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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 within the last couple of weeks which will make for an interesting market comparison.
Test System:
Processor: Core i7 970 @ 4.6ghz
Graphics: HIS HD7950
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:
HD7970
HD6990 (880 core)
HD6970
HD6950
HD6870
HD6790
HD6770
HD6670
GTX590 SLi
GTX590
GTX580 SLi
GTX580
GTX570
Monitors: Dell U2410 x 3 / LaCie 730
Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark
Games:
HomeFront
Alien V Predator
Dead Island
Tom Clancy HAWX 2
Resident Evil 5
Lost Planet 2
Far Cry 2
F1 2011
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Total War: Shogun 2
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.
Looks like a play on the reference design. very poor showing compared to XFX and Sapphire cards today….
would probably have been ok if they all used the crap cooler on launch day, but after reading the Sapphire review this looks so bad 🙁
This is exactly why HIS, Powercolor, Sparkle and all those crappy eastern makes never do well here. They just dont know how to target the enthusiast user. XFX and Sapphire are different. I bet Sapphire dont like XFX in their sector now. real competition heating up between those two for the top spot.
Fastest single chip video card.Runs cool and very quiet even at full load, gave me 40-45% extra performance than my 6970 HIS icecool,no crashes after hours of gaming!
http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-Radeon-PCI-Express-Graphics-21197-00-40G/dp/B006P88VO8?tag=emjay2d-20
great review-the most important point being that cooler cannot really handle the 7950 unless you have a large case and play games in a freezer-even then I doubt the cooler has enough capacity to continuously draw off enough heat to completely prevent instability problems under intense gaming conditions