AMD Radeon HD 7950 Pro Reviews

There is not much to dive into here other than we see the more or less expected performance differences associated with the clock jump to 850 MHz as well as a bit more for the boost speeds up to 925 MHz.

The AMD Radeon HD 7950 in CrossFire is a performance monster, but we still ran into a couple multi-GPU hiccups that reminded us that multi-GPU setups always have more quirks than those with a single video card.

The AMD Radeon HD 7950 is a huge performance upgrade from AMD's previous generation. If you have a Radeon HD 6950 or even a Radeon HD 6970, the Radeon HD 7950 will give you the GPU power you are looking for. The price of $449 is steep, but you are getting better performance that will allow a better gameplay experience, and lower power utilization. The Radeon HD 7950 does bring much better power utilization and efficiency to the table. The Radeon HD 7900 series is the most efficient and feature rich GPU architecture AMD has ever produced. If you are gaming with a GeForce GTX 580, especially if it is overclocked or the 3GB variety, we think you should just stick with it for now. The Radeon HD 7950 may give you 10% better performance, but it isn't worth the price if you are already sporting a GTX 580. If you have a lesser GTX variant, such as the GeForce GTX 570 then the Radeon HD 7950 will be more meaningful and provide a tangible upgrade. Who would have thought we would have been here comparing AMD’s second tier card and the GTX 580 with NVIDIA’s next generation GPU still not in sight?

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB is a monster GPU that's shackled by AMD's conservatism. Unleash its potential and it becomes something rather pant-wettingly special. We just hope it's available for the quoted £350.

Our look at the reference Radeon HD 7950 and HD 7970 cards shows there to be a 15 per cent gap in performance in favour of the range-topping GPU. But raise the HD 7950's clocks to the higher speeds of the 7970 and the gap melts away to around five percent, often a little less, depending upon gaming title. This type of analysis is sometimes moot because the second-rung GPU often has problems in running at the higher speeds of the very best card in the family, yet such is the frequency headroom of the HD 7950, ramping way, way past the 925MHz core and 5,500MHz clocks of the HD 7970, that overclocking it is wonderfully easy. Indeed, add a bit of voltage into the mix and it flies. So what have we really learnt from this exercise? The Radeon HD 7970 is still the better card for performance junkies; it offers a smidge more performance and is guaranteed to run at 925MHz/5,500MHz clocks without any fiddling from the end-user. However, if it was our money on the table and the choice was between a £350 HD 7950 or £440 HD 7970, knowing what we do, we'd go for the cheaper offering and push up the speeds ourselves. Heck, we'd even be saving some power, too.

The AMD Radeon HD 7950 should be available immediately through boutique system builders and popular on-line retailers, with wider availability in the coming weeks. The suggested price for the card is $449. At that price, the Radeon HD 7950 undercuts reference GeForce GTX 580 cards by a few bucks ($20-$40) and custom, overclocked GeForce GTX 580 with 3GB frame buffers by about $80-$100. Clearly, with the release of the Radeon HD 7950, which offers better performance and more features, GeForce GTX 580 pricing needs to come down to remain competitive. With that said, we wished AMD was more aggressive with Radeon HD 7900 series pricing. The Radeon HD 6970 and 6950 debuted at $369 and $299, respectively. The Radeon HD 7970 and 7950 arrive at $549 and $449. In light of competing offerings, the 7900 series is technically priced “right”, but we would have loved to see AMD come out of the gate with more aggressive pricing to make the cards more attainable for more enthusiasts and to put more pricing pressure on its main rival, NVIDIA.

For PC gamers who want high frame rates but don't want to pay more than $500 to get them, AMD's new Radeon HD 7950 video card is a compelling, powerful choice.

We’re not convinced that the new features of the HD 7900-series cards will be all that appealing to gamers casually considering an upgrade. If you’re considering opting for an extreme system with two, three, or four of these cards, sure, the power savings of AMD’s ZeroCore will be enticing. But, then again, if you’re shelling out for a cadre of $400-plus graphics cards, being thrifty probably isn’t one of your primary concerns. That being said, if you’re vacillating between an HD 7970 and an HD 7950, and your budget is tight, we’d definitely opt for the HD 7950. Its performance, when overclocked, approached (and in some cases exceeded) the stock-clocked speeds of the HD 7970 sample we tested. Considering the $100 price difference, it’s hard to make a strong argument for the HD 7970 over its slightly stepped-down counterpart. Both cards are impressive performers, for sure, but the HD 7950 is so close to the pricier card, we’d hate to blow $100 on just a few more frames per second.

The AMD Radeon HD 7950 is one hell of an impressive pixel-pusher, and Nvidia is going to have to work incredibly hard with its Kepler cards to best this excellent card.

