XFX Radeon HD 7950 vs SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 7950

[Noplay]

Hi, I just bought Bioshock infinite today but my computer cannot handle it, lags real hard during fighting sequences, so I am looking to get a new graphics card.

I am currently using Geforce 550ti, i5 2500k @3.3ghz cpu, my motherboard is
GIGABYTE GA-P67A-UD3-B3: it says it support for ATI CrossFireX.

My budget for new video card is around 300, so I narrowed it down to these two after following tom's hardware best bang for the buck gfx card guide.

XFX Radeon HD 7950 vs SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 7950;
They are the same price on newegg, but I don't know if they are necessarily the same, one has Boost Clock with lower core clock, and I am not familiar with overclocking things.

Questions:
Does the core clock MHz matter more than the 192/384-bit when looking in a video card?

Should I get newer graphics card opposed to these that had been released for a while?

Thanks for the help in advance!

 

[bigcyco1]

Get which ever is cheaper i prefer SAPPHIRE

 

[Leland]

Thats good now that you were able to narrow it down, sinceyou just want to play the game try to ler the settingsq to me dium first or low if you are up for the story. Both are good brands but they have negative's also. Xfx is somehow noisy aswell as the sapphire one. I would suggest the HIS IceQ version, not sure if you heared it before but it is a good card and has a really good cooling. Theres actually not that much negative reviews on this brand which is good and if you dont mind the noise but really want performance (its not that noisy though) grab an Asus card ersion as it has extreme cooling and overclocking is a breeze. Thats just my opinion so there might be some negatives there but goodluck though

 

[DannyGerard]

SAPPHIRE is good forget about xfx 2 of my friends got the xfx and they both died after 3-5 months about me i got the gigabyte one and its working wonderfull full load 99% for 3 hours and my tem did go higher than 60c

 

[kennai]

XFX is actually a really good brand, even more so if you're not overclocking. If you get a black edition card and register it on their website they'll provide you with a life time warranty on it. Their standard warranty is also like a 2 year period that covers defects and the like. So all those who bash it, there's good with the bad.

 

[Newbi3]

Sapphire is a much better choice. Their cooling option and their OC ability is far better than that of XFX.

Though the site below does not prove very well that sapphire can OC further, but it definitely makes a point about the temperature of the cards.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5476/amd-radeon-7950-review/17

Also, sapphire gives you a free hdmi. Why not lol
P.S: Try to avoid the vapor-x one though, I think it is still voltage locked. Go for the flex boost or the oc boost one.

 

[Noplay]

XFX is actually a really good brand, even more so if you're not overclocking. If you get a black edition card and register it on their website they'll provide you with a life time warranty on it. Their standard warranty is also like a 2 year period that covers defects and the like. So all those who bash it, there's good with the bad.

Black edition on newegg is discontinued.

It appears majority of you guys favour sapphire.

Questions:
Does the core clock MHz matter more than the 192/384-bit when looking in a video card?

Should I get newer graphics card opposed to these that had been released for a while?

 

[Newbi3]

By newer graphics card, which one do you mean?
A 7950 can easily out-do a 660ti using the boost bios (so it's not technically OC)

Look for a 7950 boost.

 

[Noplay]

I was going to buy the sapphire, but then these other two 7950 showed up and for $20-40 difference, I don't know if it's better to get these or not.
SAPPHIRE 100352-3L R is $20 more
SAPPHIRE FleX is $40 more.
I only have 2 monitors, and I barely use the second one, but the thought of having to buy adapters in the future for the mini port is what troubles me.
Haha ya, the game bundle deal didn't really entice it for me but hopefully I can recuperate some cash from it instead.