EVGA e-GeForce 7950 GX2
Testing System and 3DMark06
HOW WE CONFIGURED THE TEST SYSTEM: We tested the EVGA e-GeForce 7950 GX2 on the Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI - an nForce 4 Intel Edition SLI X16 chipset-based motherboard - powered by an Intel Pentium 4 550 processor and 2GB of Corsair XMS2 DDR2 memory. The first thing we did when configuring this test system was enter the BIOS and loaded the "High Performance Defaults." The hard drive was then formatted and Windows XP Professional with SP2 was installed. When the installation was complete, we installed the latest nForce 4 chipset drivers, installed all of the other necessary drivers for the rest of our components, and removed Windows Messenger from the system. Auto-Updating and System Restore were then disabled, the hard drive was defragmented, and a 1536 MB permanent page file was created on the same partition as the Windows installation. Lastly, we set Windows' Visual Effects to "best performance," installed all of the benchmarking software, and ran the tests.
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Motherboard - Video Cards - Memory - Audio - Hard Drive -
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Hardware Used: Intel Pentium 4 550 (3.4GHz) Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Quad Royal nForce4 SLI X16 chipset EVGA e-GeForce 7950 GX2 NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT 2048MB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 Integrated 2x Western Digital SE16 (RAID 0) 7,200RPM - SATA II - 250GB |
Operating System - Chipset Drivers - DirectX - Video Drivers - Synthetic (DX) - DirectX - DirectX - DirectX - DirectX - OpenGL - |
Relevant Software: Windows XP Professional SP2 nForce Drivers v6.86 DirectX 9.0c NVIDIA Forceware v92.91 Benchmarks Used: 3DMark06 v1.0.2 Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.05 X3: Reunion DEMO F.E.A.R. v1.0.7 Half Life 2 - Lost Coast Quake4 v1.2* * - Custom Test (HH Exclusive demo) |
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;) 3DMark06 |
Futuremark recently launched a brand new version of its popular benchmark, 3DMark06. The new version of the benchmark is updated in a number of ways and now includes not only Shader Model 2.0 tests but also Shader Model 3.0 and HDR tests as well. Some of the assets from 3DMark05 have been re-used, but the scenes are now rendered with much more geometric detail, and the shader complexity is vastly increased as well. Max shader length in 3DMark05 was 96 instructions, while 3DMark06 ups the number of instructions to 512. 3DMark06 also employs much more lighting, and there is extensive use of soft shadows. With 3DMark06, Futuremark has also updated how the final score is tabulated. In this latest version of the benchmark, SM 2.0 and HDR / SM3.0 tests are weighted, and the CPU score is factored into the final tally as well. |
Although there are three graphs shown above, they all share the same characteristics. The three single GPU cards from NVIDIA match up evenly with the scores rising incrementally from the 7900 GT to the higher speed 7900 GS and then to the 7950 GT. From there, the 7950 GX2 and 7900 GT SLI combo take a quantum leap, with the highest overall score going to the SLI pair. The GX2 claims slightly better performance in Shader Model 2 testing and the 7900 GT SLI returns the favor with Shader Model 3 results.
