Sapphire HD7950 Dual-X FleX Edition Review (OC)

1. Introduction2. Sapphire HD7950 Dual-X FleX3. Sapphire HD7950 Dual-X FleX (Super High Res Gallery)4. Testing Methodology5. Setting up Eyefinity6. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark7. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage8. Synthetic: 3DMark 119. Synthetic: HQV Benchmark 2.010. Gaming: F1 2011 (1080p)11. Gaming: F1 2011 (5760x1080)12. Gaming: Alien V Predator (1080p)13. Gaming: Tom Clancy HAWX 2 (1080p)14. Gaming: Resident Evil (1080p)15. Gaming: Far Cry 2 (1080p)16. Gaming: Total War Shogun 2 (720p & 1080p)17. Gaming: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2560x1600)18. Gaming: Battlefield 3 (1080p)19. Gaming: Battlefield 3 (5760x1080)20. Gaming: Dirt Showdown (5760x1080)21. Technical: Thermal Dynamics22. Technical: Acoustics Performance23. Technical: Power Consumption24. Technical: Overclocking25. Closing Thoughts26. View All Pages

The Sapphire FleX cards have been firm favourites in the Kitguru offices since they were initially launched and today we are looking at the latest high end model – the HD7950 FleX. Not only have Sapphire included their custom display technology, but the card receives an overclock and a proprietary two fan cooler. Today we look at this card with a variety of games, including some titles running across three 24 inch screens at 5760×1080 resolution.

Sapphire have nailed their designs in 2012, they have been consistently producing some of the quietest discrete solutions. Even their high end cards have been whisper quiet, thanks to optimised fan profiles and the adoption of high grade dual fan cooling systems.

Product	Sapphire HD7950 FleX	AMD HD7950	AMD HD7870	AMD HD7850
Core Clock speed	860mhz	800mhz	1000mhz	860mhz
Transistors	4.31B	4.31B	2.8B	2.8B
Stream Processors	1,792	1,792	1,280	1,024
Compute Performance	2.87 TFLOPS	2.87 TFLOPS	2.56 TFLOPS	1.76 TFLOPS
Texture Units	112	112	80	64
Texture Fillrate	89.6 GT/s	89.6 GT/s	80 GT/s	55.0 GT/s
ROPs	32	32	32	32
Pixel Fillrate	25.6 GP/s	25.6 GP/s	32.0 GP/s	27.52 GP/s
Z/Stencil	128	128	128	128
Memory Type	3GB GDDR5	3GB GDDR5	2GB GDDR5	2GB GDDR5
Memory Clock	1,250mhz	1,250mhz	1,200mhz	1,200mhz
Memory Data Rate	5.0 Gbps	5.0 Gbps	4.8 Gbps	4.8 Gbps
Memory Bandwidth	240 GB/s	240 GB/s	153.6 GB/s	153.6 GB/s

The Sapphire HD7950 Flex receives a core clock boost by 60mhz from 800mhz to 860mhz. The 3GB of GDDR5 runs at the reference speeds of 1,250mhz, or 5Gbps effective. Let us take a closer look at the hardware.

The HD7950 Dual-X FleX Edition ships in a lovely sunburnt orange coloured box. As would be expected Sapphire have included a 3D rendered image of a woman kitted out in full army gear. The FleX technology gets a high profile mention top right of the box.

The bundle includes a tasty Sapphire sticker, software disc, power and video converter cables and a useful Crossfire connector. There is also a little pamphlet on other products that the company currently sell.

The Sapphire HD7950 FleX Edition features a mean looking black cooler with matching black fans. The white FleX and Dual-X stickers therefore stand out dramatically against the background.

The card is built around a blue PCB and the copper heatpipes are clearly visible running across the full length.

No compromises with this high end solution. It is Crossfire capable in 2, 3 and 4 way configurations. There is also a dual bios switch to maintain a backup if you plan on customising the card.

The Sapphire HD7950 Dual-X Flex Edition demands power from two 6 pin PCI power connectors.

This is a dual slot design with two full sized DVI connectors and a single HDMI port with two mini Display Port connectors. It is Eyefinity capable and can power up to 6 displays. This solution can simultaneously output multiple, independent audio streams from the HDMI and mini Displayport connectors at the rear of the card. The GPU can support 3GHz HDMI with frame packing support for Stereo 3D.

