NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2

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. Three games are tested in our "Highest Playable" detail settings, taking both 24" widescreen LCD gamers and CRT gamers into account. The second part of our evaluation focuses on apples to apples comparisons.

Because the benchmarks are done manually, there are slight differences between runs. However, we have run each benchmarking scenario through enough times to get consistent average and minimum frame rates. We recorded results for comparison at 1920x1200, 1600x1200 and 1280x1024 in the apples to apples section.

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

• NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 1GB - operating at its default clock speeds of 500/1200MHz;
  
• 2 x BFG Tech GeForce 7900 GT OC 256MB - operating at their default clock speeds of 475/1360MHz in SLI mode;
  
• 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 PowerStream 600W Power Supply (SLI Certified); Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2; DirectX 9.0c; NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 standalone version 6.84 WHQL; NVIDIA beta Forceware version 91.29.

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