Foxconn FV-N79GM3D2-HP
Clocked at 550/700 -- the reference clocks -- and with the same cooler as the reference board, the Foxconn FV-N79GM3D2-HP is hilariously boring in its execution, Foxconn doing nothing over applying a branding sticker to the cooler. The same 512MiB of Infineon GDDR3 as we saw on the reference board not is present on the Foxconn too.
Both DVI ports are dual-link and HDCP protected as NVIDIA demand and the latest revision of the once obnoxious reference cooler is pleasingly quiet. In 2D mode it struggles to be heard and our tests show that in 3D mode it doesn't make a racket either. Nicely done. SLI is supported of course and the single slot cooler means you might have joy in some smaller form factor systems where a dual-slot cooler would fail.
It's exactly the same as the reference hardware, then.
Presentation, Bundle and Manual
The box art sort of looks like a lopsided Mondrian on crack. That instantly makes it the best box art ever to advertise a graphics card in the history of the Universe. Get past the abstractionist aesthetic and you can see it's a GeForce 7950 GT with support for all the features you'd expect of an NVIDIA G71-based graphics product.
Foxconn bundle VirtualDrive PRO version 10, RestoreIT version 7 and a USB gamepad with analogue and digital control. Installing VirtualDrive PRO 10 knackered a test system of ours, causing the OS to cease booting in any way, shape or form. Maybe that was a hint we should have used RestoreIT to backup the system partition first? Regardless, do your research before using the program to make sure it's compatible with your hardware and software build, just to make sure you can run it without issue.
The driver CD came with a driver for the graphics board and also one for the gamepad, installation of which showed us the well-built pad could be completely configured, with each of the buttons supporting autofire in the driver. A decent value add if you're new to gamepads on the PC, but no replacement for something like Microsoft's Xbox 360 pad for Windows.
A pair of DVI-to-VGA adaptors was supplied, along with a dual Molex-to-6-pin PCIe power cable and component video output cable. Both DVI-to-VGA adaptors support converting a dual-link signal to analogue, which you don't always get, which is nice. So while there's no bundled game to use the gamepad with, at least Foxconn do something a little different in terms of the bundle, if not the graphics card itself.
The card ships with a standard 2-year warranty that starts as soon as the card is shipped to you. It's handled by the retailer from which the card is purchased from. However, should you sell the card on during the 2-year period the warranty is not transferable to the new owner. We don't like that at all; the warranty should be based on the product itself and not on ownership.
We ran it through our usual performance tests, so let's see how it stacks up against another 7950 GT, an older 7900 GT and an ATI Radeon X1900 XT.