The FleX Edition has a cooling plate positioned across the VRM's and memory modules. The cooler itself is based around five thick copper heatpipes, which run into two separate racks of aluminum fins on either side of the core. The engineering quality is exemplary and the two fans are merged into a single header.

Above, a GPUz overview of the hardware. This highlights the core clock increase from 800mhz to 860mhz over the reference card design. The 3GB of memory is connected via a 384 bit memory interface. The card is equipped with 32 ROPS and 1792 unifed shaders, which is reduced from 2048 on the higher cost HD7970.

On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.

To test today we are using our long standing Core i7 970 system, which is overclocked. We have a variety of hardware benchmarked on this system this year which will make for an interesting market comparison.

Main Test System:

Processor: Core i7 970 @ 4.6ghz
Graphics: Sapphire HD7950 Dual-X FleX Edition Review (OC)
Cooling: Coolit Vantage
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Memory: 6GB ADATA @ 2133mhz 9-10-9-32
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot)

Comparison Cards:

KFA2 Geforce GTX680 EX OC
Asus Geforce GTX670 Direct CU II TOP
GTX680
MSI R7970 Lightning Edition
HD7970
MSI R7950 Twin Frozr III 3GD5/OC
HD7950
Sapphire HD7870 Overclock Edition
HD7870
HD7850
HD6990 (880 core)
HD6970
HD6950
HD6870
Sapphire HD7770 Vapor X Overclock Edition
XFX HD7770 Black Edition S CFx
HD7770 CFx
HD7770
Sapphire HD7750 Ultimate Edition
HD6790
HD6770
HD6670
GTX590 SLi
GTX590
GTX580 SLi
GTX580
GTX570

Monitors: Dell U3011 and 3x Dell U2410

Software:

Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark

Games:

Alien V Predator
Tom Clancy HAWX 2
Resident Evil 5
Far Cry 2
F1 2011
Total War: Shogun 2
Battlefield 3
Elder Scrolls V: SkyRim
Dirt Showdown

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.

Some game descriptions are edited from Wikipedia.

It has been a while since we showed the configuration settings for an Eyefinity system.

Most graphics cards based on AMD technology require the third monitor in an Eyefinity set-up to be a DisplayPort monitor, or connected with an active DisplayPort Adapter. The SAPPHIRE FleX family can support three DVI monitors in Eyefinity mode and deliver a true SLS (Single Large Surface) work area without the need for active adapters. The first two monitors are connected to the two DVI ports and the third to an HDMI to DVI cable (supplied) with no extra hardware required.

Catalyst Control Center is easy to use and all the settings for an Eyefinity system are clearly marked in the ‘AMD Eyefinity Multi Display' panel. The image above shows a 30 inch screen in the central position, and two 24 inch screens on either side, with one rotated into portrait mode. This is how I configure my main work system.

The next process is to configure the screens in the way you want them. Above, we are running three 24 inch screens side by side in landscape mode.

It is perfectly possible that Catalyst Control Centre may set up your screens ‘out of position'. Meaning the central screen could either be on the left or right. There is a simple process to correct this, by simply clicking on the corresponding blue screen.

The later versions of Catalyst Control Center add a very useful taskbar option, across all screens or just on the central screen. I use UltraMon, so I tend to ignore this section completely.

Custom resolutions can be configured in the last panel in this section of the driver. We would just leave it at the native settings, in this case 5760×1080.

The first time, it may be a little daunting to set this up, but it all starts to make sense rather quickly.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

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.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We use the following settings: 1920×1080 resolution. Anti Aliasing off. Anisotrophy 4, Tessellation normal. Shaders High. Stereo 3D disabled. API: Direct X 11.

Great performance from this demanding benchmark, besting the HD7770 1GHZ Crossfire X configuration by a couple of frames per second.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

This is a high performing card, scoring 28,528 points. It is a little slower than the MSI HD7950 Twin Frozr III, but that card is clocked a little higher, out of the box.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

This benchmark is based around Direct X 11, and the score of 7,280 points would indicate very strong gaming performance. More on the game tests later.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here

	Sapphire HD7950 Dual-X FleX Edition
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	5
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	7
Total	196

A score of 196 points is class leading right now, the ideal solution for high definition media playback on a big screen.

