XFX GeForce 7950 GT XT

INTRODUCTION

I'm breathless and not from doing heavy physical labor, but in turn from sheer excitement. It is every professional reviewer's dream to receive products in advance of their scheduled release and to be one of the first kids on the block to lay hands on and sample that new product. The week before the release of the NVIDIA® 7900 GS GPU/VPU I received an XFX® 7900 GS XT video card to review before its release on September 6^th. Now just under a week before the release of the NVIDIA® 7950 GT series of GPU/VPU on September 14^th I was lucky enough to be chosen by XFX® to receive their "rendition" of the 7950 GT card. Guys, that's just eight days apart so maybe the term breathless is a bit of an understatement.

You'll notice that I said "rendition" in my initial description to the XFX® 7950 GT. I said this out of complete and utter respect for XFX®. I truly admire them for having the testicular enlargement necessary to take the NVIDIA® GPU/VPU and completely go outside of the norm with its design to the point that it is completely silent due to its fanless construction. You might say: "That's nothing new and evolutionary there have been a number of fanless video cards produced." In reply, I'd say: "You're exactly right, but how many of them do you actually remember or read about today?" I'd shutter a guess that even those of you that have been around the "Enthusiast World" for a number of years would be hard pressed to answer. The reason for your silence might be that none of these cards were stable or fast enough to keep your attention for very long. The reason for this is that most of these previous styles also required some form of external cooling to function at any where near the level you would require for your system.

Will the XFX's "silent approach" in their design of the 7950 GT be a flash-in-the-pan idea that in a few months is a distant memory or will it truly be a fleeting glimpse of what the future has to offer. Join me today in Bjorn3D lab while we put this card through it's paces to find out for sure. I will assure you that shy of running this card in a fanless case we will have no mercy pursuant to its new design. At the end you can be the judge!

XFX: A Brief Overview

XFX®, a company that is very well know not only to the general computer consumer but to the Computer Enthusiast community as well operates on the following corporate philosophy:  "XFX® dares to go where the competition would like to, but can't. That's because, at XFX®, we don't just create great digital video components--we build all-out, mind-blowing, performance crushing, competition-obliterating video cards and motherboards." "Oh, and not only are they amazing, you don't have to live on dry noodles and peanut butter to afford them."

From our rather extensive experience doing XFX® product reviews we've seen this corporate philosophy transcend from merely words into a series of excellent, highly polished digital wonders that go a step beyond in not only performance but quality as well. We are highly anticipative that our review sample, the GeForce™ 7950 GT will continue to follow this same tradition.