GeForce 7950 GX2 Retail Round-up

Gameplay Evaluations - How We Tested:

There are no timedemos used in our evaluations - we're focusing on the real-world gameplay experience. Ultimately, this is what should determine your next video card purchase.

We have split this video card evaluation into two sections, focusing on two different screen sizes that GeForce 7950 GX2 is targeted at. To paint a comprehensive picture of how these video cards perform, we have evaluated the performance of a selection of competing video cards across six different game titles on both a 24" widescreen monitor (1920x1200) and a 19" Sony G400 CRT monitor.

Because the benchmarks are done manually, there are slight differences between runs. However, we have run each benchmarking scenario through at least three times to get consistent average and minimum frame rates. Along with the 'highest playable' evaluations, we recorded results for comparison at 1920x1200 and 1600x1200 in three games to compare the cards in an apples to apples format.

In the 'highest playable' section of the evaluation, you will not go far wrong by following the logic that the higher the resolution and in game details, the faster the graphics solution in that particular title.

NVIDIA GeForce 7-series System Setup

• ASUS EN7950GX2* - operating at its default clock speeds of 500/1200MHz;
  
• BFG Tech GeForce 7950 GX2* - operating at its default clock speeds of 500/1200MHz;
  
• Leadtek WinFast PX7950 GX2 TDH* - operating at its default clock speeds of 500/1200MHz;
  
• MSI NX7950GX2-T2D1GE* - operating at its default clock speeds of 500/1200MHz;
  
• XFX GeForce 7950 GX2 570M XXX Edition - operating at its default clock speeds of 570/1550MHz;
  
• BFG Tech GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB - operating at its default clock speeds of 670/1640MHz.

AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 (operating at 2600MHz, 13x200MHz); ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe (NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16); 2 x 1GB Corsair XMS4000 Pro (operating in dual channel at 200MHz with 2.0-3-3-7 1T timings); Western Digital Raptor 74GB, 10000RPM SATA 150 hard disk drive; OCZ GamesXStream 700W Power Supply (SLI Certified); Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2; DirectX 9.0c; NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 standalone version 6.84 WHQL; NVIDIA Forceware version 91.31 WHQL.

* Note: In order to avoid confusion and simplify the way our results are displayed, we have labelled the GeForce 7950 GX2's from ASUS, BFG Tech, Leadtek and MSI with the same clock speeds as NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2.

ATI Radeon X1000-series System Setup

• Sapphire Radeon X1900XTX 512MB - operating at its default clock speeds of 650/1550MHz.

AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 (operating at 2600MHz, 13x200MHz); DFI LANParty UT CFX3200-DR (ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200); 2 x 1GB Corsair XMS4000 Pro (operating in dual channel at 200MHz with 2.0-3-3-7 1T timings); Western Digital Raptor 74GB, 10000RPM SATA 150 Hard disk drive; Antec NeoHE 550W Power Supply (CrossFire Certified); Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2; DirectX 9.0c; ATI Catalyst 6.5 WHQL.


Seeing as we've found that ATI's high quality anisotropic filtering mode is a given with the Radeon X1900-series, we felt that NVIDIA's hardware needed to produce an image that was as close as possible to what is achievable when high quality anisotropic filtering is enabled on the Radeon X1900-series cards. We enabled high quality driver settings on NVIDIA hardware to remove the harsh optimisations that are evident in several of today's games.

We feel that if you're spending a lot of money on a video card, you're going to be looking for no-compromises image quality. As we have mentioned in the past, we were disappointed to find out that there were no improvements in filtering quality on GeForce 7900-series, especially when ATI has a quality setting that NVIDIA really can't touch with its current hardware.

With both manufacturers implementing a dual card solution, the platform also forms an important part of the overall buying decision, as it's not possible to run CrossFire in an NVIDIA SLI motherboard or vice versa. Thus, if you have any intention of adding a second card after purchasing one or other, you'll need to make a decision on which platform you'll base your system around.


We use the following abbreviations on our best-playable settings tables:

• QA AA - Quality Adaptive anti-aliasing (ATI Radeon X1000 series);
  
• PA AA - Performance Adaptive anti-aliasing (ATI Radeon X1000 series);
  
• HQ AF - High Quality Anisotropic Filtering (ATI Radeon X1000 series);
  
• TSS AA - Transparency SuperSampled anti-aliasing (NVIDIA GeForce 7 series);
  
• TMS AA - Transparency MultiSampled anti-aliasing (NVIDIA GeForce 7 series);
  
• HQ Driver - High Quality Driver Settings to remove noticeable texture shimmering in certain titles (NVIDIA).