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About LinkBacksRead more.So just how good is a Radeon HD 7950 with Boost?
Read more.So just how good is a Radeon HD 7950 with Boost?
Wow, surprisingly quiet.
The reference card is supposed to sound like a jumbo jet with boost enabled.
It's all about the overclocking, where the 7950 basically passes the 680 at 1050Mhz then just pulls away. That's why the value for money is crazy with these cards.
AMD needs to learn a hard lesson here, because these cards should never have been released at a paltry 800MHz. Had they been released nearer to 950 or 1GHz, Nvidia would have been in an awful mess this year instead of them being able to launch the 680 at such a high price. AMD's loss is our gain however.
I guess they were released at such a low clock because AMD weren't really sure what the competition would be like and wanted to keep their cards balanced across performance, power and noise.
They were presumably hoping to win on all 3 counts which they arguably did against the old 580.
After all if you can win in every area it makes the buying decision easy for the consumer.
With the 670/660 Ti AMD then realised they couldn't win across the board, so decided to concentrate on pure performance.
Luckily with this card Sapphire have done an admirable job on noise as well.
Wrong thread
Last edited by cptwhite_uk; 22-08-2012 at 08:44 PM.
sapphire is really good for keeping temps and noise down (At those speeds - most card would), but the company has lost its way by releasing cards barely over reference speeds (The 7970 GE Toxic is out of the norm). Nvidia AIB`s are pushing their cards so high, that some are needing their speeds reduced bcoz its set too high causing some to crash e.g. KFA2-Zotac. I don`t know if AMD or AIB`s are at blame here, but situation is getting dire with every card.
Sapphire cards usually overclock good, but not everyone overclocks and neither is the overclock guaranteed.
Sorry but I disagree entirely. As you can see from the Hexus review, the card has the speed to perform fantastically out of the box. If you crank up the speed even more so it gets even closer to the 7970 then Sapphire are going to eat into their own sales of the 7970, which makes no sense.Originally Posted by heXuser
And in the meantime they keep good reliability across the variation of the huge number of cards they sell, rather than other manufacturers who factory overclock too optimistically then suffer from a poor reliability rate in the long term.
If reliability over the long term isn't that important, then you can overclock, but that should be an informed decision so keeping that to the overclockers is better than putting it in the hands of everyone by default.
As an aside, hexus has used pictures from the disassembly of a vapor-x 7970 by mistake. The pcb matches up with other vapor-x 7970s in videos, while there's already a vapor-x 7950 review out where the pcb looks nothing like that (it looks like a 7950). Assuming this is the 7970 pcb sapphire seems to have used cheaper capacitors on the vapor-x than they did on the dual-x oc, and cheaper caps than used even on the actual vapor-x 7950... even the sapphire website makes no mention of black diamond components on the vapor-x 7970 while the 7950 and 6gb 7970s have them. From 3 user reviews, it comes with a stock voltage of 1.2~1.23, with a stock overclock of around 1140~1200... Poor...
Last edited by raspute; 23-08-2012 at 11:27 AM.
Hello, the pictures you see are from the actual card, and not copied over from another. This is the OC Vapor-X, with PowerTune with Boost Technology. I wouldn't say a stock overclock of 1,160MHz is poor, mind.
yeah a 1160mhz on a 7950 would be nice on stock. a 7970 that comes with 1.2 or 1.23v stock voltage that can barely do 1200mhz reliably is really disappointing i think, especially with a ghz edition label.
but i actually meant the pictures on the review seem to be from a 7970 model? i saw a kitguru disassembly of the vapor-x 7950 a few days ago and it matched up more closely to other pictures of vapor-x 7950's i'd seen, while the pictures you have look to be (unique) pictures of the disassembly of a 7970 vapor-x.
for reference:
http://www.kitguru.net/components/gr...tion-review/2/
evidently either your review or kitguru's has used the wrong pictures, and i'm just making an assumption that you may have used wrong pictures because the screws and heatsink layout on yours match vx7970 unboxings i've watched while the kitguru ones match vx 7950 unboxings i've seen.
Yeah, this image is definitely of the 7970, not the 7950:
img.hexus[DOT]net/v2/graphics_cards/amd/Sapphire/HD7950VX/RearB.jpg --- 8+8 power, which the 7970 Vapor-X does have, but the 7950 Vapor-X uses 8+6.
The rest look to be correct though.
---
Anyway.. I've been 'researching' it for awhile, but I cant seem to figure out whether the Vapor-X or Dual-X [Flex, OC 950] is the better card from Sapphire. Same price. Something's gotta be up if the Vapor-X is not more expensive.
seems to me some components are better, some are worse. on the 7970 for example, the ram on the ghz vapor-x is better but the capacitors are worse. i prefer the unisink of the dual-x. the actual core voltage on the vapor-x is really high.
7950 has elpida ram instead of hynix, with what seems to be a worse ram and vrm vooling design, but conversely a better cooler from what i gather.
vapor-x's seem generally better with a few cost-cutting measures that may or may not affect performance... coolers are def better and their overclocks seem healthy enough. if they were same price i'd go vapor-x
Hmm, I wonder if you guys got a different version of the Vapor-X than me; mine seems to be completely voltage locked.
Can someone tell me which software I can use to rise Core and Mem Voltage on my Sapphire 7950 Vapor-X OC ( 7970 pcb )
I was trying Trixx 4.3.0 and MSI Afterburner 2.2.3 without any positive effect :/
thefogo
my 7950 has the same symptoms
I opened a support ticket up with Sapphire, and they told me the voltage was locked to protect my hardware and warranty =/Can someone tell me which software I can use to rise Core and Mem Voltage on my Sapphire 7950 Vapor-X OC ( 7970 pcb )
I was trying Trixx 4.3.0 and MSI Afterburner 2.2.3 without any positive effect :/
thefogo
my 7950 has the same symptoms
It seems Sapphire has voltage locked their cards:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...php?p=22720223
OTH,1100MHZ was still reached despite this on stock voltage.
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