AMD Radeon HD 7950 Review Feat. Sapphire & XFX: Sewing Up The High-End Market
by Ryan Smith on January 31, 2012 9:02 AM ESTMeet the XFX R7950 Black Edition Double Dissipation
Our second partner card of the day is XFX’s R7950 Black Edition Double Dissipation. Like the 7970 Black Edition Double Dissipation we reviewed earlier this month, the 7950 BEDD is a factory overclocked card (Black Edition) using XFX’s Double Dissipation cooler.
Starting with the overclock, XFX is shipping the 7950 BEDD with a core clock of 900MHz and a memory clock of 5.5GHz. This represents a 100MHz (12.5%) core clock overclock and 500MHz (10%) memory clock overclock, putting it just shy of the 925MHz core clock the 7970 ships at.
In terms of construction like all of the other 7950 cards launching today XFX is using AMD’s 7950 PCB. This means the PCB measures 10.25” long and features 2 6pin PCIe power sockets towards the rear of the card, while at the front the card uses the AMD standard port configuration of 1 DL-DVI, 1 HDMi, and 2 mini-DisplayPorts. The one notable deviation here from the Sapphire card is that XFX has not included a BIOS selection switch, so the card lacks any kind of ability to easily recover from a bad BIOS flash, and if unlocking proves viable it would not be a good candidate for the process.
Meanwhile cooling is provided by XFX’s Double Dissipation cooler. This is the same heatsink and fan assembly we saw with the 7970 BEDD, which makes this an open air cooler using a pair of fans to push air along an aluminum heatsink running almost the entire length of the card. Because it’s the same assembly, the shrouding for the card sticks out over the end of the PCB, negating the benefit of the shorter 7950 PCB and making the card 10.65” long just like the 7970 BEDD.
Top: 7950 BEDD. Bottom: 7970 BEDD
Do note that while it uses the same fan and heatsink assembly, Double Dissipation does not mean it uses the same vapor chamber assembly to transfer heat from the card. Where the 7970 BEDD used a fairly large vapor chamber, the 7950 BEDD uses a much smaller vapor chamber that only makes contact with roughly half of the heatsink, meaning that heat isn’t being transferred to the extremities of the heatsink nearly as well on the 7950 BEDD. Furthermore the aluminum plate covering the RAM and MOSFETs is poorly sized, leaving parts of the RAM chips (and their thermal pads) exposed. We’ll see how this plays out when we get to our testing, but the 7950 BEDD is clearly not as well built as the 7970 BEDD.
Rounding out the package is the same collection of extras that we saw in the 7970 BEDD. Inside you’ll find the usual driver CD and quick start guide, along with a metal XFX case badge, a mid-length CrossFire bridge, and a passive HDMI to SL-DVI adaptor. All of this is packed in one of XFX’s pleasantly small boxes, which doesn’t use much more space than the card itself.
The MSRP on the 7950 BEDD is $499, $50 over the MSRP for a regular 7950 and making it one of the more expensive 7950s launching today. XFX is offering a base 2 year warranty on the 7950 BEDD, which can be extended to a lifetime warranty by registering the card within 30 days of purchasing it.
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xeridea - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Tru Datxeridea - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
But not as bad as the Obamination we are in today.bji - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Which is better than the Bush clusterf** we were in yesterday ...Sabresiberian - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Too bad we can't actually blame stupidity on some drug that we can prevent people from smoking.;)
dagamer34 - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
So you want to wag your finger at AMD for trying to make money when Nvidia has decided not to show up for a few months? Everyone knows that competition drives lower prices and right now AMD doesn't have any at the truly high end. If you want the parts now, you can pay up or wait. It's that simple.I am actually glad AMD is competing at the truly high end again because it shows confidence in their products. Confident products = bolder designs in the long term.
chizow - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Actually I've been saying for years AMD missed an opportunity to profit by mispricing their RV770 badly. Ever since that time they've been trying to dig themselves out of the pricing mistake they caused, because as a direct result, Nvidia dropped their flagship single-GPU prices to $350-400 for the 2nd tier and $500 for the top single gpu. Since AMD's subsequent parts have always trailed Nvidia's same-gen parts, they were obviously forced to price their cards according to Nvidia's performance, which generally meant $400 or less.The problem is that SI offers none of the performance and value you would expect from a next-gen part, nor does it raise the bar for price/performance. It only manages to keep the status quo using last-gen metrics and the 7950 is direct proof of this. Its roughly the same price and performance as the GTX 580, which would've been great if this were 2010 when the GTX 580 launched, but its 2012 now.
arjuna1 - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
leave it to an nvidia fanboy to twist facts around as needed to put nvidia on top.chizow - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
I didn't say Nvidia was on top...But honestly, as an ATI fan take a look at the 6970 results compared to the 7950 and then ask yourself if you really think the 7950 is worth the price at $450-500 compared to the $300-350 for a 6970....
I mean if you thought the 6970 was a great deal compared to the GTX 580 how on earth could you think the 7950 is some amazing bargain some 14 months later?
Galidou - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
OMG and you just realized that? Welcome in 2012, you hav ebeen sleeping for the last 20 years?!?Video card manufacturers have done that a thousand times before... Nvidia and Ati with their rebranding and next gen higher priced than last gen for the same performance... The top segment was never meant to be performance/price top of the chart.... OMG.
So by listening to what you said from the beginning, anything below gtx 580 is useless, because you can find last gen video card lower priced for more or same performance, because of the next-gen price premium... HELLO!?! wake up...
You can find gtx 480's at a way lower price than gtx 570's on the bay for about the same performance...
You can find radeon 4870 about half the price of 6770's for about the same performance....
And so on....
chizow - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
I don't think you understand that in your attempt to discredit my point, you've actually completely validated it.Yes, historically when a new part releases it compresses prices and forces older last-gen parts to drop in price as the new price:performance metrics dictate a drop in price with the next-gen level of performance.
None of this is occurring with SI because AMD has priced this part exactly where its performance lies because they are basing this on last-gen metrics. If anything, lower tier parts are probably UNDER priced relative to performance compared to SI and have no reason to drop in price.