Author Topic: nVidia’s GeForce 7950 GX2 (Read 1170 times)

Krusty · « **Reply #30 on:** June 26, 2006, 01:21:03 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Bronk
IMHO
The problem with water cooling vid cards is only the gpu gets cooled.
I think the rest of the card overheats and degrades the card slowly.
If I am wrong please correct.

Bronk

I think the heat is generated from the GPU, and may spread out from there. Memory creates some, but it's the chips, not the silicon, that generate heat, and by far the biggest heat generator is the GPU. I've heard that you water cool the GPU then the normal case fans are sufficient enough to cool the rest.

38ruk · « **Reply #31 on:** June 26, 2006, 10:58:49 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Bronk
IMHO
The problem with water cooling vid cards is only the gpu gets cooled.
I think the rest of the card overheats and degrades the card slowly.
If I am wrong please correct.

Bronk

When water cooling the videocard you can go two ways , get a block that covers the ram along with the chip, Or get ramsinks ,small heatsinks that stick to the ram that use case fan airflow for cooling . Even the cheaper Gpu blocks that only cover the chip usually come with the ramsinks , people that leave the ram uncovered are usually the ones that have heat issues .

Brenjen · « **Reply #32 on:** June 30, 2006, 09:39:12 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by 38ruk
Have they figured out whats killing all these 79xx series cards yet? I was on evga's website the other day , and the posts on defective 7900's are everywhere. It looks like its a design problem as all 7900 makers are running into the same issue, hope your 7950 is trouble free. 38

I believe some of the end users are onto the fix, or at least headed in the right direction...read this thread from the eVGA forums:

possible 7-series fix

As far as not OC'ing the 7950 Krusty, eVGA's warranty covers OC'ing

My 7950 should be in by next week, they have my old card & my new one should ship out today or at least by monday.

Edit: I should have more accurately labeled the link "possible discovery of the exact problem & possible fix for some 7-series cards" but that seemed a little too long. Read the thread, esspecially if you have a 7900GTX giving you fits.

scottydawg · « **Reply #33 on:** June 30, 2006, 09:46:47 AM »

I haven't had any problems with my ASUS 7900 GTX. It's overclocked to 700 or something crazy like that.

Brenjen · « **Reply #34 on:** June 30, 2006, 09:53:08 AM »

My eVGA 7900GTX EGS OC'd to some really insane speeds too; 702mhz core clock & 907mhz memory clock. But I never left it there, the card chewed through everything without the OC, but as I stated earlier, I was gettin a'feared it were a'goin bad.

People seem fairly happy with the 7950's so far, I hope it's smooth sailing for me too.

Krusty · « **Reply #35 on:** June 30, 2006, 11:53:19 AM »

Well I wouldn't care if the warranty covers it -- a dead card is still a dead card!! It's a PITA to replace, and use a sub until it gets replaced, time lost, ability to play gone, etc etc.

Brenjen · « **Reply #36 on:** June 30, 2006, 12:03:19 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Krusty
Well I wouldn't care if the warranty covers it -- a dead card is still a dead card!! It's a PITA to replace, and use a sub until it gets replaced, time lost, ability to play gone, etc etc.

I agree, I'm just pointing out the facts. My system would be o.k. with OC'ing because I had heat issues when I went to the 7900 & I installed some duct work & fans for the GPU, not everyones system would be agreeable to OC'ing though...some with liquid coling would be in even better shape than me. It's a choice & for some it's a bad one, for eVGA customers, it's covered whether it was a bonehead move or not.

Krusty · « **Reply #37 on:** June 30, 2006, 12:07:43 PM »

so when do you expect to get the 7950 in?

Also, question: Can you use the 7950 now to give yourself SLI with only one PCIe slot?

Roscoroo · « **Reply #38 on:** June 30, 2006, 12:29:29 PM »

A note about "Ram sinks" on video card ramchips

Alot of the aftermarket sinks are using that double back sticky style tape which doesnt let heat transfur very well . its actually better to just let a fan blow across them then to use that setup ... unless you take the time to do it correctly .

put the sinks on with artic silver 5 and a drop of superglue or epoxy in 2 corners of each chip/sink . this also goes for the gpu sink .

they now have h20 blocks that cover the gpu and the ramchips for some of the cards .

