GeForce 7950 GX2 Retail Round-up

Caveats:

There are some caveats that you should know about before deciding whether the GeForce 7950 GX2 is the high end video card of choice. The first caveat is the lack of support for anti-aliasing and HDR at the same time in games like Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Avid players of Bethesda's latest masterpiece may find that they will get a better gaming experience from a Radeon X1900XTX if anti-aliasing is something that you cannot live without.

Having said that, we feel that HDR and anti-aliasing only really makes a big difference in the built up areas of Oblivion - when you're running around in the wild, the difference between 0xAA and 2xAA is very small. If anything, this should be credited to Bethesda for creating an engine that doesn't suffer massively from aliasing. If you are happy to play games like this without anti-aliasing enabled, the GeForce 7950 GX2 is a superb performer - it is in a league above every other single card solution on the market at the moment.

Secondly, because GeForce 7950 GX2 uses a pair of GPUs, it ultimately relies on multi-GPU profiles in order to achieve its performance. Whilst NVIDIA is usually on the ball when it comes to releasing profiles for top games, there are lesser-known games that still don't benefit from multi-GPU. If you're a niche gamer, it is another thing that may sway your purchase.

Due to the way that GeForce 7950 GX2 works, you will need to make sure that your motherboard is on NVIDIA's compatibility list to ensure the GeForce 7950 GX2 works flawlessly in your system. NVIDIA is actively working with motherboard partners to ensure that GeForce 7950 GX2 works in as many motherboards as possible - the list is being updated on a weekly basis.

The other issue that you should know about is the multi-display support. Currently, if you're a multi-display user, you will have to enable and disable multi-GPU every time you want to play your favourite game. This is a problem with all multi-GPU solutions at the moment, though. If you don't see this as a major issue, we're sure that you'll be incredibly pleased with your GeForce 7950 GX2 purchase.

Performance:

Despite the issues that may turn enthusiasts away from GeForce 7950 GX2, we are still incredibly impressed with the way that the GeForce 7950 GX2 performs across a range of popular games. Multi-GPU has been making a B-line for the mainstream for some time now, and this is the closest that it has come so far.

Getting a pair of GPUs onto a video card that is no larger than the current flagship cards from both ATI and NVIDIA is an impressive feat. Even more impressive is the way that NVIDIA has managed to get the GeForce 7950 GX2 performing consistently well.

At times, the XFX GeForce 7950 GX2 570M XXX Edition took performance to another level above the reference-clocked GeForce 7950 GX2's. However, the downside was that there were many occasions where the XFX 570M XXX Edition lacked an image quality advantage over the cheaper, and slower clocked GeForce 7950 GX2's - even at 1920x1200.

Based on our experiences with a pair of GeForce 7900 GX2's in Quad SLI, we don't think that a single GeForce 7950 GX2 is fast enough to cope with playing games at 2560x1600. Even if you're running a pair of GeForce 7900 GTX's in SLI, or a pair of Radeon X1900's in CrossFire at 2560x1600 is going to result in a few compromises. A pair of GX2's will fare much better when the drivers are a lot less buggy. At that time, NVIDIA will officially support Quad SLI via the drivers on its home page - we're eagerly looking forward to that day.

Final Thoughts...

The four reference clocked GeForce 7950 GX2's represent good value for money if you're a high end gamer - all are priced around the £400 mark. Meanwhile, both the GeForce 7900 GTX and Radeon X1900XTX appear to sell for around the £310-350 mark, depending on which board partner's products you were looking at. We will come back to XFX's 570M XXX Edition in a minute.

BFG Tech's GeForce 7950 GX2 is £30 more than the other reference clocked cards, but we still feel that it represents good value, especially when you factor in the lifetime warranty. If you're one to keep a product for more than a couple of years or even play a game of hand-me-down, it is something worth factoring in to your buying considerations.

If that is something that you're unlikely to do, we feel that the ASUS EN7950GX2 represents the best value for money out of the bunch. It comes with a three year warranty, a couple of reasonably good games and a nice leather CD wallet. It is also the cheapest at the time of writing, too. The price we have listed in the review is the cheapest available price. MicroDirect also lists the EN7950GX2 for £390.10 including VAT - that's nearly £10 cheaper than anyone else.

The XFX is undoubtedly the fastest of the five GeForce 7950 GX2's on test, but it is also the most expensive by a considerable margin - at over £527 including VAT, it represents very poor value for money, especially when you consider performance over a wide range of games. Indeed, there are occasions where its higher clock frequencies don't result in higher playable image quality settings. Of course, gameplay is slightly smoother and the performance gap will increase at higher resolutions. However, as we have already mentioned, we feel that gaming at 2560x1600 is limited to Quad SLI for the foreseeable future.