Final thoughts and rating
The introduction of the Radeon HD 7950 fleshes out the premium graphics-card offerings from AMD. Due to hit retailers' shelves priced from £350, thereby undercutting the HD 7970 by £100 or so, the second-rung Tahiti card is around 15 per cent slower than the headline act.
Thinking of the two Radeon HD 7900-series cards, the '50's reduction in price and gaming performance generally mirror each other, as shown by the HEXUS.bangbuck graph. Less power also plays well in the juice-sucking reckoning, with the HD 7950 pulling fewer watts than a mid-range GeForce GTX 560 Ti.
Armed with the same checklist of features and pretty quiet to boot, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB is an attractive proposition for readers who can't quite stretch to the full-fat HD 7970. And while the AMD-clocked performance is undoubtedly impressive, beating out the best single-GPU offering from NVIDIA, this new card really comes into its own when overclocking. Forget about 10 per cent overclocks, dear readers, because the HD 7950 scoffs at such mediocre thoughts. Rather, the core scales by almost 50 per cent while memory speed isn't too shabby.
Think of the Radeon HD 7950 as a default-clocked card and it's good, very good, thanks to an excellent underlying architecture. But view it in the right light, as a GPU just begging to be overclocked, and it turns into a captivating proposition, so much so that one questions the need to even consider the HD 7970 instead. Why spend an extra £100 for minimal extra performance? Indeed, such thinking may have underscored AMD's rationale of releasing this second Tahiti card a few weeks after the XT version; a side-by-side launch wouldn't have done the HD 7970 any favours.
Bottom line: 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.
The Good
A well-balanced GPU
Excellent power-draw figures for high-end card
Overclocks like a champ
The Bad
NVIDIA's Kepler is just around the corner. Any purchase may be premature
HEXUS Rating
AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB
HEXUS Awards
AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB
HEXUS Where2Buy
HEXUS Right2Reply
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