Q. G71 x 4 = _____

[jAkUp]

A. 7950 QUAD SLI (nana2)

http://i6.tinypic.com/11rt75v.jpg

These cards run at a stock clockspeed of 500MHz/1.2GHz. I am suprised at how cheap these are considering it has 4 GPU's and 1 GB of ram on each card sandwich. :) (each GPU writes to framebuffer, so its actually only 512MB texture memory.) I suppose with the low clockspeeds Nvidia are able to acheive very high yields.

Performance
My FEAR performance is pretty impressive, however, these drivers are extremely early, and it kinda shows.. as I lost 1,000 3DMark06 points, but that's forgiving since Quad SLI is not officially supported as of yet. Also, I am using an unofficially supported 8x PCIe motherboard, so that may be a limiting factor as well. Overall, it is much more stable than I thought it would be. I have not seen any crashes, BSOD's, or anything of the such. I imagine that getting 4 GPU's to talk together efficiently is quite a task to accomplish.

Here are some early benchmarks of FEAR. And yes, my SLI 8xAA Fear score is HIGHER than the 4x!! I tested and retested, and yup, it appears this is true. I think the drivers are not efficiently balancing the load across the GPU's when using a Non-SLI FSAA mode. Updated drivers should fix this.

FEAR
1600x1200 (AA/AF levels set ingame)
Everything maxed in game (SoftShadows on)
Image quality set to HQ in Nvidia control panel
http://i5.tinypic.com/11rtz6w.jpg

Overclocking
Overclocking to 570/1.4GHz was a snap, however, in the case of FEAR, I did not see any performance increase, minus a frame or two, at the resolution I am running at it appears I may be 100% CPU bottlenecked when running Quad SLI.

32xAA
32XAA is a new feature of 7950 Quad SLI. HL2 Episode 1 is almost playable at around 25-30 FPS. You can find some screenies of 32xAA below:
http://img126.imageshack.us/img126/7502/hl15fz.th.jpg (http://img126.imageshack.us/img126/7502/hl15fz.jpg) http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/7715/hl29ca.th.jpg (http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/7715/hl29ca.jpg) http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/8486/hl39eo.th.jpg (http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/8486/hl39eo.jpg) http://img164.imageshack.us/img164/7099/hl44dk.th.jpg (http://img164.imageshack.us/img164/7099/hl44dk.jpg)

As for noise, even with 4 fans on my video cards, it doesn't seem that much louder than my 7900GTX's. However, these things get HOT. The heatsink on them is burning to the touch.

Another strange thing, is I actually had to lower my CPU overclock by a few MHz! I suspect that Quad SLI is putting an additional load on my CPU, not to mention, maybe a possible additional overhead having to try to calculate the load balancing of 4 GPU's.

Also, I now have 4 GPU's under device manager... also it appears that each GPU has its own IRQ:
http://i5.tinypic.com/11rt9nb.png

Here are some more pictures of the cards:
http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/9285/20bt.th.jpg (http://img57.imageshack.us/my.php?image=20bt.jpg) http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/7936/36re.th.jpg (http://img57.imageshack.us/my.php?image=36re.jpg) http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/5738/40vk.th.jpg (http://img57.imageshack.us/my.php?image=40vk.jpg)

[Lfctony]

The single GX2 results and the SLI GX2 results at 4xAA seem too low... Maybe it's due to the combination of soft shadows and AA? It's a buggy implementation AFAIK.

[jAkUp]

Possibly... I dunno if SS are even working properly with AA, I will retest without SS.

[MUYA]

:eek:

[agentkay]

:drooling: Next a Conroe, a x16 mobo and WC for QuadSLI. Just kidding Jakup. :D Looks impressive and I´m sure with proper drivers and mobo, you should experience a nice boost. Congrats! :clap:

[Toss3]

:wonder: Please, oh, please can I have your old 7900GTXs?

[JimBobb]

@Jakup: What for a Driver you are Using?

[retsam]

Q. G71 x 4 = jakup_sucks!!.....hahaha




thanks for the review jakup...

