When the Radeon HD 7970 launched at $550, it looked like a reasonable alternative to the GeForce GTX 590 and Radeon HD 6990. Both dual-GPU boards are measurably faster, but they’re also $700+, power-hungry, and in the case of the 6990, embarrassingly loud. Even still, the 7970's asking price is still pretty steep.
And that’s why a card like the Radeon HD 7950 is such a welcome addition to AMD’s portfolio. The company is, as of this writing, unwilling to comment on the 7950’s anticipated price tag. However, we’ve already run the benchmarks. We know how it stacks up to the Radeon HD 7970 and GeForce GTX 580. So, we know what we’d pay for this new board. If our target is close, we’d be looking for something under $500—perhaps $480 or $490.
What makes the Radeon HD 7950 worth a few bucks more than Nvidia's GeForce GTX 580? Well, let’s have a closer look at the card itself…
Update: Before publication, but after our launch coverage was finalized for international translation, AMD let us know that the Radeon HD 7950 should sell for $450. That's well below where I thought the company would target, given its competition. Clearly, AMD is pricing the 7950 to out-value Nvidia's GeForce GTX 580 (or force its competitor to adjust downward) rather than exist in a price structure defined by the company's single-GPU flagship. Advantage: AMD.

That's a Radeon HD 7970 up top and a Radeon HD 7950 down below. In the right light, they'd pass as twins.
Meet AMD’s Radeon HD 7950
Physically, the Radeon HD 7950 is identical to AMD’s already-available Radeon HD 7970—save one distinguishing feature: a second six-pin auxiliary power connector. That’s a telltale indication of a sub-225 W maximum board power (75 W from the slot, plus up to 75 W from each plug). In fact, AMD rates the 7950 right at 200 W. In comparison, the Radeon HD 7970’s power ceiling is 250 W, necessitating its eight- and six-pin power connectors.
A 10.5” PCB is extended out an additional half of an inch by a metal base plate and plastic shroud. So, plan accordingly when you pick a chassis. This card is fairly long.
As with the Radeon HD 7970, AMD employs a centrifugal fan mounted on one end of the Radeon HD 7950, which blows across the length of the card and exhausts heated air out the back of your chassis. This is the design we prefer. It wasn’t possible to cool the Radeon HD 6990 or GeForce GTX 590 the same way. In both examples, a center-mounted fan exhausted some air from a rear I/O slot and everything else was recirculated.
Because it relies on effective exhaust, one of the card’s two slots is grated for unrestricted air flow. The other slot is populated with four display outputs: one dual-link DVI connector, one full-sized HDMI port, and a pair of mini-DisplayPort outputs.
Board partners will almost certainly bundle a variety of adapters, so be sure you’re getting the components you need before making a purchase. The two Sapphire Radeon HD 7970s we bought came with DVI-to-VGA, mini-DisplayPort-to-DisplayPort, mini-DisplayPort-to-single-link DVI, and HDMI-to-DVI adapters. Meanwhile, the XFX R7950 Black Edition card we received only included an HDMI-to-DVI adapter.
More notable, though, is that all four outputs can be active at the same time, supporting extensive display configurations that you simply cannot achieve on a single Nvidia-based board.
Tahiti Pro: Same GPU, But On A Diet
Radeon HD 7950 centers on the same 4.31 billion-transistor Tahiti GPU as AMD’s faster, more expensive flagship, manufactured on TSMC’s 28 nm node.
However, instead of sporting 32 Compute Units, this scaled-back model comes equipped with 28 Compute Units. As you know, each CU plays host to four Vector Units, each with 16 shaders, ALUs, Stream Processors, or whatever else you’d like to call them. That’s a total of 64 SPs per CU. A quick little multiplication (64*28) gives you a grand total of 1792 SPs on this chip.
And because each of those four missing CUs also included four texture units, that specification drops from 128 to 112.
To help differentiate the Radeon HD 7950 even further, AMD dials back its core clock rate to 800 MHz (down from 925 MHz on the reference Radeon HD 7970). Peak compute performance correspondingly drops to 2.87 TFLOPS from 3.79 TFLOPS.
