AMD HD7950 'Tahiti Pro' Review

We’ve seen how thoroughly impressive the flagship AMD HD7970 was so today we focus on it’s little brother, the HD7950 hoping for similar achievements…

Product on Review: AMD Radeon HD7950
Manufacturer and Sponsor: AMD
R.R.P: £349.99

So we’ve seen just how powerful the HD7970 was. We were all aghast at it’s extreme performance, great cooling and power efficiency so much so that is currently sitting at the top of our graphics card list. The is however one chink in the HD7970’s armour and that is the price. At well over £400 it is out of reach for a lot of gamers so while it certainly has power, it is not what you would describe as value for money. AMD and formally ATI had the strategy of creating two cards, one ‘full fat’ version which held the ‘XT’ moniker while the other being a slightly trimmed back example made do with being labeled a ‘Pro’ such as the 9700XT and pro varieties. In recent years however, the graphics cards were named slightly ifferent in that the variance was in the model number. Take for example today’s review sample; the HD7950 is a slimmer version of the full on HD7970. Both cards however still have the XT and pro labels but instead of being plastered over the packaging, they are hidden beneath the cooler being the GPU core itself. The HD7970 has the GPU codenamed ‘Tahiti XT’ whereas the HD7950 has, that’s right, the ‘Tahiti Pro’.

The Pro version of the AMD graphics card range appeal more to the budget conscious. Of course, being a top of the line GPU, the HD7950 will be anything but cheap but if it can hold its own against the more expensive (and more powerful) HD7970 without making too many sacrifices then the HD7950 is sure to appeal to the market and if it overclocks only half as well as the HD7970 then you will be getting HD7970 performance for less outlay. The problem for the HD7950 is the price. While it may be cheaper than the HD7970 the prices of AMD’s old adversary, NVIDIA range of cards are starting to tumble with Kepler on the horizon. This puts the likes of the GTX570/580, still themselves very powerful cards more attractive to the budget conscious who are looking for the absolute best bang per buck. So if you are wondering if the AMD HD7950 is the right card for you, sit back, make a cuppa and join with me as I take you through the good, the better and the damn right outrageous aspects of AMD’s latest graphics card, the Radeon HD7950.

Let’s take a look at the specification…

Specification

The HD7900 series will feature the new Tahiti core which is the successor to the Caymen core of the HD6900 family. The Caymen core was based on a 40nm manufacturing process so it is fair to say that perhaps the biggest improvement to the Tahiti core is the reduction to 28nm process. This has enabled AMD to cram 4.31 billion (4,312,711,873) transistors into the new Tahiti core as opposed to the 2.64 billion on the HD6970 Caymen XT.

Comprising of what AMD calls ‘Graphics Core Next (GCN)’ archetecture which is optimised for heterogeneous computing, the new Tahiti core has upto 32 CU’s (compute units) with dual geometry engines along with 8 back-ends comprising of 32 colour ROPs per clock and 128 Z/Stencil ROPs per clock. Each CU has a Vector unit and Scaler Co-Processor and can execute instructions from multiple kernels.

The VLIW4 SIMD has evolved to the GCN quad SIMD which equates to similar computational power yet grants better performance, threading and simplification. The GCN also has a new Cache hierarchy with 16KB instruction Cache and32KB Scaler Cache shared between 4 CU’s. The L2 Cache is accessible by each CU with it’s own separate process to ensure coherency. These changes increase the GFLOPs by 140%.

Tesselation on the Tahiti core is also enhanced by increased Vertex re-use off-core which theoretically at least, means the 7900 series has 4 times the throughput of the 69XX series. The are improved ansioscopic filtering algorithms too which come at no performance cost allegedly. These new algorithm improvement will allow the use of Forward Rendering with 1000’s of potential light sources and will also mean MSAA can be rendered easily.