[Blacklash]

More mature drivers + an overclocked Conroe will probably show some nice increases.

[jAkUp]

@Jakup: What for a Driver you are Using?

91.29 :)

[jAkUp]

Ok, I just ran Fear with SS off, and got about the same score for a single card... not sure exactly why it seems kinda low...

[Toss3]

Ok, I just ran Fear with SS off, and got about the same score for a single card... not sure exactly why it seems kinda low...
I don't think you can run Fear with both SS and AA enabled. I think it even says so in the game's readme file. :o

[Tygerwoody]

Jakup... did you do the EVGA stepup program? If so, how much more do you have to give to upgrade to the GX2? I've never done the stepup program, so I dont know what to expect.

[jAkUp]

As for FEAR, yea, it didn't appear that SS was being applied, but I left it enabled anyways :)

Here are some screenshots of Hitman Bloodmoney with Fraps running.

1600x1200 8xAA/16xAF
http://img432.imageshack.us/img432/6425/hitmanbloodmoney20060605073921.th.jpg (http://img432.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hitmanbloodmoney20060605073921.jpg) http://img432.imageshack.us/img432/1848/hitmanbloodmoney20060605072934.th.jpg (http://img432.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hitmanbloodmoney20060605072934.jpg) http://img432.imageshack.us/img432/9753/hitmanbloodmoney20060605073019.th.jpg (http://img432.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hitmanbloodmoney20060605073019.jpg) http://img432.imageshack.us/img432/2341/hitmanbloodmoney20060605073737.th.jpg (http://img432.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hitmanbloodmoney20060605073737.jpg)

[OWA]

Nice mini-review. Thanks.

Am I reading the results correctly? You actually got better performance in FEAR with 8xAA versus 4xAA?

[jAkUp]

Yup thats right. I couldn't believe it either. I tested and retested, and got the same results everytime.

8xAA is an "SLIAA" seeting, 4x is not. I think that possibly it is not efficiently spreading the load across all 4 GPU's when running a NonSLI AA setting.

[OWA]

Wow, that's awesome!

Also, I saw the link you posted in the other thread listing supported motherboards. The motherboard in your sig isn't listed, so does that mean it's still working just fine even though it's not listed? Just trying to see if I should risk it even though mine isn't listed.

[Mr_LoL]

Do you need an sli board to run a single one of these cards? Cant seem to find that info anywhere.

[|MaguS|]

Do you need an sli board to run a single one of these cards? Cant seem to find that info anywhere.

I believe you do.

[OWA]

Actually, looking at Mike's chart, I think I'm covered or will be soon.

Also, from looking at his chart, it doesn't appear a SLI motherboard is needed.

Edit: Heh, surprising to see a xfire chipset listed.

http://www.nvnews.net/previews/geforce_7950_gx2/index.shtml

[einstein_314]

:bugeyes: Me wants!!!

[einstein_314]

Ok, I just ran Fear with SS off, and got about the same score for a single card... not sure exactly why it seems kinda low...
As soon as you enable AA, soft shadows are disabled. You can't have both. So that's why there was no difference; it was already disabled. :)

[KoRnfR3ak]

Do you need an sli board to run a single one of these cards? Cant seem to find that info anywhere.

I think one 7950 GX2 needs 1 PCI-Express 16x slot. So if you have one non-SLI mobo with a single PCI-Express 16x slot, you can run a single 7950 GX2, and enable SLI on the drivers, right ? :) Or no? :(

[OWA]

I think one 7950 GX2 needs 1 PCI-Express 16x slot. So if you have one non-SLI mobo with a single PCI-Express 16x slot, you can run a single 7950 GX2, and enable SLI on the drivers, right ? :) Or no? :(
For the most part yeah, but you need to check the compatability list to make sure the motherboard has a compatiable bios.

[jAkUp]

Also forgot to mention, these boards are 100% HDCP ready. I really would like to test Oblivion later today, that game ran so horrible on my 7900GTX's in some scenes.