XFX GeForce 7950 GT 570M Extreme
The XFX GeForce 7950 GT
Underneath the XFX GeForce 7950 GT 570M Extreme's large passive cooler, lies a dark colored PCB, tricked out with neon-green accents and connectors.
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Although it may be a different color, the PCB itself doesn't differ much from the GeForce 7900 GT, or the 7900 GS for that matter, but it is a newer revision. Our reference GeForce 7900 GT's PCB is labeled as version "A00", while the 7950 GT pictured here is marked as version "A01B". A quick visual comparison between the two didn't reveal any major differences other than a few different coils and the inclusion on an HDCP crypto-ROM.
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Of course, the XFX GeForce 7950 GT 570M Extreme is SLI-Ready, as is evident by its SLI connector at the top edge of the PCB. The far end of the board houses a PCI Express 6-Pin power receptacle, and the mounting plate on the other side is home to a pair of dual-link DVI outputs and an HDTV/S-Video output.
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The XFX GeForce 7950 GT 570M Extreme's most intriguing feature has got to be its cooler. XFX has outfitted this card with a low-profile passive cooler. That's right - passive, as in no noise. A large, aluminum heatsink is mounted to the GPU and 512MB of memory on the front side of the PCB, and two heat-pipes connect the front heatsink to an array of thin aluminum cooling fins on the back. Most other GeForce 7950 GT cards are likely to be equipped with single-slot active coolers, similar to the one used on the 7900 GT.
| GeForce 7900 GTX | GeForce 7950 GT | GeForce 7900 GT | GeForce 7900 GS | |
| Core Frequency | 650MHz | 550MHz | 450MHz | 450MHz |
| Memory Frequency | 800MHz | 700MHz | 660MHz | 660MHz |
| Vertex Shaders | 8 | 8 | 8 | 7 |
| Pixel Shaders | 24 | 24 | 24 | 20 |
| Pixel Fill Rate | 10.4 Billions/s | 8.8 Billions/s | 7.2 Billions/s | 7.2 Billions/s |
| Texture Fill Rate | 15.6 Billions/s | 13.2 Billions/s | 10.8 Billions/s | 9 Billions/s |
| MSRP | ~$449 | ~$299-$349 | ~$299 | ~$199 |
The GeForce 7950 GT has essentially the same features as the more powerful GeForce 7900 GTX, but with lower clock speeds. Both cards feature 24 pixel pipes, 16 ROPs, and 8 vertex shaders. NVIDIA's reference specifications call for a 550MHz GPU clock with 1.4GHz (700MHz DDR) memory. The XFX card we're looking at here is clocked a bit higher though, at 570MHz / 1.46GHz. Don't fret though, we've down-clocked it to NVIDIA's specifications as well to give you all an idea as to how reference cards or other "stock" offerings will perform.