Tahiti XT Schematic

Looking at the schematics above, we can identify the bulk of the GPU is taken up with the 32 CU’s. Above these are the geometry engines. To the left and right are the 8 Render back-ends, 4 each side. There’s 768KB of L2 cache along with 6x64bit dual channel memory controllers making a 384-bit GDDR5 memory interface capable of delivering up to 264GB/sec. All of technology coupled together is transferred through a fully compatible PCI Express 3.0 x16 bus interface. Have no fear though because the cards are backwards compatible with PCIe 2.0. Note that 256 Stream Processors are disabled for the Tahiti Pro Core. Whether this is at the hardware or simply a software level remains to be seen. If it is software then a BIOS flash may see the Pro’s becomming XT’s again?

Comparing the HD7950 against it’s bigger brother, the HD7970, the 7950 has 256 less Stream Processors with 16 less Texture units. Obviously this equates to less Pixel and Texture fillrate and coupled with the slightly lower clocked memory of 5000MHz (effective) as opposed to the 5500 of the HD7970, performance is due to take a hit. The power requirements of the HD7950 are however slightly lower in that it has a claimed TDP of 200w compared to the 20% higher TDP of the HD7970.

Comparing the HD7950 to the green team it is interesting to note that the HD7950 has more the double the texture fillrate of the GTX570 and a 40Billion/sec advantage over the GTX580. The NVIDIA cards do however have the upper hand in pixel fillrate but by a much smaller margin. AMD card have traditionally been clocked higher than their NVIDIA counterparts and we see no change in that here with the lowest clocked HD7950 (800MHz) still surpassing the 772MHz of the GTX580. The memory clockspeed is also higher and now with a matching 320-bit memory interface, the AMD cards are finally on a level playing field. this equates to a much higher memory bandwidth than NVIDIA.

Let’s take a look at the cards features…

Features

AMD CrossFire™ Technology
The AMD Radeon™ HD 7950 GPU supports AMD CrossFire™ Technology and provides excellent multi GPU scaling. With the introduction of the AMD Radeon™ HD 6900 Series Graphics, AMD began delivering improved AMD CrossFire™ Technology scaling when using two GPUs. AMD is proud to continue to offer that amazing performance with its newest AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 series graphics products.

AMD Eyefinity Technology
AMD Eyefinity Technology provides advanced multiple monitor technology enabling an incredibly immersive graphic and computing experience with innovative display capabilities, supporting massive desktop workspaces and super-high resolution gaming environments. AMD Eyefinity technology with DisplayPort connectivity enables a single GPU to support up to six independent display outputs simultaneously, depending on the OEM implementation.
AMD Eyefinity technology works with games that support non-standard aspect ratios, which is required for panning across multiple displays. To enable more than two displays, one of two cases must be satisfied:

1) Additional panels with native DisplayPort™ connectors are used;
2) Certified DisplayPort™ adapters to convert your monitor’s native input to your cards

DisplayPort™ or Mini-DisplayPort™ connector(s) are used.
With the introduction and wide availability of DisplayPort™ to single-link DVI dongles, option 2 above is a low cost way to convert a set of already-owned monitors into an AMD Eyefinity technology ready display configuration.

Unlike a similar multi monitor gaming solution offered by NVIDIA, AMD Eyefinity technology does not require two graphics cards to work. Therefore, AMD offers a multi monitor gaming solution with potential for a lower setup cost. A single AMD Radeon™ 7950 GPUs can employ AMD Eyefinity technology and AMD CrossFire™ technology to provide an outstanding multi monitor gaming experience. The following chart shows the AMD Radeon™ HD 7950 graphics in a dual AMD CrossFire™ configuration versus the NVIDIA SLI GTX 580 in three monitor gaming scenario’s.

Improved Tessellation
The latest iteration of architecture in the AMD Radeon™ HD 7970 GPU features a brand new Generation of Tesselator (Gen 9) in its Geometry Engine. This features optimizations such as; Increased vertex re-use, Off-chip buffering improvements and larger parameter caches. This helps Improve performance at all tessellation factors at up to 4x the throughput of AMD Radeon™ HD 6900 series graphics (Gen 8 ).

