 7950GT head to head
Author: Luka Rakamaric
Date: 07 Nov 2006
Today we take a look at two new 7950 GT cards. NVIDIA launched the 7950GT to take a market position between the 7900GT and GTX. We can say that it has the best of both cards; higher frequencies and 512 MB of memory from the GTX, and a low price from the GT. The card is based on a G71 chip, with 24 rendering pipelines, operating at 560 MHz. The original NVIDIA specification has 512 MB memory capacity, which operates at 725 MHz.
Comparison between the 7950 GT, 7900 GT and GTX, with NVIDIA reference clocks:
EVGA 7950 GT KO Superclocked
EVGA has continued to supply the market with tweaked graphics cards, following the path Gainward has set as a pioneer of such practice. Their 7950 GT KO has a core clock of 600 MHz, just 50 MHz short of the 7900GTX. The cooler on the card remains the same, a standard copper heatsink and a small fan that we know from 7900 GT and GS. Due to the increased core clock, the fan operates in full speed mode most of the time, but thanks to the built in RPM control, it can slow down when in idle, unlike the 7900GT cards that didn?t have that feature. In every other aspect, the card is identical to the NVIDIA reference model.
Gainward Bliss 7950 GT
Gainward?s card is somewhat different that what we expected. It has only 256 MB of memory, and a custom made heatsink and fan that give it better heat dissipation characteristics. Its operating frequencies are 580 MHz for the GPU, and 750 MHz for the memory. The cooling solution is dual slot, and while there is an air outlet on the bracket, the fan doesn?t direct the airflow in that direction. The whole card is covered with a black plastic plate with numerous holes, the function of which we haven?t been able to figure out. It does look impressive, tough.
Testbed configuration:
AMD Athlon 64 FX-60
ASUS A8N32 SLI Deluxe
OCZ Platinum Edition 2, 2x512 MB
Western Digital RaptorX 150 GB
OCZ GameXStream 700W
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