A multi-GPU HD 7950 CrossFire setup is certainly not a cheap thing to get. With $900 for the two graphics cards alone you could get a large TV screen, a console and a couple of games for it. We see good performance scaling in most titles of our test suite, except for Batman Arkham City and Elder Scrolls Skyrim. Battlefield 3 at 2560x1600 also fell back to single GPU performance, even though lower resolutions scale just fine. We noticed the same problems in our HD 7970 CrossFire review with an earlier driver, so it looks like things are not going as fast as they should with AMD's driver development. With this generation of cards AMD introduced their new ZeroCore power saving technology which really can shine in CrossFire. In a CrossFire setup only a single card will be active when not gaming; the other cards will be essentially switched off, consuming only 1W of power and producing no heat or noise. Once a gaming session starts, the additional card(s) will instantly wake up and be ready to provide their full power without any manual switching or software configuration required. It seems AMD has found the holy grail for multi-GPU power consumption reduction.

The AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB graphics card based on the same Southern Islands architecture and Tahiti GPU that we first tested with the Radeon HD 7970 3GB looks to be another success. AMD now has two different GPU options available for consumers that are faster than the best single-GPU options from NVIDIA, a feat that AMD hasn't been able to accomplish in quite a long time. Being first to the 28nm technology might cause some problems with inventory but it seems obvious that they are benefiting in enough ways to make up for it, at least in terms of mindshare, if not marketshare. If AMD and its partners can get 900 MHz options out there for under the price of the GeForce GTX 580 and just as importantly, keep them in stock, then I think we have another big winner on our hands. The HD 7950 3GB is faster than the GTX 580, uses less power, offers more features, has twice the frame buffer capacity for higher resolutions and multi-display gaming and costs less. That is a conclusion that demands an Editor's Choice if I ever heard one; we only hope you'll see these cards in stock to buy for yourself. Be sure to check out our two videos below, one on the Radeon HD 7950 and the other on HD 7950 CrossFire!

The new Radeon HD 7950 proved to be a good contender to the GeForce GTX 580, with the advantage of being cheaper. The only game where the GeForce GTX 580 was significantly faster than the Radeon HD 7950 was FarCry 2, with the video card from NVIDIA being between14% and 19% faster. The GeForce GTX 580 was also between 5% and 6% faster on Deus Ex: Human Revolution. On Battlefield 3, both video cards achieved the same performance level. They also achieved the same performance level on DiRT3 at 1920x1200, but at 2560x1600 the Radeon HD 7950 was 5% faster. On StarCraft II, the Radeon HD 7950 was 12% faster at 1920x1200, but at 2560x1600 both achieved the same performance level. In all other games and simulations we ran, the Radeon HD 7950 was faster than the GeForce GTX 580: between 17% and 19% on Aliens vs. Predator, between 7% and 11% on 3DMark 11, and 47% on Media Espresso. As you can see, although the battle between the GeForce GTX 580 and the Radeon HD 7950 will depend on the game and resolution you run, the Radeon HD 7950 has a better price/performance ratio than its big sister, the Radeon HD 7970. To prove this point, consider that the Radeon HD 7970 was between 6% and 20% faster than the Radeon HD 7950 on the games we ran, but it is 22% more expensive. Therefore, the Radeon HD 7950 is a good option if you are looking for a high-end video card and have USD 450 to spend on one.

The cheapest GeForce GTX 580 goes for about $470, while Radeon HD 7970s have crept up $10 to $560. I’d totally be willing to pay a $10 or $20 premium over the 580 for AMD’s new Radeon HD 7950, if only because of the compute potential and power consumption advantage. But I’d also want accelerated encoding to work, and I’d like to see the potential speed-up with VCE factored in. Let’s see if AMD can get this card’s full suite of capabilities up and running before it has more compelling competition. At an anticipated price tag of $450, it's a cheaper, cooler, and more power-friendly alternative to GeForce GTX 580. In games, there's really no contest in a decision between the two.

Hugely fast and reasonable value compared to the HD 7970 - it's a Best Buy high-end card

Quite a few of you will understandably have a sense of “been there seen that” when looking at our benchmarks and that’s a feeling we share to a certain extent. Aside from its efficiency the HD 7950 really doesn’t necessarily bring anything new to the framerate table and performance does tend to drops more than a comparable NVIDIA card when anti aliasing is enabled. We do however expect this situation to improve as time goes on and AMD gets a better handle on writing drivers for their new architecture. Raw performance is only one small part of the equation since this card’s lasting appeal lies in all of the small things it does right. Cool, quiet and efficient are three words not normally associated with enthusiast level GPUs but the HD 7950 hits all of these points. As the cost of energy rises, efficiency is becoming more and more important for gamers and enthusiasts alike so having a graphics card that can attain high performance without breaking the 200W barrier could prove to be invaluable in the long term. Most people may want to know all about the HD 7970 but the HD 7950 will likely be the card they go out and buy. It is affordable, consumes very little power relative to the previous generation, performs at least as well as a GTX 580, has a fair amount of overclocking headroom and is ultimately much more affordable than a $550 flagship product. While it may not redefine its current price point, this is without a doubt the card to buy if you can’t justify spending more than $500 on an upgrade.