Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 OC Video Card Review @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 OC Video Card Review - The AMD Radeon HD 7950 challenges the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 closer to its price point than the impressive Radeon HD 7970 does. We've got Sapphire's best Radeon HD 7950 here, and we've run it through our gauntlet to see if its a worthy upgrade not only for legions of Radeon HD 6000 series owners, but NVIDIA's customers as well.
 
Review could have used some 3x display benchmarks, I think we know these new cards can handle 1 screen well enough. Ok card beats all the competition.

Power consumption numbers are always impressive.
 
Think the weak OC was just a bad luck card that you'll got in to test or something to do with that particular Sapphire card's design?
 
Bummer that this review sample was not that impressive of an overclocker. I have this same exact card and it maxxed out at 1260/1787 @ 1.25v. Not that I run it there 24/7, but I do keep it at 1180/1750 @ 1.2v for my every day use. Temps are similar to what [H] saw only hitting 65C on certain games, like Crysis 2. Most benches and other games run about 5C cooler all while staying pretty quiet with a custom fan profile.

http://3dmark.com/3dm11/2799763 - P9507

Wanted to see how my card at 1180/1750 stacked up in BF3 operation swordbreaker that [H] tested against with the same 2560x1600 Ultra settings with 2xMSAA and 16xAF HBAO ON. Not sure where they benched from but my fraps was taken from point getting out of hummer in teh beginning to escaping down from rooftop.

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
38251, 683862, 39, 92, 55.934
 
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Good review, but it's kind of just like OC'ing the 7970s... some are better than others. Very close to 7970 stock performance... but if you're really looking for bleeding edge performance, then the 7970 still pulls away with OCing.

FYI: It seems some of your style coding is goofed up on page 2.
 
Yeah, it's a bit of a crap-shoot sometimes. We get some great overclockers, and we get some not-so-good ones.
 
Now the question comes to it- to sell my 6850s and get one of these or a 7970? Kinda like the blue/black theme that will match my current custom build project.... Seems like a very capable cooler both thermally and audibly.
 
I dunno, I think getting an "average" card is a good thing for reviews. When reviewers get cherry-picked cards people can sometimes get the wrong impression about max overclocks, and then get angry when they buy the card and it can't do what the review said.

It was kind of like when the 6950 came out and people read about how the cards unlock, and then it became almost expected. When it didn't unlock, people got pissed and even sometimes returned the cards.
 
It does not seem like a stellar OC compared to the base overclock on the Sapphire card, but the final overclock is still significant when compared to a fully stock 7950. Then again both the 7950 and the 7970 seem like they should have had, respectively, AMD stock clocks of 900MHz and 1,001MHz.
 
Forgive me if this has popped up before, but has anyone tried pairing an HD7970 with an HD7950 in crossfire? I can't find anyone on the internet who's tried it and I'm really curious.
 
Slash3 said:
Forgive me if this has popped up before, but has anyone tried pairing an HD7970 with an HD7950 in crossfire? I can't find anyone on the internet who's tried it and I'm really curious.
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Haven't seen anyone who has actually done it yet, but I know there are some people on this board who have both a 7970 and a 7950. Perhaps we can get them to try it out? CFX does support this, so it should work.
 
I'd get it just because it wouldn't turn the rest of my case into an oven. Mightily impressive cooler on this card
 
Wow it seems that the BF3 patch did help MSAA performance of the 7000's a great deal.
 
When I owned my 5870's, both cards were the Sapphire brand cards. Very impressive pieces of hardware to say the least...

Drivers sucked though...
 
So it begs the question, why buy a this (or any other 7950) @ $479.99 when you can get a 6970 for 349.99 and have almost identical performance?

I mean hell, look in the FS/FT section and you can pick up a used 6970 for around 250 now.

The price to performance ratio is all jacked up in my opinion.
 
Crazy Chuckster said:
So it begs the question, why buy a this (or any other 7950) @ $479.99 when you can get a 6970 for 349.99 and have almost identical performance?

I mean hell, look in the FS/FT section and you can pick up a used 6970 for around 250 now.

The price to performance ratio is all jacked up in my opinion.
Click to expand...

