7950 GX2 review!

[Beomagi]

http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q2/geforce-7950-gx2/index.x?pg=1

one major bit to note - HDCP support for upcoming bluray and hd-dvd DRM encoded video.

2 cards, the cores are 500MHz (11% faster than 7900gt), and gimpy 1200MHz ram (9% slower) - so think of it as 2 stock speed 512MB 7900gt's in SLI pretty much.

Significant boost over the x1900xt and 7900gtx - though it should be noted that prices have dropped substantially, and they're now pretty much a different class. With x1900xt's as low as $376.66 shipped, It's closing in on the level of upper gaming cards, falling away from the high end gaming bracket (price wise not performance).

It's scary to see though that the x1900xtx uses a fair bit more power than the 7900GX2

They compare it to a dual core cpu - it's not, it's a simple sandwich.

It is expected to debut at $600 min, so after 2 or 3 months it should finally start hitting the $500 level at the usual e-tailers.

I'd prefer seeing a 32 pipe core anyway. SLI is an inefficient method of combining the power of 2 cores and sets of memory. Still it's a nice boost when looked at as a single card.

[TrinireturnofGamez]

 geforce 8 series out soon.. makes no sense to ''upgrade'' to this when dx10 is around the corner .

[TriniXaeno]

Don't be so quick to retire the old tech Trini.

People who owned the TI 4200 had a good laugh at the next gen early adopters for a good year before a true successor to their awesome card presented itself.

This is a brilliant bit of performance from Nvidia here. In a word, WOW.

More than 75% increase in performance in 3DMark 2006 over a stock 7900 GT is nothing to sneeze at.

Best of all, it won't break your powersupply as previously feared. This is svelt.

I'm sticking with my 7900 GT but it is nice to know that there is a feasible upgrade option out there should the need ever arise. Compared to the tame 33% increase that going to a 7900 GTX would offer.

[Beomagi]

Well, It's nice if you're stuck on a non sli board. 2 7900gt's work out cheaper, cooler and quieter (newer models). It's still nice to see the retail is what 2 7900gt's originally went for. Looking at power, it's 71 watts above the 7900gt - almost exactly equal to another 7900gt. Of course it upgradable to quad, and therein lies the true advantage.

HDCP IS a big issue though.

This is going to handle most dx10 functions. Not all of course, but it still gonna look awesome. It's going to be interesting to see how current cards are adapted to 10 games. Remember unreal 2003? the only dx8 effect was a water effect.

[TriniXaeno]

not to mention you get 512MB of ram on the cards as opposed to 256MB on the regular 7900 GT.

That is a total 1GB Video Ram. Not a big factor in todays games at respectable resolutions but  cool nonetheless.

[TrinireturnofGamez]

 SLI doesn't work like that , Both sets of 512 ram contain the same data so  the max video data the two cards can hold is 512mb...   
     If both shared the memory and you DID have 1gb , you would also loose some performance as two cards will have to access the same area of memorry , halving memory bandwidth to both .. performance loss there will probably be greater than having 'only' 512mb of video memory ..
  Also consider that the interconnect between the cards is a fraction of what the memory bandwidth is.. transferring data not gonna be as efficient as bieng selfish .
   Thus why the cards keep their memory for themselves...

 True if Geforce 8 is another FX i'd be glad to have a 7950 , problem is we probably won't know for a year as no Vista is slated to release soon... no DX10 .
   
  X1800XT's are out for 240 us already ,   2 of them in crossfire might be a better deal price/performance wise imo..

[TriniXaeno]

It does not have to "work like that" for you to have 1GB Video RAM

The fact remains that you have 1GB of Video RAM in your system.

[Spazosaurus]

Yeah you'll have 1GB yes...but think of it like this. If you have a raid 1 setup with each drive having a capacity of 200 gigs...technically you have 400 gigs in your system, but still only 200gigs that can actually be used.

[Czar]

Good analogy, but at the end of the day, you still have 400GB worth of hardware in yuh rig...

It's amazing when you look at it from the angle that some peeps don't even have 1GB of system memory (RAM) in dey machine...how times have changed...

Couple more articles for good measure...
AnandTech - http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2769
HotHardware - http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=826&cid=2

[TriniXaeno]

Yeah, just as Czar said.

Remember, that hardware is all at work. It isn't like the drives are sitting idle. They are very much in use. Just as the 512MB of VRAM on each card will be in use when you crank up the Res/AA/AF in your favourite 3D game.

Blow mind to have that much vram.

Machines still go out of our shop with 512MB Standard (regular use) and 1GB standard (gaming)

[Beomagi]

More like having 512MB of 2.4GHz RAM if AFR is used, and that's the bottlenecking factor by a large amount.

It is 1GB physically, but the architecture wont matter to the gamer. the level of texturing would. It would have the same limits as any other 512MB card -  i.e. more that 512MB worth of shading instructions (teeny) frame buffer (minor dep on res), and textures(major) means bottleneck occurs accross the pci-e bus transfering textures to the card when needed. ~40 GBps video memory (doubled in "perfect" sli) vs sharing 2GBps over a shared link in x8 sli.


Still for the next year or 2, 512 would be the top end. I'm just dying to see 512 bit memory interfaces.

[W1nTry]

Another review: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/354/1/

[W1nTry]

And the price war continues:

Gainward 7950 GX2 available, drops to €525

Price war ongoing


By Fuad Abazovic in Milan: Friday 16 June 2006, 13:32

NVIDIA is really pushing hard on Geforce 7950 GX2 prices. Not only that, the cards are readily available, and now they actually dropped to some very affordable prices.
We did our usual price snooping and discovered that Gainward's BLISS Geforce 7950 GX2, 2x GeForce 7900 GT, 2x 512MB GDDR3, 2x DVI, ViVo, PCIe is available in German etail for an amazing €525.05 including VAT, but without the shipping cost.

Nvidia already put some heavy pressure on ATI and made it drop its X1900XTX prices to $/€400 as ATI had expected Nvidia's 7950 GX2 would be more expensive than $/€600 and to be in short supply. Well guess what, it is not and I think Nvidia caught many napping.

You can buy the card here as long as the supply lasts. All we can say is that you will get the performance roughly equal to one and a half 7900 GTXs or X1900 XTXs for your €525, what more can you ask? µ

[TriniXaeno]

damn!!!

puts his kidney up for sale on ebay.

figured I'd have to sell a piece of my liver too but with those price drops, just one kidney should do.

[TrinireturnofGamez]

Still for the next year or 2, 512 would be the top end. I'm just dying to see 512 bit memory interfaces.

  Matrox and Volari did 512 bit memory interfaces , while they had twice the memory bandwidth of the top ATI / Nvidia cards at the time ( 16 GB/S for Parhelia , 6.4 Gb/S for Radeon 8500,  8 for Geforce 4) it still would get beat around . While the other cards were weaker  , they had much more  usage of their memory bandwidth and could still hold their ground...
  And of course the price of manufacturing that 512bit memory interface made the cheaper  ATI/Nvidia cards much more attractive...