Date:
Thursday , October 12, 2006
Author:
Brent Justice
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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NVIDIA GeForce Go 7950 GTX Preview

NVIDIA is announcing the world’s fastest mobile gaming graphics processing unit. We explore the technology behind the GeForce Go 7950 GTX and break down the associated technologies.

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Our Thoughts

While we haven’t had hands on testing of the GeForce Go 7950 GTX in a laptop yet, the specifications clearly speak for themselves. The GeForce Go 7900 GTX was already very fast for gaming, and now the GeForce Go 7950 GTX should exceed that in games. The only concern we have with this announcement is of course the fact that it is still a DirectX 9 based GPU.

With DirectX 10 desktop video cards right around the corner one has to keep in the back of their mind that mobile DirectX 10 GPUs will follow eventually. Laptops aren’t like desktops. With a desktop PC you can purchase a video card now, use it in your PCI-Express slot, enjoy gaming, then down the road when a new GPU is released you can sell it for some cash and upgrade to a brand new GPU. With laptops this option is limited. Only with certain laptops and GPUs is there even a potential for upgrading.

NVIDIA is pushing an initiative called MXM which would theoretically allow you to upgrade laptop GPUs. It hasn’t quite become as widespread as they had hoped however. While the GeForce Go 7950 GTX is MXM based, the question remains will the next generation DirectX 10 mobile GPUs be compatible with the same MXM standard plus your laptop model to allow you to upgrade to it? When you purchase a laptop you may want to err on the side of caution and assume that the GPU your laptop is shipping with is what you are going to have the entire life of the laptop, better safe than sorry.

If you are purchasing a laptop today though there is no question that an SLI GeForce Go 7950 GTX laptop is going to provide you the best gaming experience on a laptop, period, and probably for a very long time as well in games. All upcoming games (except for the Vista exclusive Halo 2) announced so far all have DX9 code paths.

The Bottom Line

The GeForce Go 7950 GTX is simply an extension of the GeForce Go 7900 GTX and therefore remains a DX9 part. The core clock and memory clock speeds have been increased, yet at the same time NVIDIA has maintained the same power envelope as the GeForce Go 7900 GTX. With these faster clock speeds NVIDIA is pushing mobile gaming performance even further. The ability to purchase laptops with two GeForce Go 7950 GTX GPUs in SLI literally makes it the fastest gaming platform in the mobile arena.