F1 2011 is the newest Direct X 11 racing game from industry pioneers CodeMasters. The 2011 Formula One season is the 62nd FIA Formula One season. The original calendar consisted of twenty rounds, including the inaugural running of the Indian Grand Prix before the cancellation of the Bahrain Grand Prix. Pirelli returns to the sport as tyre supplier for all teams, taking over from Bridgestone. Red Bull Racing are the reigning Constructor’s Champions. Red Bull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel is the defending Drivers’ Champion, one of five World Champions appearing on the grid.

Good solid results at these settings, averaging 73 frames per second. We lowered the preset to ‘high' for the next page.

F1 2011 is the newest Direct X 11 racing game from industry pioneers CodeMasters. The 2011 Formula One season is the 62nd FIA Formula One season. The original calendar consisted of twenty rounds, including the inaugural running of the Indian Grand Prix before the cancellation of the Bahrain Grand Prix. Pirelli returns to the sport as tyre supplier for all teams, taking over from Bridgestone. Red Bull Racing are the reigning Constructor’s Champions. Red Bull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel is the defending Drivers’ Champion, one of five World Champions appearing on the grid.

We configured the game to run across three screens in Eyefinity at 5760 resolution.

Good performance across three screens. We tried later with the ‘ultra' preset and the frame rates dropped a little further, but still remained playable. Impressive results from a single card.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparable throughout reviews.

An intensive Direct X 11 game which requires powerful hardware to maintain playable frame rates at these settings. The Sapphire HD7950 Dual-X FleX Edition averages 83 frames per second, dropping to 49 frames per second in an intensive section of the test environment.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 is an arcade-style flight action game developed by Ubisoft Romania and published by Ubisoft. After the events of the first game, the H.A.W.X squadron is sent to Middle East, where a high level of violence is being registered, and the appearance of various insurgents leaders in various hotspots. The team also has to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Russian nuclear weapons. The player will be controlling three groups: one American (Hunter), one British (Munro) and one Russian (Sokov), each with its own pilots and supporting characters. There will also be references to other characters in the Tom Clancy universe.

We are testing in full DX11 mode with all settings to maximum.

Strong performance with this game engine, averaging 109 frames per second, dropping to 77 frames per second a few times. Nvidia hardware dominates this particular test however.

Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.

Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made.

Great results from this Direct X 10 based engine, averaging 150 frames per second, falling just behind the slightly higher clocked MSI R7950 Twin Frozr III.

Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2.

Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer.

Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today.

Settings: 1920×1200, D3D10, Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(8x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Ultra High), Vegetation(Very High), Shading(Ultra High), Terrain(Ultra High), Geometry(Ultra High), Post FX(High), Texture(Ultra High), Shadow(Ultra High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High).

Good performance from the Sapphire HD7950 Dual-X FleX Edition averaging 92 frames per second.

Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths.

This engine can be tough to power at 1080p. The Sapphire HD7950 Dual-X FleX Edition has no problems however maintaining a 66 frames per second average at these high settings.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is an action role-playing open world video game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. Skyrim‘s main story revolves around the player character’s efforts to defeat Alduin, a Dragon god who is prophesized to destroy the world. Set two hundred years after Oblivion, the game takes place in the fictional province of Skyrim, upon the continent of Tamriel, and the planet of Nirn. The open world gameplay of the Elder Scrolls series returns in Skyrim; the player can explore the land at will and ignore or postpone the main quest indefinitely. Skyrim has received universal acclaim from critics, selling more than 3.5 million copies within the first 48 hours of release.

A solid average frame rate, never dropping below 35 frames per second.

According to EA, Battlefield 3 garnered 3 million pre-orders by the day of its release. It is unknown at present whether these figures are worldwide or just for the US. The pre-order total makes it “the biggest first-person shooter launch in EA history”, according to the publisher. The engine is beautiful on the PC and very demanding of the partnering hardware.

Solid results at these high settings, averaging 78 frames per second.

According to EA, Battlefield 3 garnered 3 million pre-orders by the day of its release. It is unknown at present whether these figures are worldwide or just for the US. The pre-order total makes it “the biggest first-person shooter launch in EA history”, according to the publisher. The engine is beautiful on the PC and very demanding of the partnering hardware.

We configured the game to run on our three 24 inch monitors at 5760×1080. We also dropped the Texture quality from ultra to high.

We managed to get the game perfectly playable, while maintaining a frame rate above 30 fps at all times. This is a great result for the single card and very impressive results.

Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007.

