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BFG GeForce 7950 GX2 1024MB PCI-E Review |
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Written by Mavke
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Thursday, 20 July 2006 |
Digit-Life reports about their review on the BFG GeForce 7950 GX2 1024MB PCIe video card. Have you heard of computer sandwiches? They are essentially the same as usual sandwiches in the kitchen, two pieces of PCB with something in between. The first GeForce 7950 GX2 that we gotten in our hands is the version from BFG. This card is more expensive than what we are promised for the dual processor monster with 1GB of memory and 48 texturing units in total. And as already mentioned is build out of two PCB's put together, each equipped with a GeForce 7900 core to deliver stunning performance. On top of that it also supports SLI, also known as Quad SLI technolgy.
 BFG GeForce 7950 GX2 1024MB PCI-E Review
The GeForce 7950 GX2 video card has 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory on the front side of each PCB. The are Samsung memory chips with a 1.4ns memory access time, which corresponds to 1400MHz. So, the GeForce 7950 GX2 is actually two GeForce 7900 chips operating at reduced frequencies in SLI mode on a single card. That is two G71 accelerators operate in a single slot. And both assembled with a their own cooler. The price of compact dimensions, compared to two GeForce 7900 GTX cards is reduced operating frequencies. Memory frequencies in the first place, as it's impossible to arrange the chips in around the core.
According to our tests, the BFG GeForce 7950 GX2 is currently the fastest single slot accelerator. It's impossible to choose adjectives to differentiate this solution from the SLI tandem. It used to be easy, a single card accelerator. It's clear that we speak of a video card with one GPU or even two GPU's on a single PCB. But here we have one accelerator on two PCB's. On the other hand, saying that it's a single slot solution means misleading those who use this term for video cards, which thickness equals the distance between two slots. So it uses only one PCI Express interface, but is taking up two expansion slots.
Yep, the Radeon X1900 XTX card sometimes catches up and even outperforms the new model from NVIDIA. But it happens, when its performance is limited by system resources. Results are unpredictable in this case. The Radeon X1900 XT CrossFire turned out faster, but the price for two Radeon X1900 XT's is much higher. So, the GeForce 7950 GX2 card is certainly a king among single stand alone accelerators. The price will be approximately $650. Which is quite expensive, but you get the power of two GeForce 7900 cards in return. It is certainly less expensive than two GeForce 7900 GTX's.
I also want to note that the video card was stable, we had no gripes with it. The cooler is not noisy, it did not speed up to maximum, even though the core temperature reached 90°C and higher. Unfortunately, you cannot replace a cooler on this video card, there are no counterparts. And finally, I want to note once again the admirable bundle.
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