AMD HD3D Technology
AMD HD3D Technology is supported by an advanced and open ecosystem that, in conjunction with specific AMD hardware and software technologies, enables 3D display capabilities for many PC applications and experiences.

Your PC has evolved, offering unprecedented amount of games, photos and movies for you to play, watch, design, create, share and download in 3D. With the arrival of the latest in 3D technology you can now enjoy an enhanced visual experience on Stereo 3D-capable desktops and notebooks powered by AMD HD3D Technology.

HDMI 1.4a
More bandwith than standard HDMI allows full implementation of 60Hz Stereo 3D. Standard HDMI ports do not have adequate bandwidth for more than 3D 1080p at 24fps.

Ultra-high resolution (4k Panels)
– Current implementations currently use 4*DVI or 2*DP 1.1, which is expensive and unwieldy.
– AMD will move to a single-connector output for 4k via DP 1.2 HBR2 and HDMI 1.4a 3GHz mode.

AMD Quad Buffer SDK
– Native 3D support for Developers.
– functions with Dx9, 10 and 11
– Native support scheduled for Windows 8
Nearly 600 games support AMD’s implementation of 3D either natively or through middleware partners. Also support for many 3D displays already on the market including Samsung and LG’s proprietry implementation.

Video Codec Engine (VCE)
– H.264 HD Encoder
– Power efficient
– faster than realtime 1080p @ 60 FPS
– Variable Compression Quality
– Multiple Input Options:- (1) Frame Buffer, (2) GPU Display. (2) is useful for wireless displays.

AMD ZeroCore Power

When a discrete GPU is in a static screen state it works to minimize idle power by enabling a host of active power saving functions including (but not limited to); clock gating, power gating, memory compression, and a host of other features. However, GPUs with AMD’s exclusive ZeroCore Power technology can take energy savings to entirely new heights by completely powering down the core GPU while the rest of the system remains active.

Nearly all PCs can be configured to turn off their displays after a long period of inactivity. This is known as the long idle state; where the screen is blanked but the rest of the system remains in an active and working power state (ACPI G0/S0). As soon as the system goes into long idle state and applications are not actively changing the screen contents, the GPU enters the ZeroCore power state. In the ZeroCore power state, the GPU core (including the 3D engine / compute units, multimedia and audio engines, displays, memory interfaces, etc.) is completely powered down.

However, one cannot simply remove the GPU and its associated device context completely; particularly when it is the only GPU in the system as is the case in many enthusiast platforms. The operating system and SBIOS must still be aware that a GPU is still present in the system. For this reason, the ZeroCore Power state maintains a very small bus control block to ensure that GPU context is still visible to the operating system and SBIOS. The ZeroCore power state also manages the power sequencing of the GPU to ensure that the power up/down mechanism is self-contained and independent of the rest of the system.

The enablement of the ZeroCore Power feature is controlled by the driver. The driver monitors the display contents and allows the GPU to enter the ZeroCore Power in the condition that the GPU enters long idle and subsequent work requests are no longer being submitted to the engine. If any applications update the screen contents, ZeroCore Power technology can periodically wake the GPU to update the framebuffer contents and put the GPU back into the ZeroCore Power state. Furthermore, applications such as Windows 7 desktop gadgets are architected to minimize activity and save power in the long idle state. These applications are active during screen-on mode to display dynamic content such as weather, RSS feeds, stock symbols, system status, etc. but also have the intelligence to suspend any updates and activity when the system enters long idle. These applications will not wake the GPU from the ZeroCore Power state in long idle.

AMD ZeroCore Power technology delivers tremendous energy savings. Many PCs remain in the long idle state for a variety of use cases that are highly relevant to everyday consumers, enthusiasts and professionals. In ZeroCore Power mode, users can still enjoy non-graphics activities such as file serving/streaming, motherboard audio and music, and remote access while the GPU core is essentially powered off.

