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Review: Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 OC in CrossFire

by Parm Mann on 31 January 2012, 16:00 4.5

Tags: Sapphire, AMD (NYSE:AMD)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qabbxr

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Test methodology

Sapphire HD 7950 OC
single-GPU specification

Sapphire HD 7950 OC
dual-GPU specification


GPU comparisons

Graphics card Approx.
price
GPU clock
(MHz)
Stream
processors
Shader clock
(MHz)
Memory clock
(MHz)
Memory bus
(bits)
Graphics driver
  2x Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 OC
(3,072MB)
£750 900 3,584 900 5,000 384 (x2) Catalyst 11.12 RC11
  Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 OC
(3,072MB)
£375 900 1,792 900 5,000 384 Catalyst 11.12 RC11
  2x EVGA GeForce GTX 580 SC
(1,536MB)
£770 797 1,024 1,594 4,050 384 (x2) ForceWare 290.53 beta
  EVGA GeForce GTX 580 SC
(1,536MB)
£385 797 512 1,594 4,050 384 ForceWare 290.53 beta

HEXUS high-end test bench

Processor Intel Core i5-2500K (3.33GHz, 6MB smart cache, quad-core, LGA1155)
Motherboard Intel Desktop Board DP67BG
Memory 8GB Corsair Vengeance (9-9-9-24 @ 1,600MHz)
Power Supply Corsair AX850W
Monitor Dell 30in 3007WFP
Disk drive(s) Crucial RealSSD C300 (256GB)
Chassis Corsair Graphite Series 600T
Operating system Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit, SP1)

HEXUS high-end benchmark suite

3DMark 11 Performance and Extreme presets
Aliens vs. Predator DX11, 1,920x1,080 and 2,560x1,600 resolutions, 4xAA, 16xAF, very high quality
Battlefield 3 DX11, 1,920x1,080 and 2,560x1,600 resolutions, 4xMSAA, 16xAF, ultra quality
Batman: Arkham City DX11, 1,920x1,080 and 2,560x1,600 resolutions, 8xMSAA, extreme quality
Crysis 2 DX11, 1,920x1,080 and 2,560x1,600 resolutions, 4xAA, ultra quality
Just Cause 2 DX10, 1,920x1,080 and 2,560x1,600 resolutions, 4xAA, 16xAF, very high quality
Total War: Shogun 2 DX11, 1,920x1,080 and 2,560x1,600 resolutions, 4xMSAA, 16xAF, high quality
Power Consumption To emulate real-world usage scenarios, we record mains power draw both when idle and whilst playing Total War: Shogun 2
Temperature To emulate real-world usage scenarios, we record GPU core temperature both when idle and whilst playing Total War: Shogun 2
Noise A PCE-318 meter is used to record noise levels when idle and whilst playing Total War: Shogun 2
Overclocking Pushing the graphics card as far as it will go, we increase speeds and re-run the Aliens vs. Predator benchmark
HEXUS bang4buck A custom metric used to evaluate comparative performance with price factored in

Notes

All cards are tested using the latest available drivers from AMD and NVIDIA, and all of our gaming benchmarks remain unchanged - making it easy for you to cross-reference results from other recent reviews.

What we have here, however, is a simple showdown; for those of you who are contemplating spending somewhere in the region of £800 on graphics, what's the better bet for gaming? A pair of Radeon HD 7950s, or a pair of GeForce GTX 580s?