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Leadtek WinFast PX7950 GX2 TDH 1GB PCI-E Review |
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Written by Mavke
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Sunday, 18 June 2006 |
GD Hardware reveals a review on the Leadtek WinFast PX7950 GX2 TDH 1GB PCIe graphics card. NVIDIA let everyone know that its intentions were to bring Quad SLI based PC's to market a few months ago, which has only been done with system builders. While the logic behind keeping it away from the retail market were legitimate issues like power and thermal concerns, it look as if they might have stumbled on an easier way to get it out to the masses, enter in the GeForce 7950 GX2 PCI Express card. There is one issue right now, however and that is NVIDIA hasn't released any drivers that'll support do-it-yourselfers making their own Quad SLI boxes with two GeForce 7950 GX2's.
 Leadtek WinFast PX7950 GX2 TDH 1GB PCI-E Review
This two-headed monster is dubbed as a single video card, however it's actually two video cards; one stacked on top of the other. Two G71 GPU's each with 512MB of RAM mean that you get SLI performance in a product that only takes up one PCI Express slot. Thermal issues that NVIDIA worked on to make this a viable product include GPU's that are clocked near the same speed as the GeForce 7900 GT but have more memory, a slightly faster GPU clock and quite simply make it the fastest single video card going right now. The clock rates for the GPU are 500MHz and 1200MHz memory clock.
While the overall clock rates are a bit lower than the GTX units, there's more tricks under the hood of the GeForce 7950 GX2 that make it just about the same performance as two GeForce 7900 GTX's. Although NVIDIA brags about this card have 1GB of RAM, in actuality each GPU has a dedicated 512MB and can't access the full 1GB. So in essence, this card will have similar performance as any other 512MB card, all things being equal. Leadtek's spin on this card is really a reference design card that offers users little in way of making it a must have card over other brands.
No doubt about it; the Leadtek WinFast PX7950 GX2 kicks some major ass and wipes the floor with ATI's fastest card and is about the same price. We give kudos to Leadtek for offering such a great card for the money, priced quite a bit cheaper than some of its competitors. The only real caveat we have here is in regards to thermals, make sure your PC case has some good case fans to keep the air moving around this card. With street prices ranging from Leadtek's at $559 it means you'll have to do some smart shopping to make sure you get the one you're looking for at the best possible price.
This also shows that NVIDIA has given its add-in board partners some wiggle room in their pricing. At the end of the day, it breaks down to this if you desire the fastest single card going than NVIDIA's GeForce 7950 GX2 is the one you want to get. There's no reason to look to ATI at the point if that's your desire.
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