AMD Radeon HD 7950 Review Feat. Sapphire & XFX: Sewing Up The High-End Market
by Ryan Smith on January 31, 2012 9:02 AM ESTFinal Words
When AMD launched the Radeon HD 7970 last month there was a great deal of speculation that the Radeon HD 7950 would be their direct GeForce GTX 580 competitor, and indeed this has proven to be the case. While the 7970 sails past the GTX 580—and AMD has priced it based on that—the 7950 and the GTX 580 are trading blows on a game-by-game basis, similar to what we saw last year in comparing the GTX 500 series and the Radeon HD 6900 series. But when the 7950 wins it wins big, while the same cannot be said of the GTX 580; the only real weakness for the 7950 right now is Battlefield 3, and while that’s an important game it’s but one of several.
Ultimately it’s not a fair fight, not that AMD ever intended it to be one. Outside of a few corner cases the 7950 renders the GTX 580 irrelevant, and while it’s not quite as immense as what the 5850 did to the GTX 285 2 years ago the outcome is much the same. With the 7950 AMD can deliver performance similar to if not better than the GTX 580 while consuming significantly less power and enjoying all the temperature & noise benefits that provides, making it a very attractive card.
On that note the cooling situation makes the launch of the 7950 one of the more unusual high-end product launches in recent history. With high-end cards typically sticking to reference designs for the first phase of their lives the 7950 lineup is going to be much more varied than normal, not only in gaming performance due to factory overclocks but in cooling performance too. While we can speak in absolutes about the gaming performance of the 7950 there is no common thread on cooling performance—it needs to be evaluated on a per-product basis, so it will be important to do your research.
Meanwhile the $450 price tag is unfortunately not very aggressive on AMD’s part, but with their lead in rolling out their new lineup this is to be expected. Given its performance the 7950 only needs to be as cheap as the cheapest GTX 580 and that’s exactly what AMD has done. There will ultimately be a massive price shakeup at the high-end due to 28nm, but this looks like it won’t happen until AMD has some competition at 28nm or 7900 sales slow down significantly.
Finally, what about our retail sample cards, the XFX R7950 Black Edition Double Dissipation and the Sapphire HD 7950 Overclock Edition? These two cards clearly embody the type of variety we’re going to see from AMD’s partners; they have fairly large factory overclocks and large open air coolers, and with these customizations AMD’s partners are hoping to set themselves apart from each other while justifying a higher MSRP in the process.
Overall the Sapphire HD 7950 Overclock Edition is the clear winner among the two cards. While I believe our specific sample is well above the average card due to its extremely low VID, in terms of design Sapphire has clearly done their homework and it shows with an excellent cooler that is ridiculously quiet and equally as cool. The factory overclock isn’t anything that shouldn’t be achievable on your own, but if you’re serious about overclocking the cooler alone would be enough to justify the extra $30.
On the other hand the XFX R7950 Black Edition Double Dissipation ends up being a bummer, particularly compared to its 7970 based sibling. For what an open air cooler can do it’s simply too hot and too loud; the numbers we’re seeing would be acceptable for a blower, but not for an open air cooler. The gaming performance is great thanks to its best in class factory overclock, but this isn’t enough to overlook the obvious cooling troubles.
Wrapping things up, so far we’ve looked at single card performance, but what about CrossFire? Later this week we’ll be looking at 7970 and 7950 CrossFire performance, and what the plethora of open air coolers means for 7950 users. So stay tuned.
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chizow - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link
Nonsense, we already covered this. GTX 280 was almost 2x faster than the 8800GTX and about the same performance as the 9800GX2. A true flagship card.ATI exceeded everyone's expectations with the RV770 but grossly underpriced their card, which is the only reason Nvidia was forced to drop their price.
The difference this time around, is that the 7970 does NOT deserve the premium pricing relative to last-gen. The only way AMD will get off the hook is if Nvidia makes the same mistake and prices based on last-gen performance as well and prices their flagship at like $750 lol. It may happen, but I doubt it.
chizow - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link
Rofl, except I have mountains of historical evidence that back my points, while your nonsensical pricing schemes would have us deciding between new cars or new GPUs.Also back to that running a business part. Its obvious you have no clue what it takes to run a business.
AMD is basically stealing from Peter to pay Paul, they're trading short-term gains for long-term profit by risking the relationship of their most loyal customers. In this business as in any other, customer satisfaction and brand loyalty is paramount.
Unlike their fanboys, it would be criminally negligent of AMD not to consider the pricing of upcoming products from their main competitor: Nvidia. To that end, 28nm parts from Nvidia are imminent, ignoring this fact is just bad business.
We'll see how this shakes out, but honestly I can't see AMD getting off unscathed here unless Nvidia prices Kepler outrageously.
Galidou - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
LOL he's fun, while Nvidia made the worse pricing decision in the world like 9800gx2 priced 150$ less than a GTX 280 that performed LESS is so much funny, last gen part vs new gen part comparison here you come....chizow - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
What's fun is you can get 2x last-gen parts for cheaper than 1x next-gen parts anytime you want it.Would you buy 2xGTX 460 today instead of a GTX 580 or 7970? Most people would say no, but for those who want it, 2xold is cheaper and faster than 1xnew.
Galidou - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
Well if you can do it anytime, what's new with 7970? Ahh it should of driven the prices down, unlike Nvidia's coming up with new gpus to drive the price up. Nvidia up the prices and ATI makes them go down here's your history of things... well things can change, we don'T live in a stable world.Galidou - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
Lotsa people already answering to you saying that you make no sense. My philosophy teacher once tole me: If someone come up to you and tells you: ''Hey you are a horse'' you can doubt, a second one comes to you and says the same thing, well you gotta start thinking a little bit, and if a third one comes and tells you the same thing, you should start thinking about buying a saddle.chizow - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link
And to base buying decisions without acknowledging the 800lb gorilla in the room (Kepler) while simultaneously ignoring the 6 ton elephant in the room (history) would be a monumental mistake.Congrats at successfully trying to manage both!
chizow - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link
LMAO.See here's the exact flaw in your argument.
AMD doesn't know what Nvidia's performance will be with Kepler.
But they've priced their new product with the assumption Kepler offers no gain, no increase in performance over Fermi.
That's the only possible way they could justify basing their new next-gen, next-process part using old part prices.
This is a massive error in calculation, because unless you're completely oblivious it should be clearly obvious Kepler could beat Tahiti if it were nothing more than a die-shrink of Fermi with higher clocks. 15-25% is NOTHING when looking at a new process node and new architecture, its more of what you would expect from a refresh.
But its OK, despite your claims you have no idea how this industry works, if you did you'd immediately acknowledge the prices AMD is asking for simply aren't justified with all things considered.
chizow - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link
Because that is what people who are interested in these parts base their buying decisions on. There's not enough incentive otherwise, its not like GPUs expire every 2 years.chizow - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link
There wouldn't be a problem if the 7950 launched 14 months ago, today its might as well be an exhibit at Jurassic Park.And the 580 for $500? Anyone who has a 580 has put a lot of mileage on those treads and gotten their money's worth. It'll get retired soon enough though, right next to that 7950.