7950GT - GREAT Power, Truly A Golden Card, But Better Buys... (Gainward Bliss 7950GT PCX TV Dual DVI Golden Sample)

Member Name: Jakg

Product:	Gainward Bliss 7950GT PCX TV Dual DVI Golden Sample
Date:	28/07/07 (154 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fast, Good Overclocker

Disadvantages: Competitors like the 7900GT/7900GTO virtually the same price

The Gainward 7950GT "Golden Sample" is one of the fastest 7xxx series graphics cards on the market, and Gainwards card doesn't dissapoint!

It runs on a PCI-e connector, however as it draws more power than the slot can provide it needs an extra power connector on the side. This is NOT compatible with an AGP board, and does need a beefy power supply (i recommend 400+ watts).

The card has a dual slot cooler - that is to say that it takes up the width of one slot, and then the fan on the card takes up the space of another slot. The fan is quiet and looks sleek, however the card has a black piece of metal on top to make it look sleek and i've found that while this has no affect on temperatures, it's not helping the airflow and does nothing but take up unnecessary room in my case, however it was easy to remove with a screwdriver.

a 7950GT is in effect just a 7900GT, however it has a faster clock speed (the "reference design" that nVidia make say the 7900GT is 450 MHz on the core while the 7950GT is 550 MHz), and to facilitate this the voltage is raised on the core (from 1.2v to 1.35v). As such it runs ever so slightly hotter than a 7900GT, however i never found mine to break 65° while gaming, which is a fine temperature for this card.

This card is a "Golden Sample" which means it's Pre-overclocked, and rather than the default 550 MHz it comes at 580 MHz. Gainward are unique as most companies just load a different BIOS onto the card to overclock it and sell it at a premium - Gainwards "Golden Sample" line are hand-picked for overclocking, and while 99.9% of 7950GT's will do the 580 MHz this card can do, this card will sail onto 630 MHz when overclocked. It will also, if "volt modded" (this voids the warranty, and you do need to know what your doing and have better-than-standard cooling) break 700 MHz. The memory is also very overclockable, as i've found that from it's default 1.5 GHz it will go to 1.7 GHz quite happily.

This card will churn out great frame rates at 1680*1050, which is the resolution of my 22" monitor, for example in BF2 (Battlefield 2) it can play with all options set to max, and still do 40 FPS + all the time.

This card is fast - it can pull over 5,000 in 3DMark06 when matched with an Intel Core 2 Duo or an AMD 64 - but its nothing "special". At the same time, the 7900GTO is slightly cheaper, but slower clock speeds, but this could easily be fixed with some overclocking, and is a better overclocker than this.

Bottom line - Great card, but if your comfortable with overclocking a 7900GTO would be better.

Summary: 7950GT - GREAT Power, Truly A Golden Card, But Better Buys...

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