AMD HD 7950 Review

Seeing as the PowerColor came with a modest overclock from factory despite the cooling solution, I suspected I wouldn’t get much in terms of overclocking. Still, I was pleasantly surprised by the 950MHz overclock on the core and 1400MHz on memory speeds. That’s a decent 19% increase from reference core clock speeds, and a good 12% over memory speeds.

The XFX R7950 Black Edition’s thoroughly designed Ghost Thermal Technology allowed for a more extreme 1000MHz on core and 1500MHz on memory speeds. That’s a nice 25% increase in core and 20% increase in memory speed compared to reference AMD specs.

With the overclocked speeds the PowerColor pretty much eliminates any power difference the HD 7970 may have had, with an average 1% slower result. Meanwhile the gap between it and the GTX 580 increased by over 16% on average.

The XFX R7950 Black Edition on the other hand beat the HD 7970 with an average 5% performance increase while overclocked, leaving the GTX 580 far behind with a 23% performance bump.

While I would once again ask our readers to wait and see what Nvidia brings out with the GTX 680 and GTX 670, expected to be out in March, those who’re planning to upgrade immediately are in for a treat. The AMD HD 7950 not only provides higher performance and features than the GTX 580 at a lower price point; it also seems to be an overclock darling that can easily go toe to toe with the HD 7970. If AMD plays the pricing game right, they can easily undercut the GTX 580’s market. And with the 1.5GB variants out soon, the HD 7950 could be a serious threat to Nvidia in the $350-$400 range with incredible performance for comparatively very little asking price.