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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Prosthetic Head - Friday, February 3, 2012 - link
I purchased a second hand 4850 and put a nice custom cooler on it about 3.5 years ago. It runs near silent and performs more than adequately in all the games I play. I honestly don't see the excitement in GPU announcements unless they really are game changers (59XX, 9800XT --> 6800, X800 type leaps). I realise I'm not a bleeding edge gamer & some of you are and thats great - It means second hand high end GPUs available regularly for the same price as low end offerings less than a year later.The only thing that tempts me about the new architectures is the compute performance. I actually use this for some computational chemistry work and the upgrade looks well worth it if I do more of this type of work.
The improving performance / power ratio is also of interest since I don't like loud fans, hot computers or excessive electricity consumption.
Galidou - Saturday, February 4, 2012 - link
Don't worry, chizow is a fanboy, there's nothing to do against greenies, they have a closed mind :PHe never said anything wrong about nvidia but sure has a ton of things to say about AMD. He speaks of overclockability of GTX 580, get an answer about how overclockable the 7970 and then changes his mind and says he cares about OC but not much about stock cards OC(which the 7970 seems to do VERY well).
Makes no sense when you say things and then right after what you say has no value for the other team.....
chizow - Saturday, February 4, 2012 - link
No, I said it makes no sense to compare one stock part to one that's overclocked. If you want to compare apples to apples, you overclock both, I have no problem with that and I think you'll find that both parts overclock similarly so the original difference in stock performance holds true.Only a fanboy would try to compare stock to OC results as you and others apparently tried to do.
Galidou - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
I never tried to compare any video card, I'm a proud owner of both camps video card, from geforce 2 gts all the way up to 6850 in crossfire and gtx 560 ti in other rig... thing is you never said anything wrong about Nvidia and I can say wrong things and good things about both camps being an owner of MULTIPLE of their cards...Someone with only one side of a story shouldn't be used as a reference for righteousness in judgement... Like taking a judge for an affair of murder while the judge himself is in the family of the murdered one.....
Anyway just my two cents...
chizow - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
If you never tried to compare any video card, why are you defending someone who did then?As usual with these kinds of threads arguing with ignorant fanboys, I'm simply keeping things honest and correcting erroneous flaws in facts or logic.
Does it make sense to you to make a comparison about one overclocked part compared to another stock part, then declare the OC'd part the winner based on those results?
Of course not!
As for your two cents, keep them, you will need to save every penny to make the jump from 6850 or GTX 560ti to 7950s at these prices.
Galidou - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
There was bad things about AMD and Nvidia in history and thing is you can only mention bad things from one side. I'd never listen to someone that already has a choosen side to speak about ANYTHING in my whole life, simply because you won't be able to hear the absolute truth from the defender of only one side...chizow - Saturday, February 4, 2012 - link
No, but you were talking about me. So, please explain what you think determines pricing in this market since you insist I have no clue, or YOU shut up.Thanks!
chizow - Saturday, February 4, 2012 - link
Yes of course, because it would be negligent not to from any perspective.Anyone who buys something at any point needs to project the market, needs to weigh the potential for obsolescence. That's a large reason why companies do NOT disclose unannounced products as not to erode their own sales before a product goes EOL.
Similarly, it would be negligent if AMD didn't project Nvidia's next-gen parts given they use the same fab and process. And right now, AMD is basically telling you with this price that they either 1) are ignoring Nvidia's 28nm partsor 2) think Nvidia's 28nm parts perform the same as their 40nm parts or 3) don't think their customers are smart enough to realize 1 or 2.
Either way, they're going to look the fool once Nvidia does release their 40nm parts.
chizow - Saturday, February 4, 2012 - link
You mean the super-OC'd Classified 3GB versions that perform within a few % points of the 7970? Yeah of course there are. You'd be a moron not to realize the difference, or you're just being dishonest. With you it could be either.Most 580s are in the same price range as the 7950, $440-500, because once again, they deserved that price tag when they launched 14 months ago and the release of the 7950 has done nothing to make Nvidia drop the price on them.
But as I said, this price and performance level will be retired soon, but obviously not as a result of the "next-gen" Tahiti parts. We'll most likely have to wait for the real "next-gen" parts with Kepler to shift this stagnant price:performance metric.
chizow - Saturday, February 4, 2012 - link
No, only a moron would blow $500 on another card a year later that performs the *SAME* as the card they paid $500 for a year earlier. And that's why the 7950's pricing sucks.There's light at the end of the tunnel, you may finally be getting it lol.