XFX Radeon HD 7950 Black Edition Video Card Review @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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XFX Radeon HD 7950 Black Edition Video Card Review - XFX steps to the plate with its customized version of the Radeon HD 7950 with the XFX Radeon HD 7950 Black Edition. This video card sports a factory overclock and XFX's custom Ghost Thermal Technology cooling device. We see how it matches up to a GeForce GTX 580 and Radeon HD 7970. Does its performance justify the cost?
 
'We see how it matches up to a GeForce GTX 580 and Radeon HD 7970. Does its performance justify the cost?'

Just wanted you guys to know your review had the 6970 in the head to head and not the 7970 :D
 
darkangel74 said:
'We see how it matches up to a GeForce GTX 580 and Radeon HD 7970. Does its performance justify the cost?'

Just wanted you guys to know your review had the 6970 in the head to head and not the 7970 :D
Click to expand...

and it was compared against the 7970 in the overclocking section.. so what exactly is your point? but damn does it make the 6970 look like its 2 or 3 generations old.

given how close the stock 7950 is to the 7970 i can understand XFX's pricing though. i mean hell for 100 bucks less you get almost 7970 numbers and a simple overclock beats the 7970. though its kind of odd that both cards are so close to each other in performance. maybe AMD should of released the 7970 with higher stock clocks?
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
and it was compared against the 7970 in the overclocking section.. so what exactly is your point? but damn does it make the 6970 look like its 2 or 3 generations old.

given how close the stock 7950 is to the 7970 i can understand XFX's pricing though. i mean hell for 100 bucks less you get almost 7970 numbers and a simple overclock beats the 7970. though its kind of odd that both cards are so close to each other in performance. maybe AMD should of released the 7970 with higher stock clocks?
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Maybe they are leaving room for a 7980 to release when Nvidia finally drops Kepler... lol
 
That would not suprise if they are waiting to match oKlepar or kill it through price with the 7980..
 
Flyinfinni said:
Maybe they are leaving room for a 7980 to release when Nvidia finally drops Kepler... lol
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To me that only makes sense using their top binned parts, the overclocks are huge! And I doubt we are seeing top binned parts yet, those should be saved for the 7990, and possibly a surprise 7980 or tweaked gpus by the time any competition shows up (excluding the physx optimized gimmick rumor).

oh, and good review!
 
Flyinfinni said:
Maybe they are leaving room for a 7980 to release when Nvidia finally drops Kepler... lol
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maybe but still doesn't make sense.. why not just release the 7900 series as the 7800 series and release the 7800 series as the 7700 series, etc, etc. not only does that leave you room for a future 7950/70 when kepler releases it makes the performance gain look way better. but in my opinion i think the 7k series is just a stepping stone series for GCN and 28nm.. wouldn't surprise me if they release the 8k series high end cards before the end of the year. but who the heck knows what AMD is really thinking or doing.

sat here thinking for a bit.. what if they end up calling the 7990 the 7999 and the 7990 ends up being the refresh of the 7970? would be interesting and make a little more sense then shoving a 7980 in the middle of that. but then again they could go the Nvidia route and call the refresh the 7975 and 7955..
 
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sirmonkey1985 said:
maybe but still doesn't make sense.. why not just release the 7900 series as the 7800 series and release the 7800 series as the 7700 series, etc, etc. not only does that leave you room for a future 7950/70 when kepler releases it makes the performance gain look way better. but in my opinion i think the 7k series is just a stepping stone series for GCN and 28nm.. wouldn't surprise me if they release the 8k series high end cards before the end of the year. but who the heck knows what AMD is really thinking or doing.

sat here thinking for a bit.. what if they end up calling the 7990 the 7999 and the 7990 ends up being the refresh of the 7970? would be interesting and make a little more sense then shoving a 7980 in the middle of that. but then again they could go the Nvidia route and call the refresh the 7975 and 7955..
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NAW man, were gonna go all decimal point soon with the 7970.45! :D
 
There was once a time when the max price of a video card was 200 bucks. That's it. They wouldn't price them higher.

