Radeon HD 7950 3 GB: Six Cards, Benchmarked And Reviewed

[FormatC]

With Nvidia's GeForce GTX 670 readily available for $400, AMD's Radeon HD 7950 shifts to the upper middle class of graphics card performance. We test six third-party interpretations in anticipation of pricing more in line with its competitive position.

Radeon HD 7950 3 GB: Six Cards, Benchmarked And Reviewed : Read more

 

[rmpumper]

Gigabyte HD7950 missing in action

 

[mayankleoboy1]

in some of the earlier charts, gtx680 is written as "gtx 680 1536MB".

also, gtx580 seems to be missing in the crysis2 charts.

 

[Guest]

Just thought you might like to know that the x-axis captions for the noise level graphs are labelled as they would be for temperature, rather than decibels

 

[scrumworks]

That nvidia turbo boost is a bit cheating and you should turn it off for the test. It's basically same as overclocking and your review sample cards are most likely binned to get much better than average OC.

 

[Dragh0n]

Nice article. Glad to know I'm not missing much by sticking with brand loyalty.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Why was there no expanded information on the overclocking ability of the GPUs? Half at 1025MHz and Half at 1050MHz doesn't help anything.

As well, what kind of memory overclocks did you get? Did you have to change the voltage of the GPUs to get said clock speeds?

This article was missing a bit too much info there to really be able to get the full picture of these GPUs. The HD7970 6 card shootout is how it should have been done for the HD7950s. Each cards overclocking ability (core/memory) and what they got with stock voltage and overvolted.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

[citation][nom]scrumworks[/nom]That nvidia turbo boost is a bit cheating and you should turn it off for the test. It's basically same as overclocking and your review sample cards are most likely binned to get much better than average OC.[/citation]

WOW.
how is it cheating? it is cheating only if the average user will not use the "GPU boost" feature, but reviewers are using it.

and, the card is faster, cheaper and cooler than the competition. so if you are better, you cheat?
Fanboi.

 

[SessouXFX]

XFX HD7950 didn't make the list?

You know what this is like? Imagine yourself as a concert prompter, trying to put a lineup together. You have Megadeth, White Snake, Poison, Guns -n- Roses, AC DC, you think you're doing just fine...What? Metallica wanted nothing to do with that roundup of Who's Who? Did they turn you down, or did you guys turn them down?

Because XFX matters. XFX always matter! And I'm pretty sure they weren't scared to step into the ring and beat some heads in with a comparo with the best in the biz. You guys need to get in touch with them and test their HD7950 and see if their card has the potential to blast that "elephant in the room" and hang it's head on the wall.

This is Tom's Hardware after all...

 

[we_san]

[citation][nom]scrumworks[/nom]That nvidia turbo boost is a bit cheating and you should turn it off for the test. It's basically same as overclocking and your review sample cards are most likely binned to get much better than average OC.[/citation]
You want to add 7970 OC into the crowd ? Just ask ...

 

[Deemo13]

I really like the charts posted for the benchmarking! Gives a much wider range of cards.

 

[A Bad Day]

HIS HD 7950's fan at load reminds me of one of those machinery rooms in a manufacturing plant.

 

[keigo_kanzaki]

This is the first time I heard about buying a "graphic card bracket". For the ASUS DCII card, don't you usually just put screws (3 screws for this card) on THE (usual) bracket to hold the card firmly in the case?

 

[hellfire24]

DCII,i am impressed!

 

[userngalan]

wow! the msi and powercolor is 50$ cheeper than asus..

 

[Sonny73N]

Dear Mr Wallossek, we buy our cards based on performance per price as recommended by Tom's monthly best graphic cards for the money guide. This is the time of the GTX 670, simply because it has the best value in its class. Since they're available everywhere, why don't you give us some benchmark on those 670s instead of these over-priced (still) 7950 cards with nothing left to talk about?

 

[BeWater]

Testing GTX6XX-Cards with enabled GPU Boost is certainly not cheating. Its a just a feature of this boards.

But everyone who is comparing stock clock benchmarks should keep in mind that these cards most likely wont overclock as much over their gpu boost frequency as a card without boost overclocks over its stock frequency (assuming both cards have the same overclocking capability). Especially since the gpu boost on non-reference cards sometimes already is 200mhz over their base frequency.

This can make a precise comparision more difficult. Particularly if you compare cards which are very close like the 7970 and 670 for example.

 

[xxplosiv88]

Wow, I feel even more awesome now for putting my order in for a GTX 670.

 

[DataGrave]

Dear Mr Wallossek, we buy our cards based on performance per price as recommended by Tom's monthly best graphic cards for the money guide. This is the time of the GTX 670, simply because it has the best value in its class. Since they're available everywhere, why don't you give us some benchmark on those 670s instead of these over-priced (still) 7950 cards with nothing left to talk about?

Dear Sonny73N,
Why? Because the translation is slower than a crappy GT 430

The 7950 roundup was published in Germany: May 12, 2012
The GTX670 roundup was published in Germany: May 22, 2012

http://www.tomshardware.de/Nvidia-Geforce-GTX-670-Roundup,testberichte-241027.html

 

[unksol]

Why was there no expanded information on the overclocking ability of the GPUs? Half at 1025MHz and Half at 1050MHz doesn't help anything.

As well, what kind of memory overclocks did you get? Did you have to change the voltage of the GPUs to get said clock speeds?

So you read the 2nd sentence of the overclocking but not the first?

We overclocked each card as much as possible without increasing their voltage settings. Half of them managed to hit 1050 MHz, while the other half maxed out at 1025 MHz.

sorry couldnt help myself. the fact they all hit 1025Mhz is relevant. Doing it at stock voltage is the "safe" way. and a way to show what the "average Joe" can do safely with just the sliders in CCC.

Its clearly just a puff piece for these cards and nothing to do any real comparison with when its only game benchmark is crysis 2

 

[zander1983]

*looks at current pc setup, opens local pc shop webpage, see great deal no upgrade only to find out gadget budget is empty*

 

[FormatC]

To test the stability Crysis 2 is a real nice test, because 3DMark11, Metro 2033, Furmark and GPGPU are running stable on higher clocks when Crysis 2 already crashes. This is not a secret. To compare several cards with the same chip, one benchmark is enough to show the differences between this cards. For comparison with more games you can take a look at the charts too.

Edit:
The chip quality is not OEM dependend, it is pure random. Call it GPU lottery.

I have compared 3 cards from HIS with different results (GPU and RAM clocks) and I can say that each card is really unique. It is not possible to say that the cards from manufacturer A are better for OC then others, each card has another and different limit.

 

[Useless_]

I must say I am impressed with the HIS Cooler performance, however I would have pass on the graphics card personally as I think it is fugly and judging by the video of noise it seems to have a whine that I can't stand much more than all the other cards!

Definitely a great feature allow users to hear what each graphics card sounds like given it is so subjective keep up the awesome work!!!

 

[silveralien81]

Why no XFX BE Double D?

 

[TheBigTroll]

needs gigabyte but i think they didnt have one onhand