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We received one of the first Sapphire HD7950 Vapor-X cards direct from the factory in the Far East so didn't get the retail box. Sapphire sent us an image of the retail packaging however before publication, shown above. As we would expect – another moody 3D rendered woman, this time adorned in a kinky white outfit. We have to ask, has someone stolen her snowmobile?
The bundle we received included a few video and power converter cables, Crossfire cable, software disc and HDMI cable.
The Sapphire HD7950 Vapor X Edition is built around a blue PCB with a large twin fan cooler taking centerstage at the front.
The Vapor-X cooler on this model is based on a new vapor chamber designed especially for this series. It is a very heavy graphics card, immediately noticeable when you first pick it up.
Sapphire are using two 90mm fans with aerofoil blades and dust repelling bearings.
The Sapphire HD7950 Vapor X Edition is Crossfire capable in 2, 3 and 4 way configurations. It takes power from a single 8 pin and a single 6 pin PCI E connector. The reference HD7950 is a dual 6 pin configuration, so Sapphire are clearly driving for maximum overclocked performance from the Vapor X.
The HD7950 Vapor-X offers two DVI output connectors, alongside a full sized HDMI and DisplayPort connector. All outputs can be used simultaneously.
The copper heatsink is connected to 2x 6mm and 2x 8mm heatpipes, which run into two separate racks of aluminum fins on either side. Sapphire incorporate several heatsinks to help enhance cooling of the VRM's. The GDDR5 memory is directly cooled by the base of the main cooler above. It is clear that Sapphire haven’t cut any corners in the design of this massive cooling solution.
The card ships with a dual bios, which can be easily selected via the button above.
Above, the two bios settings. For the review today we are testing with the higher 950mhz core setting as we don't imagine anyone buying this powerful gaming card will want to run at the slower speeds. AMD's Tahiti core is built on the 28nm engineering process, equipped with 32 ROP's and 1792 unifed shaders. The 3GB of GDDR5 memory is clocked at 1,250mhz, or 5Gbps effective and is connected via a wide 384 bit memory interface.
That is fantastic, although ive a feeling £300 might not be possible with the card. I hope im wrong as I think if they get the price right this could sell well for them.
They make the best video cards on the planet. Imagine what they could do if they worked with Nvidia.
Whatever happened to XFX by the way? they disappeared off the face of the planet.
I still think £300+ is too much for most people, but they are pushing the reference designs pretty much as far as they can do.
Excellent review as always Zardon. Quick question – will people actually be able to buy this one? the toxic 6GB has never appeared in the UK as far as I know.
Strange they didnt opt for the 6GB of memory again. or did they realise that its a waste of money basically?
thats very tasty but they need to make a 7850 like this for the mass audience and try to keep it around £200 🙂
Will they actually be selling this one though? the 6GB Toxic was never on sale anywhere I could find it.
Excellent, im more an nvidia guy, but Sapphire are pulling out all the stops lately with their designs.
Are you sure about the bios settings? At http://www.sapphiretech.com it says:
“On its standard settings, the SAPPHIRE HD 7950 Vapor-X Edition engine clock runs at 850 MHz with 3GB of the latest DDR5 memory clocked at 5000 MHz effective. When the Dual BIOS button is operated, the base clocks are the same but the PowerTune Dynamic Boost is enabled allowing the clocks to rise to 950 MHz or more on the engine. The fan profile and PowerTune limit is also changed to performance settings. In addition, users will be able to individually tune the card with SAPPHIRE TriXX, the company’s free to download software tool that allows key parameters to be adjusted for maximum performance.”
Yes, thats right 🙂 we tested in performance mode with core boost to 950mhz
Shouldn’t it than say 850mhz for bios 1 and 850mhz-950mhz for bios 2 in the chart on page one if the base clocks are the same? Also the GPU-Z Screenshots on page 2 confuses me because it looks more like bios 1 = 850mhz-950mhz and bios 2 = 950mhz?
In case the 850mhz-950mhz is correct for the tested bios it would have been interesting to see if the card can handle the 950mhz constantly ingame or frequently falls back to 850mhz?
I’m so curious because I don’t like this whole boost thing would have been much better to not imitate nvidia in that field an leave it fixed at 850mhz for bios 1 and fixed at 950mhz for bios 2.
Apart from that little uncertainty you have made a great Review an I wold like to thank you for that. 🙂 The only thing I mist was a small audio file to actually hear the characteristic of the fans at idle and load.
The first bios setting – the core runs at 850mhz. The secondary ‘boost’ bios has the core running at 950mhz. It was running at 950mhz constantly according to my analysis when under gaming or synthetic load. We only tested at the faster setting, as I dont imagine any enthusiast would pay a premium for this card to run it at the slower speed. seems almost pointless. Still it is a good fallback option in some instances.
The table on the first page, basically just shows the full gamut of core clock speeds. but 950mhz was used throughout testing.
Glad you liked the review.
Thank you for the fast answer at this late hour 🙂
Since the 660 Ti didn’t convince me with it’s cut on the memory bandwidth which is already the weakness of the 670 and 680 I will go with this one as soon as it is available providing that the price isn’t ruining the good package. The other Sapphire HD7950 with 950mhz and no boost is most likely louder or hotter I guess.