The key statement you made is "almost identical performance". Read the article!
Batman:AA- 48% faster than 6970
Skyrim- 19% faster than 6970
BF3- 30.8% faster than 6970
Deus Ex:HR- 38.7% faster than 6970
NFS:the run- 14.6% faster than 6970

You could argue that's almost identical performance....
and you'd be WRONG. At an average of ~30% faster, you're gaining quite a lot of performance for that money. If you increase the cost of the 6970 by 30% you get ~$455, which is slightly less than what this card costs, but you are going to use less power and generate less heat. What you end up with here is the price/performance is just a little worse, but you'll probably make it up in electricity bills over the life of the card.
 
Crazy Chuckster said:
So it begs the question, why buy a this (or any other 7950) @ $479.99 when you can get a 6970 for 349.99 and have almost identical performance?

I mean hell, look in the FS/FT section and you can pick up a used 6970 for around 250 now.

The price to performance ratio is all jacked up in my opinion.
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You have a strange definition of almost identical performance.

I suspect the 7870 will be about on par with the 6970 for comparable money once it's released, and will be on the 28nm process, so if the 7950 is a bit too rich for your blood and you don't need the extra FPS, I'd hold out.
 
well. I purchased one a few days ago. Other sites claim its around a 10%-15% difference in performance. I hope its true. lol. But ill be buying the 8900 series once its released anyway. I hope my clocks higher than the sample [H] got. Nice review. I like the look of the card, and I ended up going for the 2 year warranty. I wanted the twin frozr but couldnt find it in stock.
 
I think that the allure of a 7950 is when you overclock them. At stock speeds they are not that good a deal to be honest, but you have a decent shot at getting a good clocker that gives you a 40-50% core overclock (compared to standard 7950 speeds), or in my case, 57% and the card comes alive at those speeds humiliating a OC'd 6970 and easily justifying the price premium. Games with DX11 and tessellation see big boosts in performance over a 6970, like Crysis 2, where my performance boost has got to be close to double that of my unlocked and OC'd 6950.
 
Bleh,

Other sites often loop canned benches, [H]ard plays the fucking games. I always place more weight on their opinions and results than other sites. Yes, I read reviews on many other sites.

I've a 7970 in one computer @ 1125|1575 and an 7950 @ 1100|1575 in another. I'm more than satisfied with them both. Both of those cards will bench higher and I'm noting the clocks I actually game at.
 
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Bought one of these and I'm thoroughly impressed. Haven't shot for the stars yet, but took it to 1100 core easily. Tested it by playing SWTOR for 8 hours, so I still need to do some stress tests to make sure it can handle that or more.

Anything that OC's from 800 stock to 1100 isn't bad in my book. Hopefully tomorrow I can do some stress testing on it. Oh and in BF3 I just choose the graphics option "Give me all".

Muhahaha! :p
 
jhatfie said:
I think that the allure of a 7950 is when you overclock them. At stock speeds they are not that good a deal to be honest, but you have a decent shot at getting a good clocker that gives you a 40-50% core overclock (compared to standard 7950 speeds), or in my case, 57% and the card comes alive at those speeds humiliating a OC'd 6970 and easily justifying the price premium. Games with DX11 and tessellation see big boosts in performance over a 6970, like Crysis 2, where my performance boost has got to be close to double that of my unlocked and OC'd 6950.
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If you run your 7950 at stock speeds, how does it compare to your OC'd 6950? How high did you have your 6950 OC'd? Just wondering because I'm running my 6970 at 1Ghz, but could also add a second.

Thanks
 
semiconductorslave said:
If you run your 7950 at stock speeds, how does it compare to your OC'd 6950? How high did you have your 6950 OC'd? Just wondering because I'm running my 6970 at 1Ghz, but could also add a second.

Thanks
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I actually never benched my 7950 at stock speeds to be honest, just OC'd from the moment I validated it was a working card. Once upon a time I had unlocked 6950's in crossfire and although my unlocked and OC'd 6950's were certainly a bit faster than my OC'd 7950, it was not by that much and some games like Crysis 2, my 7950 might actually be a bit faster. To bad I do not have a second 6950 anymore to test against to grab some actual figures. Regardless I personally prefer the smoothness and ease of use of a single card system, not to mention the reduced heat and noise.

