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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Ryan Smith - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Correct. That's BIOS 015.013.000.010.000705Ryan Smith - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
I should add that this is also the build number of the BIOS on Sapphire's card.AnandThenMan - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Thanks for the info, appreciated.Sttm - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
There is 0 chance these retarded prices will remain past Nvidia's next gen launch. At that point the 7950 will drop below $300 to be competitive. So if you pay $450 now, you are a chump.mdlam - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
NO....maybe its because you just want the best card. just like all the other "chumps" were paying 500 for a gtx580 or still are, which is a completely disproportionately unfavorable price/performance ratio compared to the 560ti/6950 unlocked.rronald1 - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
I was hoping for $300-350 price tag for 7950.Right now it´s much better to get 2x second hand 6970 running in crossfire, you will get better performances than even 7970 or even 6990.
But we all know the price will drops like stones once Kepler hits the market.
mdlam - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Only if Kepler isn't a total fail like FermiEugene86 - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Except Fermi wasn't a fail...artk2219 - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - link
The original Fermi could most definitely count as a fail, hot loud, power hungry, big, expensive for only 20% more power than a 5870, and LATE, it was fun to watch :). It wasn't until the 460 and the release of the 500 series that Nvidia got that mess worked out.Veroxious - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
While the performance is impressive, the pricing is just ridiculous and leaves a bittter taste in the mouth. One could get similar performance from 2 x 6850 /2 x gtx460's for $320-360.For my next upgrade I was looking for slightly more horsepower than a single gtx580 combined with Ivy bridge. Ofcourse 1st prize for me is a single powerful gpu as opposed to sli/crossfire but at $450 for a reference card it's just pointless. We'll see what happens with Kepler but it seems AMD is setting a recurring trend of increased base cost for every architectural generation which means the costs just keep escalating. What was once a small caliber hole in my pocket seems to have become a 12-gauge crater. Arrrghhhh.........