Recommend me a good 7950

[juan334]

i am having a hard time choosing between which 7950 to choose from on new egg. i was going to go with the saphirre but someone mentioned that voltage was locked not sure what that is but in the android community when a boot loader is locked its not good.

 

[fil1p]

Hey,

For AMD cards Sapphire makes really good cards, and from what I know the voltage should not be locked. When using overclocking utilities such as MSI Afterburner or Sapphire Trixx you should be able to adjust the voltage on most cards. From what I have read some of the cards (Sapphire Vapor X) come with a voltage locked at 1.25v.

From what I read only a fraction of people have a locked voltage, but if you don't want to risk having a locked voltage, you could go with another brand. Check out some of the Asus DirectCu (do note that some of the asus cards used to have issues where the heatsink wasn't properly mounted causing overheating), Gigabyte Windforce, or a MSI cards. However it is strange that some people are getting voltage locked cards, apparently some cards from various manufactures are arriving voltage locked. Some people say that they set a fixed voltage to get around this though.

I found a thread on another forum about people having the same issues:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1303929/7950-vapor-x-voltage-locked

Hope this helps!

 

[hero1]

I would recommend Sapphire too. Go look at retailers and you are bond to find cards on sale. I got my 2 Sapphire HD 7970 for 409 but I will also be getting $15 rebate for each so pretty much @$394.99 each. So if you can afford it get a 7970 if not then stick to a 7950!

 

[blazorthon]

Even the voltage-locked cards can get their voltage unlocked if you really want to it.

Also, I'll bring another suggestion to the mix. The Gigabyte WindForce x3 7950 is unchanged AFAIK from when it firsts launched as one of the first 7950s, so it's not only one of the better=binned and cooled models, but it should always come with unlocked voltage and be one of the best cards for overclocking. It's cooler is also said to have the best cooling to low nose ratio of all the top end coolers

 

[excella1221]

^ +1.

Though on my book, I would put Gigabyte on #2 in terms of cooling and noise just behind Sapphire's Vapor-X. The only complain I can give with the latter is the price premium they give for the cooler.