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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chizow - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - link
Perhaps, but judging by Newegg's current stock of 7950, supply is exceptionally good or demand is exceptionally soft for this product at its current price. Maybe somewhere in the middle?But as you said, if you don't like it, don't buy it and it seems in this case, capitalism works just fine. ;)
Gamer23 - Wednesday, May 2, 2012 - link
I was drooling when I first read about the Sapphire 7950 and the XFX 7950 DD, but now until AMD developes better drivers, I am still on the fence, and holding on to my 5850 Toxic. I believe most people are like me, $500? I'll sit back and wait, till I see better driver support, and a $300 dollar price tag! I believe you are right also about demand being soft, as I believe most purchases are fresh builds not upgrades.Gamer23 - Wednesday, May 2, 2012 - link
I totally agree with you, I am running a i7 940 with a 5850 Toxic, and even with all of the latest games that have recently come out, I am not even pushing this rig yet. Since games are now being locked at 60 fps, what's the sense of spending $500 for the latest and greatest and only getting 60 fps? Until game developers pull off the 60 fps govenor, (catering to console ported games) it will be a while yet before I am ready to let go of this Video card.xeridea - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
I totally agree. I have a 6850 I got at a very good price. It runs any game on the market reasonably well. I run Crysis 2 with DX11 patch and texture patch @ 2048x1152 with reasonable framerates (I think my dual core is my bottleneck, usually I only get ~70% GPU utilization). I used to get cards slightly higher in generation performance, but these days it doesn't really matter with mostly crappy console ports.chizow - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
I agree for the most part, but there are at least 3 major influences pushing game technology:1) Increases in VRAM usage in current games. Whether its due to MSAA, higher-res textures and texture mods, games like Skyrim, BF3, Metro 2033, Crysis 2 are really chewing up VRAM budgets on cards. These games will use 1.5GB no problem at 1080p, so just imagine higher resolutions or muti-display set-ups.
2) As mentioned, multi-display set-ups like EyeFinity or Nvidia Surround. They'll use up ~3x the VRAM as a single monitor and with increased AA requirements, that quickly adds up. In these instances, a 7950/7970 would shine over last-gen parts with less VRAM and bandwidth.
3) 3D. 1080p isn't that demanding anymore, but 1080p in 3D is roughly double the rendering requirements but puts an even greater emphasis on maintaining 60FPS minimums. Its really quite demanding and an area more GPU horsepower is always welcome, even with SLI/CF configs.
But yes, other than these niche areas there's probably not too much reason to upgrade at this point, especially when these offerings don't really shift the price/performance/value bar at all.
kashifme21 - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Well from personal experience i have GTX 580 in SLI. Both the cards have 1.5gb memory.I game at a resolution of 5760*1080. Unless i shift the AA to some crazy setting like 8x AA, my VRAM generally isnt a bottleneck.
I am currently playing a game like Skyrim at 5760*1080. Maxed out settings with 4X AA, FXAA & 4xTRAA
My game is mostly running locked at 60fps, sometimes in towns it does drop down to 45fps, however otherwise the experience is quite smooth.
Hence i would disagree that VRAM really is a limitation even at insanely high resolutions, 1.5GB Vram is pretty dam good.
Now with the next consoles only expected to be sporting GPUS like 6670, i wonder how Nvidia and AMD intend to keep both markets alive.
At one hand they support console gaming which doesnt really bring them too many chips a year and it will eventually cause PC gamers to stop upgrading. The business model looks like its going to axe their own feet.
chizow - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
You must not run any texture mods at all, because Skyrim will use 1.5GB at only 1080p with only 2xMSAA+2xTSAA.Same for BF3, Crysis 2, Metro 2033 and quite a few other games with just highest-res official textures and 4xMSAA+2-4xTSAA.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
I have a single 1.5GB GTX 580, and at 2560x1600 I definitely feel the lack of VRAM. If he doesn't notice lack of RAM at 5760x1080, I don't trust his judgement. (Hint: it's the minimum frame rates and stutters that come from the lack of memory; averages can be fine, but minimums often tank.)Sabresiberian - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Thanks Jarred for talking about performance where it counts, minimum frame rates and stutters.;)
chizow - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - link
Yeah I completely agree about "feeling" the lack of VRAM, because it literally feels like I've submerged my mouse/monitor in oil or molasses. Idk the input lag and stutters from deferred AA just gets really unbearable once you start exceeding VRAM.But yeah I dropped a note in Ryan's 7970 closer look about PCIe bandwidth, VRAM and memory bandwidth. It'd be interesting to see how much of an impact PCIe bandwidth plays a role on cards with less VRAM, since that's when you'd expect more paging to system RAM over the PCIe bus. Also for memory bandwidth, although that's more between the GPU and RAM modules.
Anyways would be interesting to see something like that done using 1.5/3GB variants maybe a 580 and the 7950 when the 1.5GB arrives?