We enabled the game across three 24 inch screens at 5760×1080 resolution, with the settings shown above.

No problems powering the game at these settings, averaging 47 frames per second. The game dipped a few times into the mid 30's but it was a completely smooth experience.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 24c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.

Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.

The Sapphire card runs a couple of degrees cooler than the reference HD7950 when gaming. You may notice it is 2c hotter than our reference card when dealing with the synthetic stress test Furmark, but there is a reason why, which we explain on the next page.

We have changed our method of measuring noise levels. We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. We are using a heatpipe based passive power supply and an Intel SSD to keep noise levels to a minimum. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests.

Ambient noise in the room is around 20-25dBa. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

When idle, the card is basically silent, reaching the lower limits of our sound meter – both fans spin around 1,100rpm. When gaming, the fans spin up to around 2,300 rpm, emitting only 32.2 dBa of noise. When stressed with Furmark, the fans don't spin any higher which explains the temperature increase on the previous page.

It is a very clever profile however as the card is quiet at all times, even when stressed synthetically beyond the current demands of gaming titles.

To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. We measure results while gaming in Crysis Warhead and record the results.

In such an energy aware climate, AMD are making a big deal out of their new ‘ZeroCore Power’ technology. Many solutions today use power gating, clock gating and memory compression to reduce idle power requirements, but ZeroCore power technology can completely power down the core GPU while the rest of the system remains active.

Very closely matched against the reference card, demanding a few watts less under gaming load.

To overclock today we are using the latest version of Sapphire's TriXX software tool.

We overclocked the card with a little increase in board power. We managed to get the core stable at 1039mhz, from 860mhz – translating to a 20.8% increase. The GDDR5 memory could be pushed from 1,250mhz (5,000mhz effective) to 1,408mhz (5,632mhz effective), translating to a 12.6% increase. Both really impressive results.

How does this affect the performance?

An increase of over 1,000 points in 3DMark 11 is not to be sniffed at. The Sapphire HD7950 Dual-X FleX Edition actually outperforms the reference clocked HD7970 at these settings, and almost catches the overclocked MSI R7970 lightning!

The Sapphire HD7950 Dual-X FleX Edition really is a monster card, ideal for an enthusiast user who wants to build a new rig to play the latest games in Eyefinity. We also feel it will be perfectly suited for a professional user who wants to power three or more high resolution screens … for rendering, video production or photo editing in Adobe Photoshop.

With FleX technology, there is no need to spend extra for a Displayport screen, if you only want to run in a 3-way configuration. There is no demand for an active adapter, and the HDMI to DVI cable for the third screen is included in the box.

The HD7970 FleX should really be paired up with a fast, overclocked Core i5 or Core i7 processor and plenty of fast DDR3 memory. An enthusiast user could work on this system across three screens during the day reaping the benefits of the improved 7 series idle state, which demands very little power at the socket.

Then when it is time to blow off some steam, the latest games could be enjoyed across three 24 inch screens at 5760×1080. We highlighted today that the HD7950 Dual-X FleX Edition has enough horsepower to handle demanding titles such as Battlefield 3 and the latest Dirt Showdown racing game.

Sapphire deserve credit for their cooling implementation which maintains the high standards they have set for themselves during 2012. Even when tasked with demanding Direct X 11 games, the card is barely audible inside a chassis, enhancing the recommendation for a number crunching ‘jack of all trades' system build.

If the out of the box performance isn't enough then we found that there was plenty of headroom on both core and memory. We managed to increase the core clock from 860mhz to 1039mhz, which increased the overall performance by a noticeable margin. In 3Dmark 11 for instance, the Sapphire HD7950 Dual-X FleX Edition managed to outperform the reference clocked AMD HD7970, which currently demands a considerable price premium.

We have no pricing information yet, but the HD7950 FleX should be available shortly from etailers online. We would expect this card to demand a price premium over a reference HD7950, but as long as Sapphire manage to keep it around the £350-£365 price point it should sell well.

Pros:

• Very quiet.
• supplied overclocked.
• will overclock to 1000mhz+ with Sapphire's TriXX tool.
• faster than reference HD7970 when we overclocked it to the limits.
• cheapest way to set up a three screen DVI Eyefinity system.
• Can handle many engines at 5760×1080 without the need for another card.

Cons:

• No shortage of competition for Sapphire at this price point.

Kitguru says: Another fantastic card from the leading AMD partner.

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