ZeroCore Power technology also scales with AMD CrossFire™ technology. With an AMD CrossFire platform, all non-primary GPUs are in the ZeroCore Power state when not in use. For AMD CrossFire workloads, the driver will engage the non-primary GPUs to deliver full performance on-demand. The primary GPU can also enter the ZeroCore Power state during long idle as well. This delivers scalable benefits for the enthusiast. First, it effectively removes the power increase for users of AMD CrossFire under idle and light (single GPU) workloads. Second, it removes the noise penalty multiGPU users have always had to endure since the GPU fans are off in ZeroCore Power mode.

First Look

HD7950 Top

The HD7950 has the exact same cooler as the HD7970 which is no bad thing considering how well the cooler performed. Sure, it is still noisy on full tilt but the likelihood of the fan ever reaching these levels is minimal unless you have extremely poor case cooling. The card is very attractive being glossy rather than matt this time around and the accentuated curves rather than angular lines make the card look more svelte in form.

Comparison

As you can see, compared to the HD7970 (top most), the HD7950 is identical. Even the markings on the PCB are the same which leads me to suspect that the HD7950’s are failed HD7970’s having perhaps one or two shader cores malfunctioning. With this in mind it is probably conceivable that the HD7950 can be unlocked to HD7970 as with the 6000 series cards. We will be examining this possibility at a later date with yet another guide on how to do so.

Back

The rear of the card is again, matt black in appearance and again has all of the components exposed rather than shielding them with a backplate. We see that AMD have stuck to the ‘X’ bracket design to apply adequate pressure from the core to the heatsink with voltage regulation modules also taking place on the rear of the card.

Power Ports

Perhaps the only way to distinguish the HD7970 from the HD7950 to the untrained eye are the power ports of which the HD7950 has twin 6pin PCIe power ports whereas the HD7970 has a 6+8 configuration. MY only hope is that without the additional power available, overclocking og the HD7950 will not be hampered as you will remember that to surpass the 1000MHz mark in our HD7970 review, extra power was needed.

I/O

The I/O area is once again identical with the HD7970 having a DVI port coupled with HDMI 1.4a and twin display ports for eyefinity compatibility of up to four screens.

Vent

The card vents from both interior and exterior drawing cool air in from the fan and expelling it out into the case and rear exhaust ports.

Crossfire Tabs

The card has twin Crossfire Tabs for multiple GPU setups and we also see a return of the BIOS switch allowing a second BIOS chip to be flashed or used as a backup.

Overview

Overall then, the card on the exterior at least is near identical to the HD7950’s bigger brother, the HD7970. The only difference being the PCIe power ports and on the rear of the card, a missing VRM. How this translates to performance we will investigate later in the review but for further analysis, take a look on the next page where we strip the card of the cooler to examine the interior of the card…

Closer Look

Cooler

The cooler, as previously stated is identical to the one which finds itself on the HD7970. With this in mind it should perform even better on the lower specced HD7950. It is a combination of copper base plate with aluminium fin array in a longitudinal pattern. The contact with the core was very good and shouldn’t need the GPU paste replacing. All of the memory modules had TIM pads attached along with the VRM.

Heatsink

HEre we get a closer look at the heatsink which is very heavy in comparison to its competitors. Upon closer inspection there is also a metal bracket which is screwed to the main copper/aluminium heatsink to keep the main PCB from bowing under the weight of the cooler.

Naked HD7950

Stripped of the AMD cooler we see the HD7950 as nature intended. There is nothing too unremarkable to be seen here with the GPU core once again having a nickel plated partial protective shroud. 12x256MB GDDR5 modules surround the main core with the VRM module adjacent to the PCIe power ports and the CHiL regulator below.

Voltage Regulation Module

The VRM module consists of one less phase with a 4+1 phase design made up of Coiltronics ferrite core lo profile surface mount inductors (1505R1-R12) and an array of Solid capacitors.

CHiL Regulator

We do however see the same CHiL 8228G controller which is good news for overclockers as we will see in the overclocking section, this controller is now supported with MSI’s Afterburner utility to adjust both the GPU core and memory voltages.

