Fall '06 NVIDIA GPU Refresh - Part II: GeForce 7950 GT and SLI

Final Words

The single 7950 GT card from NVIDIA does not seem to offer a greater immediate return on your investment than its major competitors in the X1900 XT family. First, the X1900 XT 256MB is cheaper than the 7950 GT. Both flavors out perform the 7950 GT in multiple games. Where the 7950 GT does lead the X1900 XT 256MB in a couple cases, it never leads the 512MB version. Obviously, the usual exceptions apply and those shopping with only one particular game in mind may form different conclusions, but in our eyes, the X1900 XT series are still better deals than stock speed 7950 GT parts.

Of course, there are already a number of overclocked 7950 GT cards out and about. These don't seem to be as highly overclocked as some of the 7900 GS cards we've been seeing around, but we are still planning on doing a 7950 GT mini-roundup in the next couple weeks in order to take a closer look at the differences in the overclocked options out there. If this card falls in price or if a highly overclocked version is available for the stock price, the 7950 GT may turn into a tempting deal. At this point, it just falls short in performance for the money. Of course, sometimes other factors matter more than performance in determining value. For instance, the passively cooled XFX 7950 GT cards provide zero noise with excellent performance.

The GeForce 7950 GT SLI can be a good deal compared to a $600 7950 GX2, but with the possibility of finding the GX2 for $550 and less (especially with mail in rebates) those who want the high end performance of SLI and the flexibility of a single card that can run in most motherboards will prefer the GX2. GeForce 7950 GT SLI is technically faster than a GX2 card, as the clock speeds on the individual GT cards are higher than those of the GX2, but performance is close enough that the GX2 is probably the better choice for SLI. The GeForce 7950 GT SLI option is probably better as an upgrade later on when the added performance becomes necessary.

In most cases, even the 7900 GS SLI setup performs as well as the X1950 XTX. If you don't need maximum performance right now, a $200 investment could offer a good performance upgrade for older GPUs, and you can eventually add a second card to get current high end single GPU performance for less money in the long run. You could also look at spending $400 to go straight to 7900 GS SLI, which will typically give you performance slightly better than a single 7900 GTX or X1950 XTX card at a lower price -- though of course you still need an SLI compatible motherboard.

With DirectX 10 and Microsoft Windows Vista on the horizon, we're hesitant to recommend dropping a lot of money on a GPU upgrade right now if you don't need it. DirectX 9 hardware should still remain useful for years after the DirectX 10 launch, but unless you really have a lot of disposable income and are willing to upgrade GPUs again in six months, our advice would generally be to stick with current generation cards costing $300 or less. Such cards offer more than enough performance for the vast majority of users, and even if DirectX 10 won't be a factor in the short term, DX10 class cards will be able to handle DX9 class games all the better. We expect high end cards built for DX10 to well exceed the performance of DX9 hardware even under current games.