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 $30.
On the other hand the XFX R7950 Black Edition Double Dissipation ends up being a bummer, particularly compared to its 7970 based sibling. For what an open air cooler can do it’s simply too hot and too loud; the numbers we’re seeing would be acceptable for a blower, but not for an open air cooler. The gaming performance is great thanks to its best in class factory overclock, but this isn’t enough to overlook the obvious cooling troubles.
Wrapping things up, so far we’ve looked at single card performance, but what about CrossFire? Later this week we’ll be looking at 7970 and 7950 CrossFire performance, and what the plethora of open air coolers means for 7950 users. So stay tuned.
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Galidou - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
Oh wait, wait, the 9800gx2 was priced 150$ lower than the GTX 280 and was performing more than gtx 280!! LOL speak about mispricing.... LOL OMG THAT'S RIDICULOUSGalidou - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
LOL that 7970 story pricing like it was the worst decision a Video card manufacturer ever made is so ridiculous chizow, it'S not a good decision either, we would all like to see lower prices considering we know the size of the die under the hood and we know it can be priced lower.But that GTX 280 thingy because Nvidia was thinking they had no competition was a little like taking people for DUMMIES. The radeon 4870 wasn't so mispriced, it was the gtx 280 that WAS. The GTX was uber big but didn'T justify over triple the price of 8800gt or higher price than a 9800gx2 considering the performance of those parts..... HELL NO.
In the end, I prefer a pricing according to performance than being taken for a DUMMY by a company leading the technology with a little more performance...
chizow - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
Like I said Galidou, the GTX 280 absolutely earned the original MSRP. It was a true flagship card in every respect and maintained the price:performance increase you would expect from a new next-gen GPU over its predecessor.You still haven't refuted this because again, the data is all out there. It was over 1.5x faster than the 8800GTX/9800GTX and roughly the same speed as the 9800GX2, the minimum baseline expectations anyone should have for a new flagship card on a new arch/gen/process.
AMD was the one who mispriced their card at the time they could least afford to do so. Some like myself argued they just didn't know how to make money. They could've easily priced it at $400 and STILL forced Nvidia to drop prices on the GTX 280 and especially the GTX 260.
But yes, Nvidia looked horrible after that decision but did right by their customers by issuing rebates. Now AMD is in the exact same position and stands to look badly with this pricing. Do you really think they will do the same if Nvidia forces them to cut prices on these parts? Its OK, you can say a bad thing about AMD too. ;)
chizow - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
We've already covered this, because with the exception of very rare and extraordinary increases like the 8800GTX or 9700pro, 2x increases over last-gen flagships are NOT normal.The GTX 280 was easily 2x faster than the 8800GT, but the 8800GT was a refresh mid-range performance product. Whatever price:performance discount it carried already existed compared to the high-end parts of the time like the 9800GTX and 9800GX2, where it cost significantly less for excellent performance.
Similarly, in these last few generations of cards mid-range cards like the GTX 460 and GTX 560 can be had for less than half of what a GTX 480 or GTX 580 cost but they perform much better than the cost would indicate. Obviously the top Kepler does not need to be 3x faster than the GTX 560 in order to command a $500 price tag commensurate with the flagship slot.
In summary, the top cards do command a premium and determine the pricing for all cards that follow, but their merit for commanding that top price is judged against previous cards and generations.
Its already become obvious that 15-25% increase from Tahiti over Fermi doesn't carry enough mustard to push the stack, since its momentum wasn't enough to even shift the metric at the second stop, the 7950.
Galidou - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
It was the same performance than a 9800gx2 when it was in 2560* resolution because of memory, for the rest(99.5% of the people with 1080p or less back then) the 9800gx2 was truncating the gtx280 for 150$ less.chizow - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
No it was trading blows with the 9800GX2 and beating it at the highest resolutions and AA settings that mattered for people looking to upgrade.This is going to happen with any new flagship part because of the overall increased pipeline. High-end cards are meant to push high-end settings and resolutions because what you have is usually enough at lower end settings. This is why we "upgrade".
Regardless, X2 parts are always going to carry some performance advantage at cheaper prices but that's because single-GPU always carries a premium that goes with being the top single-GPU flagship.
You can look at any forum and you see this decision making process all the time with both last-gen GPUs and newer ones.
But back to the point. Flagship next-gen GPUs do generally tend to compete with last-gen X2 in performance, not always a convincing win across the board, but enough to effectively retire those cards. That's clearly not the case with the 7970.
Galidou - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
Nope you still can,T say something wrong about Nvidia you corrected them by saying they issued rebates to their customers, and AMD is not in the same position, they did not price it for dummies, it'S accordingly to it'S performance... wow when will you realize triple the price and according to it'S performance is different? that's all I wan you to say lol!chizow - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
Is the 7970 triple the performance of the 6950? So then how does it justify 3x the price?Its amazing how you want to try to hold Nvidia to this flawed logic and dismiss it when the 7970 fails even WORST at meeting it.
Again, this just makes you look incredibly stupid or incredibly dishonest, neither of which are flattering.
Galidou - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
it'S not triple the price of 6950 it's a LITTLE more than double, fi you have to lie this discussion is over..... when I said triple the price of the 8800gt I was gentle, 650$ for gtx 280 while 8800gt were selling for I remember I got one for 180$ so that's in fact three times and a half, plus we're comparing a 1gb video card price to a 3gb while GTX 280 and 8800gt had 256mb difference.... Now that I see you have to lie I don't want to continue this, I may be not right in EVERYTHING I say but I ain't lying big time....I prefer to be honest in my opinion than being dishonest in a certitude.....
Ati radeon 3870 sucked big time, they never offered as good a competition to Nvidia after the X1xxx products in my opinion and Nvidia have(most of the time) got better drivers, I prefer their interface, I dislike catalyst. Here's what I have to say about ATI and I have not much wrong about Nvidia but at least I can say I see both side of the medal.
Good luck in the future, peace out.
Galidou - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
I was offering you my perception ok I played the troll but I never lacked respect to you, I'm not saying you are stupid or anything while you did, respect is something you can't buy.I may be poking your opinions because you see them as fact but thing is perception is different for everyone. I do not see anything SO wrong in the pricing of the 7970 while you obviously see something very bad in it. I can'T make you see my point of view so I guess you and I are right, depends for who reads us.
respect.