While Nvidia regroup to launch their next round of discrete graphics cards, AMD have been running amok in the high end. Their HD7970 has reclaimed the single GPU throne from the GTX580. Today AMD release the HD7950, which should be available in the UK at a slightly more palatable price of £350.
We all expected the HD7970 to oust the GTX580 from the top spot, at £470 it would have been a dire situation for AMD if it hadn't. The HD7950 is infinitely more interesting because thanks to the price point it will be directly targeting the GTX580, which still retails for around £360-£400 including VAT in the UK.
Today we have multiple reviews of cards from various partners, including XFX and Sapphire. This particular review however focuses on the latest offering from HIS which is supplied at AMD's reference clock speeds.
Just how does the HD7950 slot into the market ? Let's have a look.
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