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NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 1024MB PCI-E Review |
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Written by Mavke
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Tuesday, 20 June 2006 |
DriverHeaven presents a review on the NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 1024MB PCIe graphics card. Sometimes products are released which are variations on a theme, these products can usually be looked at in a few days and then our opinions passed on to you. On other occasions products are released which are unique and interesting enough to warrant much more in-depth testing and analysis. The GeForce 7950 GX2 is one such product. A graphics card unlike any other available to gaming enthusiasts, the GX2 combines two GeForce 7950 cores on two separate PCB's with 1GB of video memory in an attempt to make the fastest graphics card available on a single PCI Express slot.
 NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 1024MB PCI-E Review
Looking at the adapter properties gives away the first major difference and that is the inclusion of 1024MB of graphics memory. Until now every desktop gaming card available to buy has featured a maximum of 512MB and the GeForce 7950 GX2 therefore represents a doubling of this specification. The memory used is GDDR3 and clocked at 1200MHz effective. The GeForce 7900 GT's memory is clocked at 1320MHz and the GTX at 1600MHz. The cores on the GeForce 7950 GX2 are 90nm chips and feature 24 pixel pipelines and 8 vertex shader units each. So, the GX2 features two core and a total of 48 pixel pipelines.
Each core is clocked at 500MHz which is slightly higher than the GeForce 7900 GT at 450MHz however below the GTX's 650MHz. Overclocking the GX2 is a very simple process. After downloading and running a copy of the CoolBits registry entry you enter the driver control panel and find that an option has appeared which allows you to automatically find the maximum overclock available on the GX2. Our sample was able to overclock from 500/1200MHz to 550MHz core and 1400MHz memory. This overclock is a reasonable increase. And with some extra tweaks, you should be able to gain even a bit more.
NVIDIA have pulled off a remarkable achievement with the GeForce 7950 GX2, the first impressive aspect of the product is the actual size of the card. When compared to the existing high end cards from NVIDIA and ATI the GeForce 7950 GX2 takes up no more room and will happily fit in any system designed for those products. Additionally, despite having two GPU's, two sets of memory and two PCB's the card only requires one power connector which again makes it competitive with existing single card solutions. The design of the GeForce 7950 GX2 really stands out against the competitors.
As far as image quality is concerned the GX2 provides identical image quality at standard to the GeForce 7900 GTX. This can of course be improved upon by enabling various levels of SLI AntiAliasing which are not available to the GTX. We are also happy to report that the drivers provided perform very well and with any luck performance will improve further on the GX2 with the final release driver. The performance of the GX2 when compared to single card solutions such as the GeForce 7900 GTX or Radeon X1900 XT is very good, in fact in almost all situations the GX2 is a reasonably large margin ahead of the two other products.
The impressiveness of the results change slightly when comparing the GeForce 7950 GX2 to GeForce 7900 GTX's or Radeon X1900 XT's in SLI or CrossFire configuration. Both of those solutions provide far superior framerates across the board, however the GX2 is a much cheaper solution. In summary, the NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 is the fastest graphics product available which works on a single PCI Express slot and is a very attractive purchase at its current sub £400 price point.
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