XFX GeForce 7950 GT 570M Extreme

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...gt_570m/1.html

[samkiller42]

Think i shall wait for DX10, and ile try and get Vista to download

Sam

[Veles]

I have to agree, that XFX card looks very cool. I think more manufacturers should do things like this. I'm glad almost everyone is shying away from the horrible green PCBs of old but I think more should go the whole hog like XFX have done here. I want all my backplates made out of bolt gun metal now

I'm with sam here though, I don't really see why they're releasing this one since it doesn't really have an improvement over the 7900 GTX and I'm waiting for some good DX10 cards to come out to go with the 2x 24" monitors I'm planning on getting

First I need the money

[Tim S]

The big improvement over GeForce 7900 GTX is price. It's really a replacement for GeForce 7900 GT.

[samkiller42]

Ok then Tim, if you and XFX are happy to send one to me, for £0 inc P&P then ile quite happily take one , other than that, DX10 it is.

Sam

What does happen to the products you review anyway?

[TomH]

Originally Posted by samkiller42

What does happen to the products you review anyway?

Raffled-off at Bit HQ? Bit-Bingo at the weekends? You didn't really think Bit employees paid for their hardware, did you?

I must say, I'm only really interested in two things about this card; the style/design is pretty neat -- as previously said, if all cards looked like this then the world would be a much smarter place to live (open to interpretation)

Also, does the HD output work? Eg. Is there full resolution when using a DVI -> HDMI cable?

Edit: Maybe in future, seeing that a lot more people will begin using an HDTV as a secondary output; maybe you should have a small part of GFX card reviews to HDTV quality? Or is there really no discernable difference from card to card?

[pjotero]

Originally Posted by samkiller42

What does happen to the products you review anyway?

they got to send them back (I think)

BTW when are dx10 cards due (I heard september a while back, but now it is a bit silent about them)

[samkiller42]

Originally Posted by pjotero

BTW when are dx10 cards due (I heard september a while back, but now it is a bit silent about them)

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/09...a_little_late/

Thanks
Sam

[DarkReaper]

Am I the only one who winced at the idea of 100+ degree temperatures?

[DXR_13KE]

Originally Posted by DarkReaper

Am I the only one who winced at the idea of 100+ degree temperatures?

that part was scary.

as for this card.... i will wait until DX10

[Tim S]

Originally Posted by DarkReaper

Am I the only one who winced at the idea of 100+ degree temperatures?

90 degrees is typical for a high end GPU under load. The XFX isn't much hotter when you factor in decent airflow.

For what it's worth, CPUs are much cooler than GPUs. Most GPUs idle at above what I'd consider a respectable 'load' temperature for a CPU.

[DarkReaper]

Ah right, that makes me relax a bit. I'm used to reading about 40-60 degree core temps so to see something double that produces a double-take!

[will.]

i dunow if the readings on that ati controll panel are correct or not, but my gfx card rarely goes above 60.. Even after I tried to play oblivion on it with settings all set to full. (1 frame per every 10 seconds!)

if nothing else, that thing looks funkylicious!

[DeX]

I know all I seem to do is complain about bit-tech reviews but it's only in attempt to make them as great as possible.

Anyway, seeing as this card seems to be a new alternative for those that were previously looking to buy either a 7900 GT or a 7900 GTX, why don't you add the benchmarks for these older cards to the review as well? The problem I find with most bit-tech reviews is that you often compare products from different brands and manufacturers but almost never different models of products from the same brand. All we can tell from the review is that this card is faster and around the same price as the 7900 GT but it would be nice to be able to see that in the numbers. Since benchmarks tend to remain pretty similar in each new product release, I don't see that it can hurt to include the results from benchmarks made in previous reviews.

Anyway other than that, great review as always. If I hadn't postponed my new system build until Vista+DX10 time I'd definately be tempted to get one of these. It'd be perfectly around my price range.

[Tim S]

I understand where you're coming from DeX and I agree with you - I would have LOVED to benchmark more cards, but I was in the office past 11pm two nights running to get this blighter out at the time I did (I finished benchmarking at 2am this morning). As I mentioned in the news story I wrote when NVIDIA announced GeForce 7950 GT and 7900 GS, they're expecting us to perform miracles in the time we're given but I'm not going to compromise the number of benchmarks run (as I feel that helps to add depth to our opinion). I got this card on Tuesday morning (or late Monday - I forget exactly) and worked solid for three days to get it done. (It's nice to be sitting at home eating real food tonight, btw )

The time it takes to run our benchmarks makes benchmarking lots of cards hard, unless I cut things down considerably or move away from what we're trying to achieve in our reviews. For what it's worth, there are many more benchmark runs done than the three results we average our frame rates on, as we're essentially investigating just how far we can push a card in each game and maintain acceptable gameplay. Typically, there's 30-40 minutes per resolution per card, depending on the game.

I've also recently changed platforms, which makes previous benchmarks somewhat 'invalid' for direct compairson purposes (since Core 2 is now the platform of choice). I don't think that will change again soon, so it'll make things fairly easy for me to re-benchmark cards I've already benchmarked with an updated driver. Re-benchmarking doesn't take the time, it's finding caveats and sweetspots on a new platform that can sometimes take the time, otherwise it's time taken to find the sweetspots of completely new GPUs.

Hope this helps to explain why we're a bit short on the comparison side of things in this particular review - I do try my best to make things as relevant as possible. Manufacturers are really trimming us down to the bones though, but we're trying to spend as long as possible with a product to allow us to formulate a wide opinion. We should have more time with some future GPUs if what I'm being told is true - it seems like our voice is being heard.

[DeX]

Fair enough, if the benchmark systems change between reviews then you shouldn't include results from previous benchmarks. I just figured you'd have some standard system that didn't change quite as often as the graphics cards or whatever you're reviewing does. I appreciate that with new processors, motherboards and graphics cards arriving all the time this must be pretty difficult. As I've said before the amount of benchmarking and quality reviews you can create in such a short time amazes me so I wouldn't expect you to be able to complete more benchmarks of other cards than you do already.

[Tim S]

We'll be building up a backlog - I've got more graphics cards to review than anyone would ever want at the moment.

well, maybe that's not quite true...

[Nature]

Isn't the G80 and 64 pipe ati card coming out in a couple months? Patience fellow nerds...

[phide]

Tim -

Why refer to the additional 256MB of memory as the "frame buffer"? Aren't the frame buffer and local video memory are two completely different things?

[Cheap Mod Wannabe]

Senjor Tim, maybe you could evaluate 7900GT vs 7950GT performance. How much of an improvement there is?

Thank you, I really do appreciate working hard to bring us technology news that make our current hardware feel obsolete =)