GDDR5 Memory

The 12x256MB GDDR5 hail from HYNIX H5GQ2H24MFA T2C which again is great news as these chips are highly overclockable. Despite the modules already being clocked to a respectable and rated 1250MHZ(5000MHz effective), I have high hopes that they can be clocked further.

Tahiti Pro Core

Finally we arrive at the heart of the graphics card, the Tahiti Pro. While almost identical to the HD7970 Tahiti XT, the pro version has 256 less Stream Processors with 16 less Texture units. Obviously this equates to less Pixel and Texture fillrate and coupled with the slightly lower clocked memory, performance is due to take a hit. How big of a hit we will examine later in the review.

Let’s take a look at today’s test setup…

Test Setup

With the latest Intel chipset release we decided to update our ageing X58 setup to the new X79 chipset. Not only that but we will be using the flagship Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition processor clocked to 4.5GHz to ensure we have no CPU bottlenecks. With 16GB of ram on board there should be minimal paging so the benchmarks we run today will hopefully give a true reflection of the graphics card’s performance.

Some of the components for our test bench were kindly donated by CORSAIR who provided the majority of components without whom we would not have been able to bring you this review so a big thanks to them.

Graphics cards on test:

AMD Radeon HD7950 3072MB GDDR5

AMD Radeon HD7970 3072MB GDDR5
ZOTAC GTX570 AMP! 1280MB GDDR5
NVIDIA GTX570 1280MB GDDR5
MSI GTX560Ti-448 Twin Frozr III 1280MB GDDR5
MSI GTX560Ti-384 Twin Frozr III 2GB GDDR5

For this review we will be using the very latest CAT 11.12 drivers.

Motherboard: ASRock X79 Extreme4-M
CPU: Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition @ 4.5GHz
RAM – 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 1866MHz 9-10-9-27
Power Supply – ANTEC High Current Pro 1200W
Hard Drive – Hitachi SATA II 250GB
Samsung F3 1TB
Cooler – Corsair H100

Benchmarks
We have also updated our range of benchmarks to include the following games which will give the graphics cards a challenge and sort the wheat from the chaff. Each benchmark will be run at both stock and maximum overclock settings and utilise 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 resolutions along with AA at various levels (application dependent):

Battlefield 3
Crysis 2
Crysis Warhead
Metro 2033
Batman: Arkham City
Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
DiRT 3
Futuremark 3DMark 2011
Unigine: Heaven 2.5

Let’s see how today’s test sample performed…

Overclocking, Temperature & Power Consumption Analysis

Overclocking
Overclocking graphics cards has never been easier. There are a variety of overclocking tools available on the internet and some included with the actual driver, in this case, the AMD ‘Overdrive’ Utility. Our favourite overclocking utility though is the excellent Afterburner from MSI which we use for all of our GPU overclocking exploits.

Above we see that the HD7950 is stock clocked to 800MHz on the core with a 1250MHz (5000MHz effective) on the 3072MB of GDDR5 memory. The HYNIX memory used on the HD7950 is rated at 5000MHz however as we have seen in previous reviews, this can often be increased further so we loaded up MSI Afterburner and set about overclocking both the core and the memory.

The core easily surpassed the 1000MHz topping out at an incredible 1041MHz! Similar results were had with the memory overclocking too with a maximum overclock of 1426MHz. These clockspeeds were 100% stable and were used for our overclocked runs during the benchmarking stage of this review. While the overclocks could go higher for one off runs, any higher than the values we displayed above resulted in anomolies (tearing/artifects/random freezing) so we backed down until stability was attained. At this speed it should beat the stock HD7970 so I look forward to viewing the benchmark results.

Power Consumption
To test for power consumption we do not use anything to technical, just a wall meter which measures the total system power draw minus the monitor.

Under both load and idle states, the stock clocked HD7950 was one of the best performers on test thanks to AMDs ZeroPower feature. Even when overclocked the HD7950 only consumed a maximum 353W which is an amazing achievement for a top of the line X79 + high end GPU combination.

