TiE23 Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 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. Scores on http://www.gamespot.com/features/6152217/index.html Pretty nifty, huh? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabretooth Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 Curse you, TiE. My 5200 now thinks I'm cheating on her. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abespam Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 hahah, 1gig of ram, thats more than or equal to most system memory on current comps. Me hopes that the other 7000series cards will now be a lot cheaper, so that i can get my 7600GT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manoman81 Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 I can't imagine the heat that thing would put out... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toms Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 good grief... does anyone actually buy these monster cards anymore? Or worse yet TWO of them? Seems to me you can spend hundreds of dollars on monster, heat producing, noisy cutting edge cards.. or be 1 card behind, still play all the games and spend about a 1/5th of the money. I guess it was only a matter of time until graphics cards went "duo core" as well.. but really.. Most people's PCs won't even be big enough to house them.. especially now everyone is more interested in small, portable quiet PCs than monster rigs.. or maybe that is just me.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crow_Nest Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 I saw this on sale at a PC Show about 2 days ago, there were selling the XFX GeForce 7950GX2 at SGD$999 a piece. Which means it'll be about US$1200 for two of these beauties running in Quad-SLI. Now what kind of mad man would need such power when x2 7900GTs are already so powerful? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IG-64 Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 I think i'd save my money and wait for DirectX 10 and shader model 4 cards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Char Ell Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 I read the report on the GeForce 7950 GX2 on Tom's Hardware Guide. My takeaway is that unless you need to play your games at 1600x1200 resolutions or higher with full AA/AF then the single card solution is still the best option when considering performance and price. Don't get me wrong, this looks like a sweet card (well two 7900 GTX cards fused together with the clock and RAM speeds turned down really) but unless you are a hard core gamer that likes to push the edge the 7950 GX2 is overkill. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El Sitherino Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 Well I just have a 7800GT and I can play at 1600x1200 in Quake4, no issues. That said, I can't help but have a strange attraction toward obtaining one of these. Probably just curiousity of if it would really be worth the money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 Well I just have a 7800GT and I can play at 1600x1200 in Quake4, no issues. That said, I can't help but have a strange attraction toward obtaining one of these. Probably just curiousity of if it would really be worth the money. I agree with you, I'd love to see how one of those things would run. The only difference is that I'm still running on a TI 4200 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nerd_Annhilator Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 I don't think that thing would even fit in my current case. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Lion54 Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 I don't think that thing would even fit in my current case. I was thinking the same thing. It actually would fit, but I would have no room for my PCI cards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BongoBob Posted June 7, 2006 Share Posted June 7, 2006 God damn, that's just plain overkill. The only reason I can see any sort of reason that it would be a good thing is if you do alot of 3D modelling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Det. Bart Lasiter Posted June 7, 2006 Share Posted June 7, 2006 I can play any game on the market at max settings and at my monitor's max resolution (1600x1200) with my 2 7800 GTX 512s. And, until new features are added (simultaneous HDR/AA for example), I won't be upgrading. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crow_Nest Posted June 7, 2006 Share Posted June 7, 2006 I read the report on the GeForce 7950 GX2 on Tom's Hardware Guide. My takeaway is that unless you need to play your games at 1600x1200 resolutions or higher with full AA/AF then the single card solution is still the best option when considering performance and price. Don't get me wrong, this looks like a sweet card (well two 7900 GTX cards fused together with the clock and RAM speeds turned down really) but unless you are a hard core gamer that likes to push the edge the 7950 GX2 is overkill. I wouldnt say that. http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?id=1927&cid=3&pg=4 As you can see the 7950GX2 in SLI mode (Which is Quad-SLI) loses to the standard 7900GTX 512MB in SLI mode. Yep, so it means Quad-SLI + 2GB VRAM = loses to SLI + 1GB VRAM. (At least according to the charts) If you read the benchmarks for the rest of the games, the Quad-SLI loses to two standard 7900GTXs 512MB in almost every game (And even 7900GT 256MB SLI). And worst of all, its heavily overpriced. At the end of the article it says that Quad-SLI seems overkill right now, which is indeed true. So in the future to come, once games have been optimized properly for the newer hardwares, im sure Quad-SLI will leap higher than it's predessor, SLI. But even if i were a hardcore gamer. Quad-SLI would never be on my list. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TiE23 Posted June 7, 2006 Author Share Posted June 7, 2006 That's pretty interesting crow. Not like I was going to get it anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Char Ell Posted June 7, 2006 Share Posted June 7, 2006 I wouldnt say that. As you can see the 7950GX2 in SLI mode (Which is Quad-SLI) loses to the standard 7900GTX 512MB in SLI mode. Yep, so it means Quad-SLI + 2GB VRAM = loses to SLI + 1GB VRAM. (At least according to the charts) If you read the benchmarks for the rest of the games, the Quad-SLI loses to two standard 7900GTXs 512MB in almost every game (And even 7900GT 256MB SLI). And worst of all, its heavily overpriced. Makes sense to me. Perhaps I was kind of fuzzy in my first post on this thread. What I meant was a single high end card like a 7900GTX (1 GPU) is only slightly behind the 7950GX2 (2 GPU's for one slot) in terms of performance at resolutions under 1600x1200 for most games so I didn't see the logic in spending more money if you weren't going to run games at very high resolution. I wasn't referring to Quad SLI whatsoever. Upon further review however I have to say that I think my initial assessment was flat out wrong. I checked NewEgg.com and this is what I found: GeForce 7950GX2 USD$600-650 GeForce 7900GTX USD$475-500 So in essence with the 7950GX2 you get two 7900GTX's that only take one PCI-e slot for only USD$100-150 more than a single 7900GTX. If you buy two 7900GTX cards and install them in an SLI config (almost the same as jmac7142's dual 7800GTX 512's in SLI) then you would have to fork out USD$950-1,000. Now it's true that the GPU and RAM on a 7950GX2 don't run as fast as on a 7900GTX (apparently due to overheating problems) so you lose something there but still... In terms of performance I think the configs would stack like this: 1) dual GeForce7900GTX in SLI - USD$950-1,000 2) GeForce 7950GX2 - USD$600-650 3) GeForce 7900GTX - USD$475-500 So what I'm interested in seeing now is a performance comparison between (1) and (2). But no matter the result I still couldn't bring myself to spend more than $500 for my PC's video subsystem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tyrion Posted June 7, 2006 Share Posted June 7, 2006 This is exactly why I'm going to the consoles. Screw $500 video cards- I can buy an actual system for that money along with a few games. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abespam Posted June 7, 2006 Share Posted June 7, 2006 well not a PS3 ... but yeah the fact that there is a new benchmark makes all other cards cheaper, i just hope that thing comes to Aust. before i buy my new comp (so that i can get a 7600 or 7800 cheaper) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TiE23 Posted June 7, 2006 Author Share Posted June 7, 2006 Basically, if you're the kind of guy who wants a 7900GTX in SLI but wants to save $300+ with little performance loss, get the 7950GX2. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Char Ell Posted June 7, 2006 Share Posted June 7, 2006 ^^^ Very nicely summarized. Not to mention you wouldn't have to spend more money on an SLI mainboard if you didn't already have one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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