In the test 15 years ago: 125 ° C was still ok with the GeForce 7950 GT from XFX

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15 years ago, Nvidia put the GeForce 7950 GT against the ATi Radeon X1950 Pro, which was not yet available. The tested XFX GeForce 7950 GT 570M convinced due to its high performance, the lower price and the silent passive cooling. The GPU garnished that with very high temperatures.

Table of contents

  1. 1 A faster GeForce 7900 GT or a slower GeForce 7900 GTX
  2. Solid performance in games
  3. Completely silent at extremely high temperatures
  4. Conclusion

A faster GeForce 7900 GT or a slower GeForce 7900 GTX

The GeForce 7950 GT could either be viewed as a faster GeForce 7900 GT or a slower GeForce 7900 GTX. Like these two models, it relied on a full expansion of the G71 GPU with 278 million transistors and 24 pixel pipelines. The GPU clock of 550 MHz was exactly in the middle between the GeForce 7900 GT with 450 MHz and the GeForce 7900 GTX with 650 MHz. At that time, product differentiation based on the clock rate was still common, today it no longer exists.

The XFX GeForce 7960 GT 570M clocked the GPU with a marginally higher frequency of 570 MHz. The 512 MByte graphics memory on the reference model was clocked at 700 MHz, with the XFX model it was 730 MHz and thus in both cases a little less than the 800 MHz of the GeForce 7900 GTX.

GeForce 7900 GT GeForce 7950 GT XFX GeForce 7950 GT 570M Extreme Radeon X1900 XT Chip G71 R580 transistors approx. 278 million approx. 384 million production 90 nm chip clock 450 MHz 550 MHz 570 MHz 625 MHz pixel pipelines 24 16 shader units < br>per pipeline (MADD) 2 3 FLOPs (MADD/ADD) 173 GFLOPS 211 GFLOPS 219 GFLOPS 360 GFLOPS ROPs 16 pixel fill rate 7,200 MPix/s 8,800 MPix/s 9,120 MPix/s 10,000 MPix/s TMUs per pixel pipeline 1 texel fill rate 10,800 MTex/s 13,200 MTex/s 13,680 MTex/s 10,000 MTex/s vertex shader 8 triangular throughput 940 MV/s 1,140 MV/s 1,180 MV/s 1,250 MV/s pixel shader PS 3.0 vertex shader VS 3.0 memory size 256 MB GDDR3 512 MB GDDR3 memory clock 660 MHz 700 MHz 730 MHz 725 MHz memory interface 256 bit 2 × 256 bit memory bandwidth 42,240 MByte/s 44,800 MByte/s 46,720 MByte/s 46,400 MByte/s SLI/CF support yes

In the reference design, the GeForce 7950 GT was equipped with the same single-slot cooler that was used on the GeForce 7900 GT and GS. Due to the small radial fan, this was comparatively loud under load and not suitable for silent PCs. The manufacturer built in its own passive cooling design for the XFX GeForce 7950 GT 570M. This put on a copper plate for heat absorption and an aluminum heat sink on the front of the graphics card. In addition, two heat pipes conducted the heat to another aluminum heat sink on the back of the graphics card. The built-in GDDR3 memory was also covered by a cooling plate to dissipate its waste heat.

  1. XFX GeForce 7950 GT backside

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XFX GeForce 7950 GT back
XFX GeForce 7950 GT cooler
XFX GeForce 7950 GT DVI ports
X >

XFX GeForce 7950 GT Heatpipe sideways
XFX GeForce 7950 GT Heatpipe
XFX GeForce 7950 GT slot bracket
XFX GeForce 7950 GT cooling solution
XFX GeForce 7950 GT without cooler

Solid performance in games

The overclocking of the XFX model was noticeable in the benchmarks in a one to two percent higher performance – free. Compared to a GeForce 7900 GT, between 16 and 22 percent more power was available, depending on the resolution and the activation of anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. Conversely, the losses on a GeForce 7900 GTX were between 9 and 13 percent. Compared to ATi graphics cards, the GeForce 7950 GT is between the Radeon X1800 XT and the X1900 XT.

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Completely silent at extremely high temperatures

The passive cooling of a fast graphics card like the GeForce 7950 GT took its toll. The GPU temperatures were already very high at 69 ° C while idling, but the measured 125 ° C under load broke all records. The temperature threshold stored by XFX in the BIOS, from which the graphics card throttled its clock, was 130 ° C. It was therefore possible that the XFX GeForce 7950 GT 570M slowed down significantly under 3D load in the summer. In the test, despite the high temperatures, no stability problems were found in a 12-hour load scenario.

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If you had a well-ventilated case, you could increase the clock speed of the GeForce 7950 GT 570M even further. Up to 630 MHz GPU and 790 MHz memory clock were possible in the test, which resulted in a 9 to 14 percent higher performance.

Conclusion

The GeForce 7950 GT was a successful graphics card and, with a price of 250 euros, was attractive for many gamers. For users with a weakness for silent PCs, the XFX GeForce 7950 GT 570M with passive cooling is a good choice – provided the case was sufficiently ventilated to keep the high GPU temperatures in check. At 300 euros, the price was slightly higher than that of the reference design, but still within the scope of what was on offer. A final assessment of the GeForce 7950 GT was still difficult because the designated competitor – the ATi Radeon X1950 Pro – was not available on the market at the time of the test.

In the “Tested 15 years ago” category, the editorial team has been looking into the test archive every Saturday since July 2017. The last 20 articles that have appeared in this series are listed below:

  • Zalman made a comeback with the CNPS 9700 LED
  • The Scythe Mine Cooler was a lot cooler for little money
  • The GeForce 7900 GS was a cheaper 7900 GT
  • Intel's Core 2 Extreme pushed multi-GPU setups to the limit
  • ATi's Radeon X1950 XTX was a top model for 399 euros
  • Thermalright's SI-128 was good, but not perfect
  • Microsoft WHQL torpedoed Nvidia's Quad-SLI
  • An overclocked one GeForce 7600 GS with 512 MByte memory
  • Intel's Core 2 Duo E6600 and E6700 cleaned up with AMD
  • The absolute price-performance tip GeForce 7600 GST
  • The Core 2 Extreme X6800 left them all behind
  • The Zalman VF-900 Cu dominated them all
  • Three GeForce 7950 GX2s from loud to fast
  • GeForce custom designs in extra fast and silent
  • The “gamer cube” that only ventilated via the power supply
  • Nvidia's double decker alias GeForce 7950 GX2
  • Intel's Core 2 Duo E6700 shone in the preliminary test
  • Nvidia's nForce 500 for AMD's Socket AM2 with DDR2 RAM
  • The best Radeon X1900 XTX came with a Zalman cooler
  • PCIe x8 versus PCIe x16 for multi-GPU systems

Find even more content of this kind and many more reports and anecdotes in the retro corner of the ComputerBase forum.