My single current 6950 is clocked at 960/1375 for every day use, in crossfire I believe I was at 920/1400, but those were reference unlocked 6950's that I sold last year to try out a Asus Matrix GTX580. If I have some time I may be able to get a few figures together of my OC'd 6950 and stock 7950 but I am sure it would not vary much from this [H] review. Maybe a few % variance.

http://3dmark.com/3dm11/1710100 - P9514 (my unlocked and OC'd 6950's in x-fire)
http://3dmark.com/3dm11/2813675 - P9517 (OC'd 7950)
http://3dmark.com/3dm11/1714612 - P8369 (OC'd 6870's in x-fire for good measure 980/1175)
 
Im trying my best to test my overclock right now. first pushing its limit and then finding best voltage.

I know for sure I run stable at 1200 core and 1700 memory. I believe I can squeeze more from memory and core possibly 1225-1250 and 1750-1775
 
Rizen said:
You have a strange definition of almost identical performance.

I suspect the 7870 will be about on par with the 6970 for comparable money once it's released, and will be on the 28nm process, so if the 7950 is a bit too rich for your blood and you don't need the extra FPS, I'd hold out.
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HD 6970 was released at $380. Obviously 6970 EOL pricing will skew the comparison but if we go by release prices we get the following.

The 7870 will be released at $300 and should be about on par with the 6970. So ~ = performance for $80 less.

The 7890 will be released at $349 on release and I expect it to be ~15% faster than 6970, given the current delta between 6970 and 7950 is around 30% (even higher in tesselated games). So > performance for less money based on release prices.

HD 7950 1.5GB will be 30% faster than the HD 6970 and will be only $20 more expensive than the HD 6970 release price.

So when the full GCN range is released the 78XX will offer more performance for less money. Or in the case of the 7950 1.5GB significantly higher performance for only marginaly higher price.
 
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I seriously considered buying this card and even had it in my checkout basket twice but after looking at all the benchmarks I just can't warrant the bang-for-buck when I already have 2x5870. Only card I see now as a viable option is 7970 and at $600.00 it does not really warrant the bang-for-buck either. $500.00 and I will jump on it though.
 
Personally, I wouldn't buy a card with a quiet custom cooler on it and then use a lot of voltage/clocks on it that would negate the acoustic advantage of the cooler. I mean if you're going to run a card with the cooler at omfg noise levels you may as well buy reference.

These sort of cards are great for a moderate OC and low noise levels. If I snagged one I'd probably just run 1025-1100MHz or the best the card could do in that range. In any case, I wouldn't choose a clock that made it loud.

If I was looking to get serious about OCing a 7950 or 7970, I'd water cool it. I wouldn't run the fan at 80-100% so I could do a high OC.

Of course, some people don't give a fuck about noise and/or game with headphones on.
 
Newegg has this card listed as Deactivate, can someone explain what is meant by that, is there a problem with this card and sapphire is no longer making it..?
 
Kyle/Brent-
Man- you guys really got a bum review board! Maxing out at 1050/1425... I've been playing for just a little bit and am (I believe) stable at 1200/1600 at 1.2V. I need to do more testing yet to make sure its really stable, but I also still have some more testing upping the voltage a bit more. This is a very impressive card- still haven't passed 70C! Loving it so far and can't wait to get deep into gaming on it:)

Edit:
I was able to get up to 1235/1775 at 1.2V. It would run 3dMark11 at 1250 with 1.25V, but I was getting some artifacting with more than 1.2V, so I backed it down. Temps have maintained very well- I think 75C is the highest I've seen:) http://3dmark.com/3dm11/2934942
 
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Flyinfinni said:
The key statement you made is "almost identical performance". Read the article!
Batman:AA- 48% faster than 6970
Skyrim- 19% faster than 6970
BF3- 30.8% faster than 6970
Deus Ex:HR- 38.7% faster than 6970
NFS:the run- 14.6% faster than 6970

You could argue that's almost identical performance....
and you'd be WRONG. At an average of ~30% faster, you're gaining quite a lot of performance for that money. If you increase the cost of the 6970 by 30% you get ~$455, which is slightly less than what this card costs, but you are going to use less power and generate less heat. What you end up with here is the price/performance is just a little worse, but you'll probably make it up in electricity bills over the life of the card.
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I think Chuckster was only looking at the first benchmark results with the graphics turned up higher on the 7950 than the rest of the cards. Surely he wasn't talking about the "apples to apples" benchmark results because if he was then yes he is WAY wrong :D.
 
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