Why such poor performance for the 7950 GX2?

Hi,

I am the (previously) proud owner of a Leadtek 7950 GX2, and have been debating on upgrading to an 8800GTX (or possibly an R600 if it ever comes out). I looked at the Toms Hardware VGA charts to see what sort of performance increase I would be expecting.

I was amazed at how poorly the 7950 GX2 performed compared to other cards.

For example, Prey at 1600x1200 (which is the res i like to play at, well 1680x1050), 32-bit, 4xAA, 8xAF performed only 1FPS faster than an AGP 7800GS+, and was a lot slower than other supposedly poorer performing cards.

And it's not just that game, similar results come up in Half Life 2 Episode 1.

Are these results skewed by anything, or does the card really perform that slowly relatively. I was always led to believe that this card should perform at about the level (maybe a touch slower) of the X1900XTX, which seems to outdo it by a mile in basically every benchmark on the VGA Chart.

If the results are skewed, say for example by driver revisions, then isn't THG painting a biased view of all cards by not keeping them all as up-to-date as possible,

If they aren't skewed........ Dammit :!:

I must admit, on the whole I've been happy with the performance of my card, and I have overclocked it fairly successfully, getting a score of about 13500 on 3D Mark 05. DirectX 10 was previously the main reason for me to upgrade, but if my card performs that badly relatively, then it's definately time for me to upgrade.

Does anyone have any comments regarding the performance of this card, or the charts in general.

My specs are this....

Core 2 Duo E6600
Leadtek 7950GX2
Intel 975XBX M/B
Corsair 2Gb XMS DDR2
XClio 550W PSU (this will go if I upgrade GPU)
Viewsonic VX2025
Logitech G15 K/B & G5 Mouse

Cheers,

So why would THG have the results as so poor?

A link to the article would be a big help.

But some of the specs are: X1900XTX vs. 7950 GX2

ATI: Core Clk 650MB / Pixel Clk 16 / Fill Rate 10400 / Texture Clk 16 / Fill Rate 10400 / Mem Clk 1550 / Mem Bus 256b / Mem Bandwidth 49.6 GBs
Nvidia: Core Clk 1gig / Pixel Clk 32 / Fill Rate 16000 / Text Clk 48 / Fill Rate 24000 / Mem Clk 1200 / Mem Bus 2X256b / Mem Bandwidth 76.8 GBs

With the exception of Memory Clock Speed... the 7950GX2 should be the performer here.

There is no particular article, these are the the VGA charts that THG put out and are supposedly updated on a regular basis. Though by the sounds of it, there's no point in looking at it anyway. Nevertheless, here is a linky.

THG VGA Chart

Thanks for the replies anyhoo, tbh I generally check lots of different sources before I buy hardware, but it was the THG VGA Chart that confused me. I always thought of THG as a reputable hardware reviewer. I've been told!

Cheers

Not really. Unless I'm terribly mistaken it doesn't make an effective 1GHz at all. It's just two 500MHz cores in SLi, and everyone knows SLi does not double performance.

if u want my opinion.. the tom hardware site itself is a joke. Tom's Hardware is a sell out. The site has just recently been sold to some guy who doesnt know anything about pc's. Their review charts i would say are twisted a bit. I think they are payed off to bump a couple cpu or gpu's up where they dont belong, misleading the consumer. I mean come on! If they are scum enough to put annoying google adds right smack in the middle of a thread post, they will do anything for some extra money $. My advice to everyone is boycott toms hardware site, stick to the forums, and read other articles from other sites. Let them see their website hit counter drop so low it will bring tears to there eyes, i would love thaT!

I dont i stick with Guru3d and fireing squad.

it would sound more right maybe saying

750mhz with say 36 pipelines for a real idea of the power

in a perfect world it would give it double the preformace.

But the data is transmitted between the cores, loosing some due to distance, then one core has to process the data, so agian loosing some preformace, thats why its not double.