Introduction

NVIDIA just announced GeForce 7950GX2 today. While the GeForce 7900GX2 was mainly for OEMs and QuadSLI, the new GeForce 7950GX2 is being sold as a single card. It will work on many different mainboards and does not need an SLI capable chip set. Some of these include the Intel 925X, 955X, 945G, 945P, E7525, VIA K8T890/VT8237R, the nForce 4, nForce 5 and even the ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200. The one thing each board needs, is a correct implementation of the PCIe x16 slot for the card to work. Compatibility testing is an ongoing process and more motherboards will be added to the list as testing progresses. For the most up-to-date list, please check the nvidia.com website at www.nvidia.com/GX2

Some manufacturers have jumped the gun and have started offering the cards early. Some of these are being sold for under 600€. Nonetheless, the MSRP for the GeForce 7950GX2 is between $599 to $649. Considering that the 7900GTX had a MSRP of $499 or 499€s, getting a 7950GX2 for just about 10-15% might just make that card very appealing to the high-end gamer. There will be factory overclocked cards available. XFX is selling cards running with 570MHz instead of the standard 500MHz.

Lets take a look at the card and what it brings to the table.

The card

The first thing is the actual size of the card. While the GeForce 7900GX2 was very long, the 7950GX2 is about the size of a 7900GTX in length. The card should now fit into normal ATX cases with no problem. The GPU cooler has become much smaller, but still covers the memory chips as well. While the 7900GX2 had two SLI connectors, the GeForce 7950GX2 only has one, located in the middle of the card. There will be no problems using the card by itself, or using two of these in SLI. While QuadSLI with 7950GX2 will not be supported at launch, it will be in the future.


Here you see the card inserted in an Intel mainboard with a single PCIe x16 slot, while the second picture shows an AMD based board, with two of these cards installed. Note the single SLI bridge used. Using a bigger PCI card right under the graphic card will not block the GPU cooler anymore, as was the case with the 7900GTX.

Lets take a look at the specifications.

Specifications

While the manufacturing process and the die has remained the same, the GeForce 7950GX2 GPUs run at the specification using a lower voltage than single GPU configurations. The results are 143W peak power consumption for the GeForce 7950GX2 compared to 95W for a GeForce 7900GTX and 125W for a Radeon X1900XTX. The minimum PSU requirement has been raised from 22A on 12V of the GeForce 7900GTX to 27A on 12V for the GeForce 7950GX2.

The clock speed has been dropped from th 650MHz of the GTX model to 500MHz. The standard 7900GTs run at 450MHz, so the new GPU is placed in between the two models. As mentioned before, some manufacturers have decided to offer factory overclocked cards. The number of Pixel Shaders, ROPs and Vertex Pipelines has doubled as there are two GPUs. The pixel and texture fill rate has not quite doubled because the 7950GX2 uses 1.2GHz DDR3 memory, while the 7900GTX uses 1.6GHz DDR3 memory. In total the memory bandwith has gone up from 51.2GB/s to 76.8GB/s

But besides speed and performance, the GeForce 7900GX2 brings HDCP to the high-end.