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Gigabyte GeForce 7950 GX2 1024MB PCI-E Review |
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Written by Mavke
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Saturday, 24 June 2006 |
Hardware Zone reveals a review on the Gigabyte GeForce 7950 GX2 1024MB PCIe graphics card. While computer chips continue to shrink and become cheaper roughly in line with Moore's Law, there's also this new trend of throwing more and more processors at this age-old quest for greater processing speed and power. Dual cores and soon, quad and multi-cores are the new arms race between the Intel and AMD. The idea of the network computer never took off despite the buzz. Instead, we saw the reverse, personal computers are concentrating more silicon and becoming more powerful. This also applies for the graphics industry, both ATI and NVIDIA have ramped up the transistor counts on their GPU's, so much so that they now rival CPU's.
 Gigabyte GeForce 7950 GX2 1024MB PCI-E Review
Hence it was perhaps inevitable that NVIDIA finally hit on the bright idea of reviving multi-GPU configurations with its Scalable Link Interface technology. The SLI technology has come a long way since NVIDIA's interpretation hit the market more than two years ago. Industry support has gradually built up together with the maturing of the technology and now it is rightly so, the more established multi-GPU graphics technology compared to ATI's CrossFire. The introduction of the GeForce 7950 GX2 is another step forward for this technology and with Quad SLI becoming availale for retail consumers.
As a sign of their confidence in the design and marketability, the top tier vendors have quickly jumped onto the GeForce 7950 GX2 bandwagon despite a considerable recommended retail price of $599. So far, we have already seen two GeForce 7950 GX2 cards in our labs, with a reference board from NVIDIA and a retail version from MSI. Both have performed well enough to justify its existence as opposed to a standard GeForce 7900 GT SLI setup, which the GeForce 7950 GX2 most closely resembles. The next GeForce 7950 GX2 from Gigabyte is thoroughly reference from top to bottom.
With a core clock speed of 500MHz, coupled with 1.4ns GDDR3 memory running at 1200MHz, the GeForce 7950 GX2 is on paper similar to a pair of GeForce 7900 GT's running in SLI and at the same time, not exactly so. First, the core speed of 500MHz of the GeForce 7950 GX2 is 50MHz faster than a GeForce 7900 GT but NVIDIA also took something away in exchange. This was the slower memory frequency on the GeForce 7950 GX2, 1200MHz instead of 1320MHz. For most consumers, the crucial difference is that you don't need a SLI motherboard for the GeForce 7950 GX2 and that could sway some to try it out.
If you manage to get your hands on some of the unofficial ForceWare drivers like version 91.27 and another GeForce 7950 GX2, you can try Quad SLI just like what we did. Besides the high power requirements of such a system, the noise and heat output are also considerable. Of course, so did the benchmark numbers, though the actual impact of Quad SLI is probably not as impressive as it sounds. You definitely won't get four times or even three times the performance of a single GeForce 7900 GT but having four GPU's allow you to fully exploit giant displays and high resolutions.
Gigabyte has done pretty much what every other vendor did with a new graphics product, slapped on its own logo and packaging and sent it to the stores. The emphasis, especially with NVIDIA's hard product launches in mind, was to get the goods out on the launch date and from what we have seen, NVIDIA and its board partners have succeeded admirably on this count. The clock speeds on the Gigabyte GEForce 7950 GX2 stayed true to the ones specified by NVIDIA and the board design and layout too remained the same as the reference board. Naturally, the same logic applies for the performance.
Gigabyte's major contribution to the product lies in the bundled accessories and software and we were quite satisfied. While the quantity of the software may not be as overwhelming as some other vendors, Gigabyte provided quality applications that are worth trying out instead of being thrown aside. The competitive pricing of the Gigabyte GeForce 7950 GX2 of between $570-$580 should place it among the more reasonably priced alternatives available. In the end, the price, service and support and even the contents of the bundle should decide which vendor is the one for you.
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