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 - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Well then everything you said is nothing new, and is quite useless, that's what I meant. What's the point mentioning that it always has been like that and say it like if it's totally shocking like if it's new.''In other words, if you wanted this level of performance, you could've gotten it a year ago with the GTX 580 for almost the same price....over a year ago....
And that's why AMD's pricing of these parts fails.''
Than marketting the way is done nowadays is a big FAIL but everyone knows it, ALWAYS has been like that... Car manufacturer makes new cars every year and sometimes it's worse than last year's, and higher priced....
Ever heard of programmed obsolescence??
chizow - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
But this ISN'T how it usually goes, its unprecedented which is why many observers are pointing out the inconsistency. Look at history and even your own examples to show how this is out of the norm.I will leave you with one final question and you try to answer it with a straight face.
If Nvidia launched their new "next-gen" architecture on a new process node like 15nm in 12-13 months and it was only 15-25% faster than the 7970 but cost 10% more, would you be happy with it and consider it some great victory???
I don't know, I mean every way you possibly look at this, it just isn't right.
xeridea - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
I would poo my pants because Nvidia actually did a process shrink ahead of schedule. BY THE WAY 14nm is 2 shrinks from now, and will be about 5 years down the road.Following your conversation, you clearly don't know the reason behind pricing scheme. There is 0 competition with the 7900 series right now, and it is still better price/performace at its high price. Price will go down in time, but cards are always more expensive on release.... welcome to the real world.
You could get the 580 last year for $50 more than the 7950, while using 30-80W more power (idle-game), running 10-25C hotter under load, making more noise, and slightly less performance (even with fairly new drivers for 7950).
chizow - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Uh, no I understand perfectly why they're pricing it this way.They're trying to make money and capitalize on the brief period of time they can actually charge a premium for holding the performance crown.
But that's not going to stop keen observers like myself for calling them on it, especially when they're pricing last-gen performance at next-gen prices. They might swindle a few of their unwitting fans this time around but this will only hurt them in the long run. And by long, I mean as soon as Kepler launches.
mdlam - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Too bad your "keen" observations prevented you from noticing that Nvidia is also pricing their 14 month old technology at premium prices? Wait maybe it is because you are a Nvidia fanboy! I won't ever get swindled by AMD, I will only be swindled by Nvidia, says the retard.SlyNine - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Then go back and look at other launches. Get the facts and stop using Adhominem attacks and showing your ignorance.chizow - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
No, Nvidia priced their last-gen performance based on last-gen premiums, you would expect the next-gen to shift these parts to obsolescence but obviously AMD doesn't feel their users possess the acumen to understand this paradigm.As for retards being swindled by Nvidia, lmao, the difference is, they would've been reveling in their ignorant bliss with this level of performance, 14 months ago. For the same price.
Its truly amazing though, because you're falling into the exact trap AMD expects you to fall for with the pricing of this card. Honestly how can anyone defend the price and performance metric of this card 14 months later?
mdlam - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
AMD doesn't give a shit whether you fall for anything, neither does Nvidia. If enough people buy their cards at X price to support their billion dollar companies, then the price stays. If not, the price goes down. If more people than not refuse to buy the product, then price goes....up.... Whether its this metric or that metric or not fair or super clever AMD trap its all bullshit people make up who hold little educational knowledge in economics or business.mdlam - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
People like you btw.chizow - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - link
Sounds like someone missed their nap.AMD should care actually, because the only people who would even entertain buying one of these cards are their biggest fans, the ones who are going to feel the burn the worst when the floor drops on the pricing of these products.
Again, there is precedent for this, AMD did it to Nvidia in 2008 and Nvidia was cutting rebate checks. Do you think AMD is willing to do the same?