Then 3dfx was bought out, and there was only two players left. And people have been playing into their hands ever since. I've seen them test the waters to see what people will buy, and now they are comfortable selling video cards that are the price of an assault rifle.

look at your sig - unless you have it there for troubleshooting assistance, you're comparing e-peens. Stop buying these expensive cards and prices WILL go down.

That or send me some of your expendable income...
 
Why is the Black edition always interpreted as Bad Ass and a good OCer. Their are many Apple viewers here who might be inclined to by a vid card if it was called the XFX Radeon HD 7950 White Edition.:)
 
On the power consumption when oc'd, will I have to up the amperage on my circuit breaker or is it safe to let my lights flicker.:D
 
This is a nice review.
It shows clearly how the AMD cards can be overclocked.

But once again to not include an overclocked GTX 580 or an overclocked HD 7970 just isn't showing the complete story.

Sure, this highly overclocked GPU can beat some stock models......OK......so.....

Now put it up against a 7970 and a 580 OC'd by the same percentage......:eek:

By the way.....XFX dropped their double lifetime warranty on GPUs.
I'm not even sure if these new ones come with more than a 3 year warranty?
 
magoo said:
This is a nice review.
It shows clearly how the AMD cards can be overclocked.

But once again to not include an overclocked GTX 580 or an overclocked HD 7970 just isn't showing the complete story.

Sure, this highly overclocked GPU can beat some stock models......OK......so.....

Now put it up against a 7970 and a 580 OC'd by the same percentage......:eek:

By the way.....XFX dropped their double lifetime warranty on GPUs.
I'm not even sure if these new ones come with more than a 3 year warranty?
Click to expand...

Thats why I'm hoping if my card dies their won't be any 6950 around and they will have to give me a card of equal value or better.:D
 
RooK said:
There was once a time when the max price of a video card was 200 bucks. That's it. They wouldn't price them higher.

Then 3dfx was bought out, and there was only two players left. And people have been playing into their hands ever since. I've seen them test the waters to see what people will buy, and now they are comfortable selling video cards that are the price of an assault rifle.

look at your sig - unless you have it there for troubleshooting assistance, you're comparing e-peens. Stop buying these expensive cards and prices WILL go down.

That or send me some of your expendable income...
Click to expand...
They aren't just "testing the waters". Yes, AMD is definitely pricing them higher now, but that's because they can with no competition from NVIDIA yet. They are a business. And frankly AMD needs the money so I'd rather they be price gouging a bit while they can if it means they stick around. Besides, NVIDIA and ATI have been selling $300-500 dollar cards for years. Look at the 8800-series launch pricing.
 
magoo said:
This is a nice review.
It shows clearly how the AMD cards can be overclocked.

But once again to not include an overclocked GTX 580 or an overclocked HD 7970 just isn't showing the complete story.

Sure, this highly overclocked GPU can beat some stock models......OK......so.....

Now put it up against a 7970 and a 580 OC'd by the same percentage......:eek:

By the way.....XFX dropped their double lifetime warranty on GPUs.
I'm not even sure if these new ones come with more than a 3 year warranty?
Click to expand...

They are not TRYING to get the whole thing. If you want those results, go look at the original 7970 launch article that has an OCed 580 as the comparison. They didn't put ALL of those results here because they've already done it and there's no point in them re-doing that. If you know how it compares to a STOCK 580 and 7970, then you can use that to compare them to the OCed 580 and 7970 from the other articles.
 
I noticed something funky on the second page, you show a screenshot of GPUZ and my memory bandwidth calculation for the mhz displayed doesn't match what is shown:
1375*(384/8)*4=264gb/s
however the displayed bandwidth does match your overclocked ram speeds:
1700*(384/8)*4=326.4gb/s

Looking at the overclocking page it would seem the GPUZ there agrees with me. I think someone forgot to let GPUz refresh itself before they took a screenshot after resetting to stock speeds :eek:

edit: nevermind it's been photochopped. open both images directly and different tabs and you will see the boxes don't line up between the two.

