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ASUS Extreme N7950 GX2 1024MB PCI-E Review |
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Written by Mavke
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Wednesday, 28 June 2006 |
HotHardware shares a review on the ASUS Extreme N7950 GX2 1024MB PCIe graphics card. The fastest single graphics card in the world. This is the goal that NVIDIA was shooting for when they conjured up the GeForce 7950 GX2. Some might argue that a GeForce 7950 GX2, however, with its double stacked dual GPU powered PCB design, is anything but a single graphics card. We'd remind you that it does drop into a single PCI Express graphics slot, no matter how you slice it. In fact there's room for two and yes, for Quad SLI. The GeForce 7950 GX2 is essentially a pair of GeForce 7900 GT's, goosed up a bit in clock speed and then outfitted with 512MB of GDDR3 RAM.
 ASUS Extreme N7950 GX2 1024MB PCI-E Review
ASUS was the first to ship to our labs their version of the GeForce 7950 GX2, right after the launch. Though our launch card was shipped to us from XFX, that didn't stop us from configuring the new ASUS card along side XFX's for some Quad SLI action. ASUS bundled in a solid assortment of extras with the Extreme N7950 GX2, including one major game title, King Kong, which is also emblazoned on the outside of the box. Fitting, since certainly the card within could easily be considered a modern day King Kong of the 3D graphics world in and of itself. A great design that will attract quite a few buyers.
For the amount of available horsepower and on-board resources the ASUS Extreme N7950 GX2 has to offer, its size is surprisingly compact. Even with two honkin' big GPU's and a full 1GB of RAM (512MB per PCB), the card doesn't expand beyond the dimension of a standard two slot design. It's also actually significantly shorter than its predecessor, the GeForce 7900 GX2, an OEM only variant that never made it to the mainstream market. The ASUS Extreme N7950 GX2 employs a standard reference design from NVIDIA with no modifications whatsoever. The turbine fans used are relatively quiet at extensive benchmark runs.
The ASUS Extreme N7950 GX2 showed itself to be the fastest single card available on the market right now, hands down. No other single graphics card configuration could touch it and its performance advantage was significant in all applications. Furthermore the card, though it runs hot as a pistol, as do all GeForce 7950 GX2 cards, has a fair amount of available overclocking headroom as well. Finally, the Extreme N7950 GX2 also compared well versus a pair of ATI Radeon X1900 cards in CrossFire mode in most tests and it should, for its price point, which leads us to our final evaluation.
Currently the ASUS Extreme N7950 GX2 is listed on the high side of the GX2 price range, dropping in at $609, which was the lowest price according to our search engine. But in actuality, the Extreme N7950 GX2 is listed for more than that at, and is actually priced at $619. At that price, there are other GeForce 7950 GX2 offerings from EVGA, XFX and Gigabyte that fall in for a bit less, some approaching the $560 price range. Why price points vary so much between cards is a mystery to us frankly, since virtually every card we've seen so far, has the exact same NVIDIA reference design behind its build.
One area to consider seriously though is warranty and ASUS is strong in that regard, offering a full three years to the end user. We'd encourage anyone looking at one of these new, slightly toasty-to-the-touch cards, to make sure you are fully aware of the available warranty for the card. Better safe than sorry. Pricing aside, the ASUS Extreme N7950 GX2 is a fine example of a GeForce 7950 GX2 card. It's built with standard ASUS quality under the hood, comes with a great game bundle and rocks just about any high-end gaming scenario you could throw at it currently.
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