Up Close, Looking at Details

Having gone through the main impressions of the GeForce 7950 GT accelerator, it is time to check a bit deeper and reveal the real nature of the NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT graphics card. We will actually take a closer look and highlight some of the vital features. We will start with the front and move slowly to the underlying components. We might not have mentioned this, but NVIDIA has actually slight revised the reference cooler from the GeForce 7900 GT card. The revised version should be slightly cooler, though produce less noise. All set, here we go...

When looking at the GeForce 7950 GT from NVIDIA you might just think it is the old GeForce 7900 GT, with only a slight change of the heatsink sticker. The reference design of the GeForce 7900 GT came with a more green sticker, while on the refreshed GeForce 7950 GT this is more a black/green design. The other component and PCB look quite similar as we can't spot any differences with the GeForce 7900 GT accelerator. Although NVIDIA has gone through a change linked to the memory chips, and instead of using Samsung branded these are now replaced by Infineon chips.

The cooling system of the GeForce 7950 GT is actually a copper heatsink with a quite small fan pumping air from inside the PC case and onto the fins of the heatsink. A very simple and compact cooling system which looks more like a cooler for a mainstream product. The heatsink has slim copper fins to expand the volume which is profitable at reducing the heat. The fan blades are made of UV reactive plastic and shine in ultraviolet light. The cooler is secured on the card by means of four spring-loaded screws.

Such a simplistic cooler is an indication of the low power consumption of NVIDIA's graphics processor. And that is certainly a fact as the GeForce 7950 GT is powered by the optimized G71 core. Anyway, proper ventilation inside your PC case is a must if you are going to use a GeForce 7950 GT and you may want to replace its standard cooler with something more efficient if you are going to overclock it. Although NVIDIA did some minor updates to the fan to get a better air flow and cooling through the copper heatsink.

And yes located at the top of the board and looking very familiar is the SLI connection. Since NVIDIA has introduced the SLI technology, almost all their graphics card features this extra technology. The SLI connection provides the means to support multi-GPU power. So in essence you can combine the raw processing power of two GeForce 7950 GT accelerators. Of course this SLI connection is not really needed anymore, as the current ForceWare drivers support cable-less multi-GPU operation. But using the SLI hardware connection you get some extra performance which is not possible in cable-less mode.

The GeForce 7950 GT requires some extra power, in addition to the power that is supplied via the PCI Express slot which is common for a high-end graphics card. We finally arrive at the rear I/O plate, where you can find a dual DVI and S-Video output. A standard configuration since the GeForce 7 series have been introduced and completely inline with the current system requirements. So in the end the GeForce 7950 GT is a refresh of the previous GeForce 7900 GT, with a slightly better cooling and extra memory coming at higher clock speeds. All this should give the GeForce 7950 GT the extra performance advantage and gaming experience.