I myself havent had a problem with the ram on my cards with just air flow . but i have had overheated gpu's befor .

Brenjen · « **Reply #39 on:** June 30, 2006, 01:09:07 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Krusty
so when do you expect to get the 7950 in?

Also, question: Can you use the 7950 now to give yourself SLI with only one PCIe slot?

My 7950 should be in next week, my 7900 arrived at eVGA on the 28th & they claim about three days for testing & shipment.

As far as the question about SLI...well, that depends, it is & it isn't. Yes it's SLI...but not really. For all intents & purposes it's a single card, but it is working in the same manner as an SLI set-up would, but the main difference as far as I know is the 8 vs. 16 pipes and the way their jobs are split up. Someone with a broader tech speak vocabulary would need to explain it, I understand how it works, but I can't seem to explain it. Know what I mean?

Brenjen · « **Reply #40 on:** July 11, 2006, 07:39:05 PM »

AHHHHHHhhhh; got my 7950GX2 in today! Popped it into the machine & ran aquamark3 - 86,000+, I forgot to write down the exact overall score, but the individual scores were; GFX=14,415 & the CPU=10,964

3Dmark06 - 6313, which is better than my 7900GTX EGS scored OC'd

I played AH for about 15 minutes and saw frame rate increases over my 7900GTX EGS. I have my detail set on full & I am using 1024 resolutions. Sitting in the tower I minimized the clipboard & my frame rates went up to 158FPS!

I am running the 7950 at reference speeds until a water cooling solution comes out for it because my temps are GPU#1 - 59C & GPU#2 - 66C at idle as I write this according to everest home.

My ASUS A8N SLI Premium mobo did not require a bios flash at all, & I am using the newest Nvidia 91.31 WHQL certified drivers.

So far I am very pleased with the performance.

Krusty · « **Reply #41 on:** July 11, 2006, 09:02:55 PM »

Cool!

Brenjen · « **Reply #42 on:** July 13, 2006, 07:40:54 PM »

This card is just unreal; I got a frame rate of over 320FPS in my plane looking up at the sky!

But it does run on the hot side, I had to get creative with a 120MM fan & some cardboard duct work to get my at idle temps down to 54C on GPU#1 & 58C on GPU#2 with an ambient room temp of around 90F

I don't think it's really worth $600 but in my position already having the 7900GTX as a full value trade in & seeing as how it was starting to malfunction I think I made the right choice for sure.

If anyone is thinking about getting a high-end card, I can honestly say this one is mind blowing.

AKWarp · « **Reply #43 on:** July 15, 2006, 10:41:58 AM »

The 7950 offers some advantages over a pair of 7900gtx's...primarily, you get near the performance for almost half the price :-)

A pair of 7900gtx's ain't cheap!

Also, there is the ability to get another 7950 and go QUAD SLI.

The 7950 has been fairing well in the performance department against a pair of 7900's. The differences are minimal in most circumstances.

I'll be building my next rig soon and it will be an AMD X2 AM2 CPU and a pair of 7950's in quad SLI. Will be interesting to see how the quad setup works with AH (if it will).

Just for the record, the real power of SLI and the 7950 doesn't show until you start hitting the higher resolutions. At 1024 SLI doesn't really show much improvement over a good single card solution. This is primarily to do with the clock speeds of the GPU's.

Krusty · « **Reply #44 on:** July 15, 2006, 10:56:13 AM »

Well that's another issue... How many peoples' monitors go above 1280x1024? It's pretty uncommon to have a higher resolution than that. Yet these cards support resolutions upwards of 1600 or 2400 wide by "whatever" tall.

It's all well and good to get a card that produces 500fps at 1600 resolution, it's another matter entirely to save up $2000 for a flat panel that can support that resolution!!