nVidia Geforce 7950 Gx2 With 2 GPUs on one card...can we say Damnn...

[kgd2006 0]

Graphics cards are always updating, almost seems like a new one is coming out every month. I have the nvidia GeForce 7900GT from a recently purchased Alienware computer. Now nvidia just released a new graphics card that kills all graphics card. The single card has a combined total of 1GB of GDDR3 RAM, my new computer JUST got 1GB of ram. Here is the very interesting article for you guys to check out, for all the hardware junkies like me out there. Because I know a summary of it cant feed you, you need it raw so here it is:

 

 

Nvidia reintroduced SLI two years ago, but the company found that two GPUs in a single system just wasn't enough. Four would be better. The GeForce 7950 GX2, Nvidia's newest video card, now makes two GPUs a mere starting point. The GeForce 7950 GX2 is a single card, but it comes with two GPUs and twice the amount of RAM found on normal video cards. Since the GX2 is a single card, you can place two in an SLI system for quad-GPU action. Welcome to the land of excess.

 

The GeForce 7950 GX2 sports two GeForce 7900 series GPUs; the single card has a combined total of 1GB of GDDR3 RAM, 48 pixel pipelines, and 16 vertex shaders. Nvidia reference specifications have the dual cores clocked at 500MHz and pegged the memory at 600MHz. The core clock of the GX2 is 200MHz slower than a GeForce 7900 GTX--but when you have two GPUs on a single card, who's complaining? According to Nvidia, heat output and power consumption forced the decision to ease off on some of the settings to ensure proper operation. However, the conservative engine speed gives the card manufacturers the opportunity to customize cards to offer higher clock speeds. The XFX GeForce 7950 GX2 we tested ships with a 570MHz engine clock, and 700MHz memory.

 

 

 

The double-wide GeForce 7950 GX2 will work with just about any motherboard that has PCI Express slots; check Nvidia's site for a complete list. You'll also need a quality 400W power supply to keep the card well fed, but you might need more juice if you go above reference settings. XFX recommends a 500W supply for its overclocked GeForce 7950 GX2.

 

If you manage to get your hands on two GeForce 7950 GX2s, you can run them in a single system to enable Quad SLI mode. However, for the foreseeable future, Quad SLI configurations will only be available only through system builders. Of course, we don't imagine that Nvidia would cripple retail boards from running in Quad SLI mode, and no one's going to stop you from buying two cards and slapping them in your system. If you plan to do so, make sure your motherboard is verified to run in Quad SLI mode, and be sure to have, at the very least, a high-quality 600W (our recommendation) power supply.

 

The XFX GeForce 7950 GX2 is the fastest single-card graphics we've had the pleasure to test here at GameSpot. Our XFX GX2 beat out the GeForce 7900 GTX and the Radeon X1900 XT in every single test. The XFX GeForce 7950 GX2 even manages to come close to our GeForce 7900 GTX SLI and Radeon X1900 XT CrossFire rigs.

 

We managed to get two GeForce 7950 GX2s running in our test bed without a hitch, and enabling Quad SLI mode proved trivial. Via the normal driver interface, we flipped a switch and were on our way to a system powered by four GPUs. Unfortunately, performance proved unimpressive and contained graphical errors; we mainly attribute that to the immaturity of the drivers. We're sure that, given some time, Nvidia can make Quad SLI a competitive solution.

 

With an MSRP between $599 and $649, the GeForce 7950 GX2 isn't a mainstream graphics solution, but it offers performance comparable to much more expensive dual-card SLI and CrossFire setups.

Edited June 14, 2006 by szupie (see edit history)

[finaldesign1405241487 0]

Impressive. I would only inform you to wrap that "Italic" text into quote because I see it's probably copy-pasted from Nvidia or another source, so quickly edit your post and put that in quote, or some of administrators will be mad

[kgd2006 0]

Oops, I kinda of did a quickie cause I thought some of the material that I was reading might be interesting to you guys. I did it right before I had to run to work. I'll remember next time, hehe. Szupie, thanks for the edit. Won't happen again. =)

[roggle 0]

By the way, the implementation of Quad SLI that I have seen have been massive failures, the small increase in frame rate does not justify the immense price.Also, in the implementations I've seen, if the game does not support Quad SLI mode, it switches off and turns to ONE of the graphics card...which is 'underclocked' because of heat issues. This leaves the other three graphics card doing NOTHING. It doesn't even go into normal dual SLI mode. This may be fixed by now but still, having underclocked cards just seems against the whole idea of having two graphics card in the first place.Secondly, the noise from these things is tremendous and not to mention the heat dissipation of a Quad SLI.The games that do support Quad SLI show minimal increases in performance which may be a driver issue...but...ugh it just doesn't seem to be worth it.1) The only reason why you would need Quad SLI is if you're running resolutions of 2000 +.2) Yet these games run very jerkily even when Quad SLI optimized3) It costs a bomb4) Sounds like a bomb5) Expensive like a bomb.WASTE OF MONEY...

[Habbo Shack 0]

By the way, the implementation of Quad SLI that I have seen have been massive failures, the small increase in frame rate does not justify the immense price.

 

... (save space)

 

WASTE OF MONEY...

 

On the contrair my friend, its not a total waste of money. Sure i mean, if you intend on running

2 gig's of video ram while playing half life 2, it can be a waste of money (and in some cases

a performance decline), but one card is actually good enough.

 

I only know this because I sold the Asus version of this card to one of my clients and it ROCKED the benchmarks, infact I think it came in the TOP 999 benchmarks in the official AMD forums.

 

https://community.amd.com/community/support-forums

 

I work @ Summit Direct (canada) and if you have questions about the components I used, pm me, and I'll email you the exact specs (from the proposal sheet)

 

Here are a few pictures featuring the card we're talking about (that we custom built recently)

 

 

 

 

System Specs:

 

ThermalTake Tsunami Dream ATX W/(600W PurePower PSU)

ASUS M2N-SLi Deluxe

AMD sAM2 FX62 - 2811Mhz 2x1MB L2 Cache

OZC 2GB DDR2 800MHz Gold XTC 5-5-5-12 2T

(2X250GB) WD 7200RPM S-ATA2 (Raid"0")

1GB GeForce 7950GX2 GPU - 500Mhz GPUMEM - 400Mhz

 

3DMark06 Score - 9249 (No Tweaking) 07/29/2006

SM2 - 4199 / SM3 - 4276 / CPU - 2152

 

With Tax (Ontario 14%) Sold for $4586.13 CDN

 

LET ME REMIND YOU - NO TWEAKING - NO OVERCLOCKING - NO SIGN OF ARTIFACTS

 

PURE PWNAGE!!!!!!

 

So yeah, if you have some money to spend, or finance. The Geforce 7950 GX2 is a

great option to go with. lol.