We've recently tested the first 80 Plus Platinum PSUs to hit our labs, courtesy of Seasonic and Enermax. Both were good if expensive PSUs, and next up on the test bench is a Platinum series that's sold by a brand without their own PSU factory: XFX. They sent us their newest product, the Pro Series 80 Plus Platinum Black Edition, which sets its sights on the high-end of the market. XFX has created an interesting casing with some unusual elements, but we need to find out how good this model actually is.

While efficiency is all the marketing rage in the world of PSUs, we should keep in mind that many manufacturers are trying to reach 80 Plus Platinum levels using some "tricks". As we noted in our Seasonic article, there are various routes to higher efficiency, like removing resistors that may fill other roles. Shunt resistors for example transform some of the power into power loss when current flows through it, since there is a voltage drop. That's actually their job as they measure and prevent overcurrent in an indirect way. On the following pages we will show how XFX reached the requirements for 80 Plus Platinum (90%/92%/89% efficiency at 20%/50%/100% load), and we'll also discuss the ODM and how well the XFX model fares in an increasingly crowded market.

Announced late last month and shipping 3 weeks ago, AMD kicked off the 28nm generation with a bang with their Radeon HD 7970. Combining TSMC’s new 28nm HKMG process with AMD’s equally new Graphics Core Next Architecture, AMD finally took back the single-GPU performance crown for the first time since 2010 with an all-around impressive flagship video card.

Of course AMD has always produced multiple video cards from their high-end GPUs, and with Tahiti this was no different. The second Tahiti card has been waiting in the wings for its own launch, and that launch has finally come. Today AMD is launching the Radeon HD 7950, the cooler, quieter, and cheaper sibling of the Radeon HD 7970. Aimed right at NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 580, AMD is looking to sew up the high-end market, and as we’ll see the Radeon HD 7950 is exactly the card to accomplish that.

Traditionally the launch of a next-generation high-end video card has been a staggered process. In the name of getting cards out as soon as possible the first cards are almost always reference cards coming preassembled straight from AMD or NVIDIA, which are then touched up in the livery of their partners before being boxed and sold. Only later on – particularly when there’s a solid supply of GPUs – can partners acquire individual parts and put together their custom designs.

But as it’s turning out the Radeon HD 7970 isn’t going to be a traditional launch. In a rare move AMD has loosened the leash on their partners just a bit, and as a result we’re seeing semi-custom cards planned for launch earlier than usual. XFX looks to be the first partner to take advantage of this more liberal policy, as alongside the reference cards being launched today they’re launching their first semi-custom 7970s

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With an all-custom launch for the Radeon HD 6850, the door was immediately opened to a variety of 6850 cards with a wide variety of performance characteristics. In fact you won't even find the reference design for sale in North America, making it all the more important to look at custom cards. As such We have wasted no time in collecting a few cards to see what they’re capable of, and today we'll be looking at those results. After all we’ve seen what the reference card can do, but how about the cards you can actually buy? And how about overclocking, do the latest 6850 cards continue the tradition of the *850 being strong overclockers? Today we’re going to answer all of that and more.