 
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Rizen said:
They aren't just "testing the waters". Yes, AMD is definitely pricing them higher now, but that's because they can with no competition from NVIDIA yet. They are a business. And frankly AMD needs the money so I'd rather they be price gouging a bit while they can if it means they stick around. Besides, NVIDIA and ATI have been selling $300-500 dollar cards for years. Look at the 8800-series launch pricing.
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I think Amd wants to get the entry level cards back up to the 600$ level as it was in 2005 when Sapphire Radeon 850xt 256 megs ram sold for 587$. About that time Amd and Nvidia were nailed for price rigging the entry level high end cards and by 2007 the prices had dropped to 289$ for a His Radeon 2900 512 megs. My fear is that could be shaping up again. Prices are from my old receipts.
 
Uncle said:
I think Amd wants to get the entry level cards back up to the 600$ level as it was in 2005 when Sapphire Radeon 850xt 256 megs ram sold for 587$. About that time Amd and Nvidia were nailed for price rigging the entry level high end cards and by 2007 the prices had dropped to 289$ for a His Radeon 2900 512 megs. My fear is that could be shaping up again. Prices are from my old receipts.
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I dunno, I got an X1800XT 512 for $299 in 2006. I don't recall the average high end stuff going much higher than $400, but I didn't really pay that close of attention to video cards between 2006 and 2008.

You should also account for inflation though, the dollar has taken a pretty big hit since ~2004-2005.
 
Ok I am a little new to some of this... we have a 7950 overclocked that is a very good card that will just about equal a standard 7970, the price of the oc7950 is only 50$ less that a non oc7970. if you are wanting to achieve the specks of the 7970 why not just spend the extra money and get it then you have a card that if you wanted to can be Overclocked to achieve even better specks, and is there a possibility in a couple of months the prices could drop when invidia release their new line of cards..?
/
 
Rizen said:
I dunno, I got an X1800XT 512 for $299 in 2006. I don't recall the average high end stuff going much higher than $400, but I didn't really pay that close of attention to video cards between 2006 and 2008.

You should also account for inflation though, the dollar has taken a pretty big hit since ~2004-2005.
Click to expand...

Google "Amd and Nvidia were nailed for price rigging" here's a start:http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/252850-33-nvidia-prices-class-action-slapped.
"Class actions charged against NVIDIA and ATI (now AMD) reveal that the two companies may have staged a competition over the past half-a-decade or so. A judge read out an email which suggested price fixing was rife in the graphics card market. " They eventually were found guilty. Before the guilty plea the prices of the video cards were already in a downward spiral.I wonder if the charges forth coming had anything to do with that.
 
Geezer said:
Ok I am a little new to some of this... we have a 7950 overclocked that is a very good card that will just about equal a standard 7970, the price of the oc7950 is only 50$ less that a non oc7970. if you are wanting to achieve the specks of the 7970 why not just spend the extra money and get it then you have a card that if you wanted to can be Overclocked to achieve even better specks, and is there a possibility in a couple of months the prices could drop when invidia release their new line of cards..?
/
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Becaseu if you XFire 2 of them that saves you about $100 that could be used toward a larger or a second SSD for RAID, or toward a new/better sound card or little faster memory. Some of us want performance but are cheap to a point. Plus what TRUE [H] reader doesnt really like to tinker to some extent.

I like to OC but I also like quiet... I personally own this card, and love it. If i was to do a generic 7970 it would be louder. This way I can OC get near 7970 performance for cheaper & quieter :)
 
Great review! I think the biggest surprise here was how well this 7950 fares against the 7970... wow! Within a couple of percentage points out of the box, I was not expecting that. $500 is steep, but you get 98% of the performance of a reference 7970, and a much better cooling solution.
 
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