Introduction

Today was supposed to be the day ATI’s latest GPU releases, including the Radeon X1950 XTX, X1900 XT 256MB, and Radeon X1650 Pro enjoyed all the limelight that comes with retail availability. In a startling twist of fate however it’s NVIDIA’s GeForce 7950 GT that’s stealing the headlines across hardware enthusiast sites around the web instead. Today’s arrival of the GeForce 7950 GT is a bold demonstration by NVIDIA that they don’t intend to give an inch to their archrival, concocting a new GPU that’s designed to take on ATI’s brand new Radeon X1900 XT 256MB head-on. It’s also a lesson to ATI that they must be careful about pre-announcing products too far ahead of their actual introduction. It is after all no coincidence that NVIDIA chose the 14th to hard launch the GeForce 7950 GT. But does ATI have anything to fear with today’s introduction of the GeForce 7950 GT? That’s what we’re here today to find out!

The 7950 GT reference board

7950 GT SLI

The GeForce 7950 GT is actually the second part of NVIDIA’s plans to spoil ATI’s party this fall. Last week we took a look at NVIDIA’s first effort, the GeForce 7900 GS, which has been architected to do battle with ATI’s Radeon X1800 GTO and X1900 GT at the $200 price point. The 7900 GS faired pretty favorably against the Radeon X1800 GTO, delivering better performance than the GTO overall, but against the newer X1900 GT it was a much closer battle, with the victor varying depending on the particular game being tested. The GeForce 7950 GT occupies the bracket just above the GeForce 7900 GS, priced at an MSRP of $300 and equipped with 512MB of GDDR3 memory. All GeForce 7950 GT cards are also equipped with the crypto-ROM chip necessary to support HDCP.

Although it sports the “GeForce 7950” number designation, the GeForce 7950 GT will not outperform the GeForce 7900 GTX, in fact the 7950 GT’s roots are closer to the 7900 GT rather than the 7950 GX2. We’d actually call it a supercharged GeForce 7900 GT rather than a souped-up GeForce 7900 GTX or GX2 as it’s built on the same board design as the 7900 GT, but more on that later.

Top of the reference card

Bottom of the card

The DNA among the 7900 GT/GTX and 7950 GT GPUs are the same, they all are based around NVIDIA’s G71 graphics processor and therefore have the same key technological features, the only subtle differences lie in how the board’s are configured.

The GeForce 7950 GT, like the GeForce 7900 GTX, ships with 512MB of GDDR3 memory, whereas the GeForce 7900 GT is typically limited to just 256MB (although in more recent months, some board partners have been equipping their 7900 GT boards with 512MB of memory, BFG being one example). The memory on the GeForce 7950 GT runs at 700MHz (1.4GHz effective), that’s 100MHz shy of the GeForce 7900 GTX and just 40MHz faster than the 7900 GT, while the 7950 GT’s graphics core runs at 550MHz, sitting right in between the 7900 GT and 7900 GTX, which are clocked at 450MHz and 650MHz respectively. The GeForce 7950 GT has 24 pixel shaders and 8 vertex shaders, just like the GeForce 7900 GTX and 7900 GT.

3 overclocked 7950 GT cards

The XFX 7950 GT