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EVGA e-GeForce 7950 GX2 1024MB PCI-E Review |
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Written by Mavke
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Wednesday, 21 June 2006 |
ExtremeTech reports about their review on the EVGA e-GeForce 7950 GX2 1024MB PCIe graphics card. It's hard to believe that almost two years have passed since Nvidia first introduced SLI or should we say, re-introduced it. The idea that you can use two consumer graphics cards in parallel to nearly double graphics performance goes back to the days of 3dfx, where two PCI graphics cards would draw alternate lines in scan line interleave mode. The proliferation of AGP graphics pretty much killed that concept, but the flexibility of PCI Express brought it back. As PCI Express graphics started to take hold, NVIDIA introduced its own SLI technology.
 EVGA e-GeForce 7950 GX2 1024MB PCI-E Review
While ATI has made some good strides with CrossFire, coming late to the dual
graphics game and trying to play catch up, NVIDIA has remained one step ahead.
It seems like NVIDIA always has a new dual graphics trick up its sleeve, whether
it's cheaper SLI motherboards, cheaper SLI capable graphics cards, or drivers
that enable new features in SLI mode. Their latest trick is maybe their best one
yet, SLI on a single graphics card. The GeForce 7950 GX2 marries two GeForce
7900 GT class GPU's, with two circuit boards, into a single double wide card.
Let's take a look at the new two-headed monster.
SLI is nifty, but the
big problem with it is, well, it's SLI. It requires an SLI motherboard with an
nForce chipset. We tend to like NVIDIA's motherboard chipsets, but it's still a
limiting factor. It requires two graphics cards stuffed into two slots, which
doesn't fit well in every case. Let's not forget that most medium to high-end
graphics cards require a power connector, so you'll need two of those, and
sometimes one heck of a beefy power supply. These problems aren't unique to SLI,
of course. ATI shares these dual graphics challenges. What if you could
basically sandwich two single slot graphics cards together?
Essentially,
that is what NVIDIA has done with the GeForce 7950 GX2. It's one graphics card,
but has two printed circuit boards, each with a G71 graphics processor. That's
the same one in the GeForce 7900 GTX and GT cards, with 24 pixel shader units
and texture address units, 8 vertex shader units, and 16 raster operators. You
can think of the 7950 GX2 as two 7900 GT cards banded together, though the
comparison isn't exact. The core clock speed of the EVGA card is 500MHz, up from
450MHz in the GeForce 7900 GT. The memory is 1200MHz effective, down from
1320MHz in the standard GT model.
The GeForce 7950 GX2 is a really good
idea, well executed. There are some hardcore gamers or gamers that have begun to
discover their hardcore performance needs, who would like to run a dual graphics
setup but simply don't meet the requirements. Either they don't have precisely
the right motherboard, their power supply isn't beefy enough for two high-end
cards, or they don't have enough room in their case…whatever. The GX2 neatly
sidesteps many of those problems, giving you SLI performance in a single slot.
Plus, the cards have the HDCP crypto ROM.
We'd like to see NVIDIA
officially support Quad SLI for enthusiasts using this product, and that list of
compatible motherboards needs to grow, but neither problem is something we can
get too worked up over. Right now, the GeForce 7950 GX2 cards aren't exactly
economic bargains. With GeForce 7900 GTX and Radeon X1900 XTX cards now selling
for under $500, it's clearly the most expensive single graphics card you can
buy. You can even get two GeForce 7900 GT cards for about $550. Still, these
cards are brand new, and we can remember when those other high-end cards cost
$600 or more, not long ago.
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