A few days ago we had a fairly special piece of hardware history come across our RMA desk; for those of you who didn’t guess it from the title, it’s the nVidia 7950 GX2. Released just two and a half years ago (ish), the 7950 GX2 is already an important slice of graphics history, thanks in no small part to the sprinting pace of graphics technology updates.
While dual card solutions have been an option for quite some time, this was the first time that a two-in-one card had successfully been marketed… and its performance was always going to be significant. Some of our readers may remember that the card was originally debuted as one of the few setups capable of making any real use of the Matrox Triple-Head 2 Go, an external power adaptor that allowed a single GPU to span three monitors with a super-wide resolution.
I was about to say she’s not much to look at, but it actually looks pretty good.
The 7950 GX2 was an important step forward in GPU technology. Aside from opening a new market for two-in-one graphics cards (new models now use a single PCB as the designs have been fine tuned) it also paved the way for things like Quad and Triple SLI setups. This, in turn, forced ATI to return fire with things like its own QuadFire solution, some of which have proven to be surprisingly capable, even taking the performance crowns of their time in games like Crysis.
As a total and self-admitted nerd/techie, my only regret is that the card that crossed our desk was genuinely faulty and I there wasn’t any way for me to sit and play with it a bit more…
/nostalgia
Shelton Romhanyi, RMA Labs Manager
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