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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MattM_Super - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Yes I would enjoy more performance (esp at a lower power draw). I like to get ~60fps minimum @1080p. In games with fancy lighting effects, 4xAA, high res textures, like Witcher 2, metro 2033, crysis 2 dx11 current cards cant deliver that. Its a luxury sure, but one I am willing to pay for.I also think there is still plenty of room for improvement in graphics.
sleepeeg3 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
Bingo. The fanboys are too focused on bickering to realize these GPUs are blowing past 100fps on popular games. Who cares? Game companies stopped pushing the limits years ago.chizow - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Its funny because next-gen single-GPU performance *USED* to be measured against previous gen x2 GPU card or CF/SLI where we would expect 50+% increase over last-gen single-GPU.But yes its easy to ignore the fact the 580 also overclocks quite well. I don't know what would be worst though for a new 7950 or 7970 owner. Kepler launching and make these prices look like tragic comedy, or AMD releasing the HD89xx not too long after to make them feel even worst about their purchase.
Either way, you make a compelling argument against buying one of these cards today.
Master_shake_ - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
you are obviously a fanboy,obviously you missed the part where the 7970 can oc to 1125 on the cvore and max out the vram clock with STOCK voltiage, and when you do so it beats BEATS the gtx 590 a current gen dual gpu card.
chizow - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
While I value OC'ability, I don't consider OC to stock comparisons relevant because frankly, it makes no sense.Every card can OC to some degree so an apples-to-apples comparison should be the primary comparison with overclockability secondary.
Tchamber - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - link
Rather than call you a fanboy, I would ask for an example of a high end card going against the previous gen x2 card...and bear in mind that ONCE does NOT consitute a trend. I think evolution of performance is always incremental, at least is has been since gtx200 and radeon 4000 series.chizow - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - link
-GTX 280 was very close to as fast as 9800GX2Filter prevented a link for this, but google computerbase GTX 280 review and look at performance rating summary.
-GTX 480/580 was faster than GTX 295
Same deal, google 480 review for that site.
-GTX 680 should be very close to GTX 590 performance
What makes this easier on the next-gen GPU flagship is the last-gen X2 parts generally have to make sacrifices in either bandwidth, functional units, or clockspeeds to stay within TDP envelopes along with imperfect multi-GPU scaling, so you generally see only 50-75% scaling over the top single-GPU of that generation.
So you can look at it two ways, either next-gen should be ~50% faster than the top last-gen GPU, or it is very close to the last-gen X2 GPU card.
I'm trying not to take any shots at AMD fans, but their reactions to these Tahiti parts in light of historical price and performance leads me to believe they either have very low standards/expectations or they just haven't been paying attention to the industry.
Galidou - Saturday, February 4, 2012 - link
''they just haven't been paying attention to the industry''Wait, if I buy a GPU now, and I want the top single gpu for multiple screens, whatever the people in the world think about what I WANT, I realize that I have more power for my money by buying a 7970 and I go with it, it turns out that because I have done that, I'm an AMD fanboy because I haven'T been paying attention to the industry?
OMG I'm such a tard, I forgot I haven'T paid attention to the industry so I should of paid more for a less performing card..... darn that's how stupid I am.....
chizow - Saturday, February 4, 2012 - link
If you absolutely had to have a new card today, sure you'd have some reason to buy a 7970, but still not at these prices imo.If you wanted to maximize your return on the dollar however, you'd be much better off waiting for Kepler because even if the 7970 still suits your needs better at that point, Kepler will almost assuredly force downward pressure on all Tahiti AND Fermi parts and force AMD and Nvidia to adjust prices accordingly. In the past AMD has done this when they launched a next-gen part first (See: 5850/5870 launch), but not this time.
This actually reminds me a lot of the X1950XTX launch. Great performance when it launched and price perfectly justified compared to Nvidia's last-gen G70/G71 designs like 7900GTX and 7950GT. But as soon as G80/8800GTX launched a few months later, it made that buy decision look horrible in retrospect.
So yes, while a X1950XTX today, er I mean 7970 today looks perfectly justified, it would be a mistake to ignore what the future holds and what the past has told us when making a buying decision.
Galidou - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
What about the pricing of gtx 280 at launch vs the price of 8800gt were selling? There's always an example about Ati making bad pricing decisions, but nvidia... not out of your mouth?I'm no ATI fanboy, I'm just waiting for you to show us you see the other side of the medal...
Those GTX 280 650$ at launch while the 8800gt was about 55-65% of the performance of that card but HEY it was three times cheaper... No you haven't heard of? Oh I forgot, Nvidia makes no mistakes, it's ATI that did with the 4870 pricing it so low, but Nvidia... they make no mistake.
But hey the price of the 7970 accordingly to it'S performance is SO BAD compared to the triple price of that GTX 280 for not even double the performance over that nice 8800gt...