{multithumb}

When buying a gaming card, two names spring to mind: nVidia and ATi. One of the higher end cards from nVidia is the 7950GT. Not the most expensive card on the market today, but certainly more than capable of dealing with the most demanding games out there, we’ll get to this later. But it manages to slaughter the CS Source stress test at max settings with full AA and AF at 1280x1024. It scores an average FPS of a measly 146.77. How will it fare in more rigorous tests?

{multithumb} 

Spec list from www.xfxforce.com:

The back of the box displays all the usual information, a picture of the card, in game screen shots and those awe inspiring images of what this card can render as opposed to the previous generation, usually displayed with water and grass. It also depicts logos of companies affiliated and who give approval of the card. IE: nVidia, Windows Vista etc. It also displays a graph showing how many times higher it scores than a lower model card in a benchmark test (this one being 3DMark06).

When you pop open a brand new box, you never know quite what to expect. I was quite pleased with what I was greeted with. Whomever was in charge of packing the cards went a little crazy on packing foam, not that I’m complaining, no damage was incurred during transit, obviously!

The card itself is quite nice to behold, no fans, hear that? It’s called silence! This is something that isn’t really considered an option when card makers are dealing with high-end equipment. Some may scoff at my use of the phrase “high-end” but coming from a 9800 Pro, I consider it very high spec.

Having a somewhat bland looking card (lack of fan and thus pretty heatsink covers) is offset by the black heatsink which matches the PCB with a green XFX logo plastered across.

Snaking out of the top of the card are two silver heat pipes which run along the top of the card into the main part of the heat sink which is layers of fins lining the pipes to draw heat away from the card. While this is probably quite effective, I am not a fan of mediocrity, but we’ll get to that later on.

The green DVI outputs also look quite cool I think fitting in well with the overall theme of the card.

The card comes with quite a compliment of goodies and software, Two DVI to VGA converters to plug CRT and older LCD’s into the card. A 4 pin Molex to 6 pin PCIe power connector to give the card a much needed shot of juice. Books which explain anything and everything about the ins and outs of the card. A HDTV out to component cable.

A driver CD also comes in handy, as well as a free game. And not just any game, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. One of the most popular (and difficult) first person shooters on the market. The rest of my PC is not really high end equipment. But it does the job. I beat the hell out of my system with this card. Maxed out all settings and ran it at 1280x1024, it didn’t bat an eyelid. It begged for more, to which I obliged and got consistently owned in single player of GRAW.

Now lets get to numbers that matter. Benchmark and real world results.

The test bed machine used was: 

• AMD Athlon 64 S939 3800+ @ 2.4ghz

• Gigabyte K8N-SLI

• 2x1GB PC3200 Kingston Value RAM @ 200mhz @ 3-3-3-8-1T

• Seagate 320GB 7200.10 SATAII

• LiteOn 16x DVD + - RW

• Enlight 350W PSU

At the time of testing, I was running a 350W power supply, and every time I booted the computer, I got “Windows has underclocked your card to prevent damage due to insufficient power”.

Pulling an impressive 25332 marks in 3DMark01 the card never dipped below 100 FPS. The WC is double that, but keep in mind that’s with a dual core processor with two graphics cards running in parallel. I think my card is doing ok.

3DMark05 tells a much similar story. Not a record breaker, but enough to keep up a consistent 50 FPS second on the GPU, the machine ground to a snails pace of 1-5 FPS on the CPU tests.

All this information is well and good. However, real world tests separate the show from the go.

Counter Strike Source is one of the most widely played games on the Internet for several reasons. Since its based on the Source engine it scales incredibly well, it will play on the lowest of low machines quite well as well as have lots of eye candy that can be enabled for high end machines. Of course its addictive nature also helps its popularity.

In the Video Stress Test in the main menu of CSS the 7950GT managed a staggering 146.77 FPS at max settings, 1280x1024 resolution with full shadowing and 6x AA and 16x AF.

FEAR is one of the most graphically demanding games available on the market. How does it fair on my system totally maxed out. Highest available settings on all options at 1280x960. Well, the results speak for themselves. There were no visible slow downs for the duration of the test. The smoke and dust hung in the air believably with bullet trails drawn accurately.

Conclusion

At the time of testing these were all the benchmarks I had access to. I believe, at its current pricing point of $599 (Harvey Norman Computers Superstore Bendigo) it is a tried and true investment to increase your gaming quality.

Comment on this review in the forums!