The GeForce 7950 GX2 Unfolded

It's time to check a bit more in detail the NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2, and to do so we will be unfolding the card. As the GeForce 7950 GX2 consists of two individual PCB's, it came only natural to our minds to see how both boards are constructed and held together. After removing the screws which hold the GX2 boards together we finally get a decent view on the second PCB.

From a first view to both boards we can't notice many differences. And you are right. Both PCB's are quite similar and hold the same single slot cooling solution and components. The most obvious difference is the PCI Express interface which is only available on one of the PCB's. Secondly you will see an extra interface that seems to be present on only one of the PCB's and which is not available on the other. However when turning the second PCB around, we found the interface at the back. And thirdly you should take a closer look at the circuitry at the back, only one of the PCB features the BR3 bridge chip.

So what is this extra interface that we find back on the GeForce 7950 GX2 graphics card? This is actually the PCI Express interconnection between the two PCB's. This switch has 48-lane internal bandwidth which is divided in a 16-lane link for each GPU and a 16-lane link for the PCI Express slot. Via this way both GPU's can communicate and work together to deliver stunning performance. The design of the GeForce 7950 GX2 is though less spectacular than the GeForce 7900 GX2 as the switch will only route 8 lanes to each GPU, instead of the full 16 lanes available as done on the GeForce 7900 GX2.

The connection card itself is very small and the circuit board is rather flimsy and seems like it might be broken pretty easily, so I would recommend anyone taking their GeForce 7950 GX2 apart to be very careful when putting the unit back together. Because once broken, your warranty will be voided and which such high-end graphics card that risk you just shouldn't take. Then again some overclockers might want to apply some better thermal paste to get a slightly better overclocking for their GeForce 7950 GX2.

Both PCB's of the GeForce 7950 GX2 come with this interface, but as previously mentioned on different side of their PCB. That way when putting both boards together the connection card will fit nicely so that both PCB's can communicate freely as needed. As we somehow overlooked this when going over the differences between both PCB's I would also like to point out that only one board has an SLI connector. So, when looking back on what we saw with the GeForce 7900 GX2 this is quite a change, as there each PCB had its own SLI connector. And when going for Quad SLI, you needed two SLI bridges to pair up GeForce 7900 GX2's.