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| NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 Graphics Card |
|
Yes, that was no typo. Even though it is as long and as big as the GeForce 7900 GTX, its construction is more reminiscent of its smaller brother. Just look at its coolers. They used a similar design to the GeForce 7900 GT's cooler, albeit with an aluminium heatsink instead of a copper one. In fact, one can actually say that NVIDIA gave the GeForce 7950 GX2 a lousier cooler than the GeForce 7900 GT! It was also clocked at about the same speeds as the GeForce 7900 GT - the slightly faster GPU speed being offset by the slightly lower memory speed. All these were done, we believe, primarily for marketing reasons. We may be a little harsh in saying this but we think the GeForce 7950 GX2 is a waste of good silicon. It was evidently crippled for marketing reasons. They could have made it much faster but that would have cut into the market for GeForce 7900 GTX SLI. Even with the release of this card, NVIDIA maintains that the GeForce 7900 GTX SLI will remain the ultimate choice for really hardcore gamers. And why not? Each GeForce 7900 GTX card costs almost as much as a GeForce 7950 GX2. If the GeForce 7950 GX2 is faster or even as fast as the GeForce 7900 GTX SLI, who would want to spend so much money buying two GeForce 7900 GTX cards? So, NVIDIA crippled the GeForce 7950 GX2 so that it's faster than the GeForce 7900 GTX but not remarkably so as to threaten the dominance of the GeForce 7900 GTX SLI. All NVIDIA needed was a card that would totally trash the ATI Radeon X1900 XTX. And if their test results are accurate, the GeForce 7950 GX2 certainly did that. Unfortunately, we were not able to obtain a sample of that card so we will have to take NVIDIA's word for it. Still, one can't help but wonder how much potential was wasted when NVIDIA equipped the card with puny aluminium coolers. They almost certainly undervolted it to keep the power consumption down since the GPUs didn't need to be that fast. They could be the reasons why we could only hit 600MHz in our overclocking test. Then again, all that power is really more than what many gamers can harness. If you do not have a really fast system, you may not even be able to realize the full potential of an unoverclocked GeForce 7950 GX2, much less an overclocked one. Seriously, with a single GeForce 7950 GX2 card, you can confidently play any game at 1600x1200 with 16xAF and 4xAA enabled. Don't worry about frame rates. Just concentrate on gaming! Officially, NVIDIA pegs it at the same price range as the GeForce 7900 GTX. If street prices reflects that, then it's value for money. After all, you are getting two cards for the price of one! But from what we can see at this moment, retailers are pricing it at a great premium over even the GeForce 7900 GTX. The price tag is truly mind-blowing. For more details, read our Comprehensive Review! |
| MSRP |
• $599 - $649 |
| Lowest PriceGrabber Price |
|
| Review |
|
Architecture |
• G71 |
Process Technology |
• 90 nm |
Number of Transistors |
• 278 Million per GPU |
Die Size |
• 196 mm2 per GPU |
Pixel Pipelines |
• 24 Pixel
Pipelines per GPU |
ROPs |
• 16 ROPs
- 16 colour, 16 blend per GPU |
Core Clock |
• 500 MHz |
Fillrate |
• 12.0 Gigapixels
/ sec. per GPU |
Memory Interface |
• 4-way 64-bits
memory interface per GPU |
Memory Buffer |
• 1024 MB GDDR3 |
Memory Clock |
• 600 MHz |
Memory Bandwidth |
• 38.4 GB/s per GPU |
Vertex Units |
• 8 Vertex
Units per GPU |
Vertex Clock |
• 500 MHz |
Vertex Output |
• 1000 million
vertices / sec. per GPU |
Power Consumption |
• 143 W |
Graphics Bus |
• PCI Express |
Shader Model Version |
• SM 3.0 |
NVIDIA IntelliSample Technology |
• 4.0 |
NVIDIA SLI Technology |
• Yes |
NVIDIA Quad SLI Technology |
• Yes |
NVIDIA TurboCache Technology |
• No |
64-bit Texture Filtering and Blending |
• Yes |
DVI Support |
• Two dual-linked DVI, both integrated into the GPU |
| Features |
• Microsoft®
DirectX® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 Support |
* Our New Review System
ARP is committed to developing new ways to improve your experience with us. As part of our continuous efforts to improve the value of our reviews to you, we are implementing a new review system.
This new review system is designed to allow you to quickly receive information on the latest hardware. This new system also allows you to quickly get the gist of the review without reading through it. This can be very useful, especially in situations where you need to make a quick purchase decision.
In this new system, we start with a Product Overview whenever a company sends us a press release about their latest product. We shift through extraneous PR-talk to create a straightforward summary of the product's features as well as its specifications. This allows you to quickly find out all the pertinent details about the product, without reading through official press releases.
When we receive the product for review, we will quickly take photos of it and create a Pictorial Review. The purpose of a pictorial review is to allow you, the reader, to quickly examine the product visually. It may help you make better purchase decisions, especially if you cannot wait for the full review.
After thorough testing, we will post a Comprehensive Review of the product. This adds on to the pictorial review with comprehensive test results and our final conclusion on the product.
But no matter whether you are reading a Pictorial Review or a Comprehensive Review, you can always read the summary of the review as well as examine the product's specifications right on the first page. In all our new reviews, we will maintain the first page as a Product Overview page. If the product is listed in PriceGrabber, you can also check out the lowest price online.
We hope this new review system will make your experience a lot more enjoyable and informative!