Temperature
The temperatures were taken upon first installation of the card after windows had finished loading any background applications and when sat in an idle state. Furmark was used to stress the card to 100% which is more than any application will ever do to give the card as much heat as possible to cope with.

While not a disgraceful showing, I was surprised the card was only 5c lower than the higher clocked and more powerful HD7970. Still, at a maximum 74/76 stock/overclock temperature this is a very good performance. IT is also worth noting that even under the immense stress of Furmark, the fan noise level never raised above a murmur. Increasing the fan speed to it’s maximum however made my ears bleed! Ok, maybe it wasn’t quite that loud but the dog from next door started howling which goes some way to show you how loud this cooler is on full tilt. That said it is extremely unlikely you will ever need the fan level to be that high so it is not worth worrying about.

Let’s move on to our suite of benchmarks…

Battlefield 3

Battlefield 3 leaps ahead of its time with the power of Frostbite™ 2, the next instalment of DICE’s cutting-edge game engine. This state-of-the-art technology is the foundation on which Battlefield 3 is built, delivering enhanced visual quality, a grand sense of scale, massive destruction, dynamic audio and incredibly lifelike character animations. As bullets whiz by, walls crumble, and explosions throw you to the ground, the battlefield feels more alive and interactive than ever before. In Battlefield 3, players step into the role of the elite U.S. Marines where they will experience heart-pounding missions across diverse locations including Paris, Tehran and New York.

Average and minimum frames per second were measured using Fraps during the parking lot scene on Operation Sword Breaker. High and Ultra presets were loaded at both resolutions.

Crysis 2

Crytek took an internet beating from its loyal fans due to the fact that they pandered to the console masses and dumbed down the graphics to DirectX 9. Fortunately, fans of the PC version of Crysis managed to force Cryteks hand and they have since developed a DX11 patch and have also enhanced the textures with added tesselation. It is for this reason that we have decided to include it in our suite of benchmarks.

To test the cards we used the Crysis 2 benchmark courtesy of Adrenaline with both the 1.9 patch, DX11 update and Hi-res texture pack. Settings were manually placed to Ultra, DX11 and tessellation enabled with the Central Park map being run 3 times per resolution benchmark test.

Crysis Warhead

Following the success of Crysis, the stand alone expansion “Warhead” was hotly anticipated to bring more game play, more weapons, improved visuals whilst maintaining better performance, the latter being what gamers wanted most. After all how many people upgraded their rigs just to play this game… In the game, you play as the upbeat Brit Sergeant “Psycho” Sykes, chasing down a Korean nuclear warhead. Throw in some ice shooting aliens and we’re bound to have a great game. It sure delivered.

Testing was done using Framebuffer’s Crysis Warhead benchmarking tool. The tests were configured to DirectX 10 at Enthusiast levels. Each test on the Ambush map was looped three times from which the average FPS was recorded.

Metro 2033

Based on the novel by the same name, Metro 2033 is a first person shooter with elements of survival horror. As Artyom, you trawl through the mutant infested metro systems of post-apocalyptic Moscow. The game delivers presents a grim ambience that reflects on the overall atmosphere of the underground setting. Metro 2033 uses the setting as a back drop to showcase some of the best visuals of any games out now, making it the ideal benchmark for those looking for the best graphics card.

The bundled benchmarking tool was used on Metro 2033, configuring the settings to High and making use of DirectX 11. The frontline scene was looped 3 times for each configuration. The average FPS was recorded at the end.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Skyrim is not a direct successor to the very popular Oblivion. Instead it takes place 200 years after the events of Oblivion. The non-linear playing that made the Elder Scrolls such a popular series does however make a return along with the beautiful scenery the encompasses the world of Skyrim.

Average and minimum frames per second were measured using Fraps during the drop down passage to Riverwood. V-sync was disabled to allow fluctuating (higher the 60) FPS for these runs. It is however recommended that v-sync is left enabled during normal gameplay due to the games dynamics.

