Hardware AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB Review

@ the price point. If these are so adamantly going to come down in price as more competition arrives. AMD are playing a hard game to gain market dominance.

if Nvidia offloads its kelper with better numbers and lower price point I know what I would go for, and if AMD drop their price point to suit I would be most upset at their money grabbing antics especially if I was an early adopting fanboy.

Smites of DRM tactics trying to burn the fingers of the honest loyal supporters.

 

Quite an impressive card I must say. A logical choice over a 580 for new buyers I would say.

 

Although you cannot really believe the rumours as there is nothing really to back them up, but if you do believe them then the new Nvidia card's are going make the New AMD card's look like over priced paper weights.

From the rumours apparently the new Nvidia card's will give atleast double the performance of the GTX 580's, which are on average I would say 30% slower than the 7970 maybe more or less.

Until I see the result's though from the new Nvidia card's, I won't make my choice.

 

Have either AMD or nVidia ever managed a 50% increase in performance by new architecture over old?

 

can you ever remember such a large gap in g-cards?

 

Nope... not between generations.

 

Not sure if either of them managed it with there jump to DX10 card's, but given the rumours about cores etc on the new Nvidia card's I would not be surprised, to see a 50% increase although I take the rumours with a pinch of salt.

 

Pricing for AMD new cards are pretty high but nothing unexpected

all this 7950 does is make the 7970 look even worse than it already does

If you can get a 7950 for below £350 and overclock it you will hit 7970 performance for £80 less

Agree that the overclocked versions are a waste of money as you can buy the 7970 for less in most cases.


Id also be saying wait for the next nvidia as the small upgrades are not worth it for most people.

 

Well. I'll just keep waiting and see which 28nm based card is best at the 150-180£ price point. I know this might be a bit off topic, but are there any solid news, or even rumours, regarding how long it will take AMD and Nvidia to release their mid-range cards?

My 4890 should probably be replaced sometime soon. Though if this overpriced tendency continues from both camps then I'll probably end up looking for something more reasonable like a second hand 560 Ti/570 in the Marketplace once people start upgrading. Bought my 4890 for 90 £ when the 5xxx series came out and for that price and performance on offer it was a good choice for me. Wondering whether we will see similar pricing this gen.

 

Well according to what I've read we should see the 7750 and 7770 on Feb the 15th and the 7850 and 7870 in March. No idea how accurate that info is though.

 

Seconding this! If I buy a 7000 series card it'll be for Eyefinity, really glad to see a review showing just what can be expected at such resolutions. Aka no max setting with 4x AA on BF3!

However, I believe the US price may be a typo. They're going for $460-$480 on Newegg, not $550. That said it's still pretty spendy seeing as you can get a 7970 for just $550!

 

No, and this will become less and less likely (barring some radical new manufacturing technology or some flash of genius by a computer engineer) as processors become more and more complex. There's also the well-known problem that devs don't fully utilise their capabilities due to the focus on consoles, but that's another issue entirely..

 

I think the 8800GTX came pretty close to 50% performance improvement way back when it was released, http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2006/11/08/nvidia_geforce_8800_gtx_g80/14 compared to the previous single core offering (the 7950GX2 is/was basically 2 7900 GTs).

 

"and pair of DisplayPort 2.0 outputs"

DP 2.0? Nothing found on the web about this. Can somebody explain the difference between 1.2 and 2.0 plz?

 

So it beats me why ppl think that nVidia are gonna bring a 50% bump to the table this time.... totally wishful thinking.

And ppl are meh over the price. The 7950 is out of my reach at the mo but compared to the 580 on release it represents much better value to those that can afford it.
The RRP of the 580 was £399 for a card with 1.5gb RAM on release. That was 15 months ago and after an average 5% inflation rate means that £399 is more like £420 in today's money. Compare that to the 7950 which is an average 10% faster, 3gb RAM and has an RRP of just £350!
(and while the cheapest 7950 is about £365, the 580 had some release price gouging going on and will still cost you today... cheapest on Scan... £347.50 ....now that's how to play ya customers!)

 

I'd buy the card that vents heat out of the case every time, even if it is a tad louder.

 

Venting heat out of a case is what exhaust fans are for. All my graphics cards in the past 3-4 years have exhausted into the case, and in turn that warm air is carried out of the case by case fans.

The little known fact is that the GPU PCBs dump a lot of heat into a case, so rear exhaust graphics coolers aren't as effective as you might like to believe. And yes, paddle fans are louder and less effective than axial fans.

 

Cant wait to try one of theses cards, they look superb.

 

No.



The 4850, launching at £130 was a game changer, even the 5850 at £230 was a good deal, £350 for a card ending in "50" is just redonkulous. Bring on the 7800 series please.