AMD Radeon HD 7950 Tahiti Pro DirectX 11 GPU Review

It's a nice card for the money when compared to other solutions.

I agree that it (and the 7970) is priced too high out of the gate, but that's most likely gonna change when NVIDIA drops the hammer soon. I wonder where the price will eventually settle?

I think that it has enough power to use all alone and do well with most games. Crossfire isn't really necessary unless you have caviar tastes and the checkbook to back it up.

I expect the higher binned OC models with custom cooling to do even better.

Very nice review. Im sure once more hit the market the price will come down. For now im going to stick with my 6950. It gets the job done nicely.

Wow not as impressive as I thought. I think AMD is going to be in trouble when Kepler is released.

I don't know why you guys called it pricey when the EVGA GeForce GTX 580 3072 MB GDDR5 actual price is $549.99 -- http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-Mini-HDMI-Lifetime-Warranty-03G-P3-1584-AR/dp/B004YJVUBG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1327990559&sr=8-2

O_o nice review though i don't see it pricey you get what you pay for.

Ummm Trouble? with Kepler? please. They are making changes after seeing the 7970 performance, they have time to improve kepler but when kepler is released Amd will have a secret weapon waiting for it, Nvidia will  stay in 2nd place again .

Battlefield 3 please.

Both the 7970 and 7950 looks like excellent cards from AMD to me. It really is too bad that the pricing is not in line with the more typical wallet friendly AMD offerings. One thing that AMD obviously got right is the power consumption I find the fact that their cards are competitive with Nvidia offerings with considerably less power useage to be awesome. Less power usage in turn means less heat :P

Nice review. I do agree somewhat with the pricing (I feel like they should price it lower and it would put pressure but it would work out in regards to the performance/price ratio.) but compared with the 580, they actually seem like good deals. The 7950 is a nice performer, a good overclocker and a respectable heat producer; AMD has certainly made one heck of a card, one which will prove itself in the days to come.

That's the crux of my dilemna when writing these conclusions. Technically, pricing is in line with competing offerings, so it's not like we can ding AMD too badly. But when the equivalent counterpart from a previous generation was almost $200 cheaper, something just doesn’t sit right. It seems the trend of technology getting cheaper over time stalled significantly between the previous generation and now.

Marco C:

It seems the trend of technology getting cheaper over time stalled significantly between the previous generation and now.

Amen, Brother!

It's going on with almost everything. Motherboards, CPU's, Video Cards, Hard Drives,........

System RAM and SSD's seem to be the only things that are bucking this trend.

Great review, the card looks great and seems to perform to up to its specs :). There is a lot of talk about the price, but i highly doubt anyone that will want or use this is going to care xD. But that doesn't mean its not pricy .

I remember the days when the high end card was $499. Seems like a good performer though. I wonder what the prices will do when Nvids new cards come out?

Thanks you that's a nice point there that i have to highlight for those calling the 7950and 7970 pricey.People just don't get it.There is no competition to those card yet that's why its at that price.Why don't people wait for the kepler release and stop talking about price.

cowboyspace:

People just don't get it.

No,...you don't get it.

They cost too much money for what they are. So what if they are the fastest cards on the market? It's no reason to gouge us,.....

As Marco pointed out, the last generation of AMD cards (6950 & 6970) were almost $200.00 cheaper than these are at introduction. That's a huge jump in price.

Everyone understands that they're ~fast~ and because of that, the price gouge is 'on' big time. It sucks.

They suck for doing it.

Keppler will be faster (by a lot too) when it's introduced and ~then~ AMD will lower it's prices.

Don't you think that is the point here, selling it at a high price there is no competition if you want lower price wait for kepler and see a price drop. Usually people who buy those cards are enthusiast or hardcore gamers.It's good for the company selling it at that price as far as i know and then lower the price when a competitive card comes into place..Give some reviews where it says kepler is going to be faster O_o i haven't seen any i will appreciate plz thanks you.

I understand why they're doing it.

But I still think it sucks and it doesn't do a thing to make me want to support them over their competition. (like I used to)

Keppler will be another game changer, but you'll have to wait for the reviews to see how much so. (for a moment,.....just imagine a high end GTX-580's performance,.....now double it)

I have a friend who's brother works for NVIDIA. He said that not long ago, they were all on pins and needles, just waiting for the AMD release of the HD7970, wondering if they were gonna be screwed or not.

When AMD released, they saw it's specs and all breathed a sigh of relief,....and then they had a party!

The first thought when I saw this card, is "$449, really?"

Don't get me wrong, it's a great card, but I can't justify paying that price for any card that isn't a flagship.

Based on what we’ve already seen of 7970, I can see the folks at NVIDIA breathing a sigh of relief. I think it’s a virtual certainty that NVIDIA’s next high-end GPU will outperform the 580 by a minimum of 50%, and likely more, which will put it firmly ahead of what we’ve seen from the 7970 to this point.

However, I do think there’s a lot more performance to come to the 7900 series with future drivers. The cards have a massive memory bandwidth advantage over the previous gen, much more theoretical compute perf, higher fillrates, etc. and it’s a new architecture that AMD is just now hammering on. I think the cards were released at strategic performance levels, but there’s more to be had from these things.

Just a hunch. But we’ll know soon enough.

"(for a moment,.....just imagine a high end GTX-580's performance,.....now double it)" i have to see it to believe it :) otherwise all that are rumors.

hahaahhaha

"I have a friend who's brother works for NVIDIA. He said that not long ago, they were all on pins and needles, just waiting for the AMD release of the HD7970, wondering if they were gonna be screwed or not. When AMD released, they saw it's specs and all breathed a sigh of relief,....and then they had a party!"

ok that is funny :)  waiting for Amd to do the same with keppler's release, Amd  has a secret weapon its counterpart for  keppler that is for sure and still unknown :)

Another great review from HotHardware. Yet another reason I love PC gaming, the tech is continually improving.

To be honest though I won't have to upgrade for quite some time as I currently play on Ultra settings with any game I have. I just don't have a need for the newest card because my system is still HotHardware :)

LBowen:

Another great review from HotHardware. Yet another reason I love PC gaming, the tech is continually improving.

To be honest though I won't have to upgrade for quite some time as I currently play on Ultra settings with any game I have. I just don't have a need for the newest card because my system is still HotHardware :)

I agree the review was spot on. So far, I can play all of my games with no problem too. So I can't see me buying into any of these new cards until prices come way down.

I don't NEED to either.

I have the Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 OC 3GB Model and love it , great review spot on !