Batman: Arkham City

Batman: Arkham City builds upon the intense, atmospheric foundation of Batman: Arkham Asylum, sending players soaring into Arkham City, the new maximum security “home” for all of Gotham City’s thugs, gangsters and insane criminal masterminds. Set inside the heavily fortified walls of a sprawling district in the heart of Gotham City, this highly anticipated sequel introduces a brand-new story that draws together a new all-star cast of classic characters and murderous villains from the Batman universe, as well as a vast range of new and enhanced gameplay features to deliver the ultimate experience as the Dark Knight.

The results below were obtained from the builtin benchmark utility from the game. All the settings were set to

DiRT 3

As players race to elevate their global standing, DiRT 3 is back delivering mud, sweat and gears world over: from the intense weather-beaten rally stages of Europe, Africa and the US, to executing performance driving showcases and career challenges where car control is pushed to spectacular limits.

The in-game benchmarking tool was used to test performance. All the display settings were set to the maximum available and DirectX 11 was applied. The average FPS was recorded at the end.

Futuremark: 3DMark 2011

3DMark 11 is the latest version of the world’s most popular benchmark. Designed to measure your PC’s gaming performance 3DMark 11 makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. The benchmark was run in both Performance and Extreme presets.

Unigine: Heaven 2.5

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine™ engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Conclusion

The little brother to the HD7970 is here. The HD7950 is a great piece of hardware that almost matches it’s big brother for performance and in some cases even beats it when overclocked. Going back a year or so we were amazed at the HD6990 dual GPU card from AMD with it’s performance simply stomping all over the competition. Here we have a graphics card that on occasions can better that performance (when overclocked) all from a single GPU! That in itself is an amazing achievement but to do this with much less power consumption, less heat less noise while expected to be much cheaper makes the HD7950 quite mind boggling. Without wanting to get too carried away on the euphoria of this cards performance it has to be said that it didn’t (couldn’t) outperform the HD7970 which of course is to be expected in that the HD7970 is AMD’s current flagship card. It did however come pretty damn close and if all AMD HD7950’s overclock like the sample we have tested today then you will have better-than-HD7970 speeds for less monetary outlay which is never a bad thing.

Compared to the older GTX570/560 models (we didn’t have GTX580 results on our latest test bench) the performance is not even worth considering unless you are an out and out Batman fan as this is really the only game where the NVIDIA cards excelled in comparison. All of the other games showed the 7950/70 to be top of the pile and those with a keen eye will notice our other HD7950 cards on test which even surpassed the HD7970, even when both cards are overclocked to the max!

While we have no concrete information on price at the time of writing, I would expect the price to be around the £350 mark which is a fair appraisal given the cards performance. At this price point however it is just on the edge of GTX580 territory. Were it my money I would still opt for the HD7950 though due to the advantage of 3GB of memory and GTX580 prices will plummet on the release of the hugely anticipated Kepler range of GPU’s. For £350 you will be buying the latest gen graphics capable of playing today’s and tomorrow’s games at the highest resolutions with a performance level that is currently unrivalled by the competition. What more could you ask for?

In short then what we have sampled today is the resurgence of AMD. They have created a card that is not a castrated HD7970 as some feared. Of course it is a trimmed HD7970, we all knew that would be the case but castrated/crippled is too harsh a comment to bestow on the HD7950 as it still has amazing performance. It is a streamlined effort that can, in the right hands, beat the HD7970 and even if you don’t have the right card, or the right skills, in stock format it is still a formidable card which is worthy of serious consideration for any high end gaming machine. For this reason it gets our Gold and recommended awards.

Pros:
+ Amazing GPU core overclocking
+ Good cooling
+ Great performance especially at High-res
+ Quiet (when fan below 40%)
+ Good looking design
+ Black PCB

Cons:
– Similar price point to the GTX580
– Loud fan above 40%, deafening at 100%
– Only one DVI port
– It’s not a HD7970