The render back-ends are independent of the CUs, and AMD leaves all eight ROP partitions enabled, yielding up to 32 raster operations per clock cycle. Six 64-bit memory controllers feed the partitions through a crossbar. An aggregate 384-bit data path populated with 3 GB of GDDR5 memory operating at 1250 MHz adds up to 240 GB/s of bandwidth. That’s a slight drop from the Radeon HD 7970’s 264 GB/s, but still a very substantial increase over the Radeon HD 6970.
| Radeon HD 7950 | Radeon HD 7970 | Radeon HD 6970 | GeForce GTX 580 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stream processors | 1792 | 2048 | 1536 | 512 |
| Texture Units | 112 | 128 | 96 | 64 |
| Full Color ROPs | 32 | 32 | 32 | 48 |
| Graphics Clock | 800 MHz | 925 MHz | 880 MHz | 772 MHz |
| Texture Fillrate | 89.6 Gtex/s | 118.4 Gtex/s | 84.5 Gtex/s | 49.4 Gtex/s |
| Memory Clock | 1250 MHz | 1375 MHz | 1375 MHz | 1002 MHz |
| Memory Bus | 384-bit | 384-bit | 256-bit | 384-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 240 GB/s | 264 GB/s | 160 GB/s | 192.4 GB/s |
| Graphics RAM | 3 GB GDDR5 | 3 GB GDDR5 | 2 GB GDDR5 | 1.5 GB GDDR5 |
| Die Size | 365 mm2 | 365 mm2 | 389 mm2 | 520 mm2 |
| Transistors (Billion) | 4.31 | 4.31 | 2.64 | 3 |
| Process Technology | 28 nm | 28 nm | 40 nm | 40 nm |
| Power Connectors | 2 x 6-pin | 1 x 8-pin, 1 x 6-pin | 1 x 8-pin, 1 x 6-pin | 1 x 8-pin, 1 x 6-pin |
| Maximum Power | 200 W | 250 W | 250 W | 244 W |
| Price (Street) | $549 | ~$350 | ~$480 |
- AMD's Tahiti Pro Goes Heads-Up With Nvidia's GF110
- Tessellation Performance And Audio Output
- Overclocking With XFX’s R7950 Black Edition
- Test Setup And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: 3DMark 11
- Benchmark Results: Battlefield 3
- Benchmark Results: Crysis 2
- Benchmark Results: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- Benchmark Results: DiRT 3
- Benchmark Results: World Of Warcraft: Cataclysm
- Benchmark Results: Metro 2033
- Benchmark Results: Sandra 2012
- Benchmark Results: MediaEspresso 6.5 And LuxMark
- Benchmark Results: vReveal
- 2D Performance Via GDI And GDI+
- CrossFire And SLI: 3DMark 11
- CrossFire And SLI: Battlefield 3 And Crysis 2
- CrossFire And SLI: DiRT 3, Metro 2033, And LuxMark
- Power, Temperatures, And Noise
- CrossFire And SLI: Power Consumption And Noise
- One Year Later: A Great GeForce GTX 580 Alternative




Every rumor and leak I've seen so far on gk104 pricing seems to indicate otherwise...
http://www.guru3d.com/news/nvidia-gk104-kepler-gpu-priced-at-299-230-/
According to Nvidia's AIB partners the initial price set for the first gk104 based graphics card is $300. Of course this can go up or down based on the competition. Unfortunately, I have the feeling it'll be going up.
Congratulations. The 7950 narrowly beats a year old card and costs the exact same. No thanks, I'll wait on Kepler and then decide what to get once AMD puts down the pipe and has to get real on their prices. And I'm a proud owner of a 4870.
It does beat it, i can say it does.. My SC GTX580 was pulling around the same bandwidth as one they have here, i overclocked it and was getting almost 200GB's of bandwidth and was quite surprised i was able to push it and keep it like that with no trouble at all in any game i play and pretty much passed each stress test without any artifacts that i ran for hours. Headroom to OC differentiates from card to card, and nothing is guaranteed. But of course with 7950 im impressed it does very well even though the spec's on it look like it can run a marathon around the 580 with no trouble at all, but it does keep up with it and battle it out. I hope nvidia see's this as a threat and drops there price on the 580 so i can pick up another for around $400 =D Would make me very happy.
7950's power consumption in single and cfx mode are quite impressive.
i'll compare them to kepler when they come out and get tested.. right now, gcn high end looks much better than fermi high end (gpu compute, power efficiency etc).
amd's driver support seems inconsistent as usual... hopefully more mature drivers will bring out even more performance out of the gcn cards.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/his-radeon-hd-7950-review/25
As always good job Chris.
The editors at Guru3D perform their noise tests differently than most other sites. The cards are placed in a closed case and measurements are taken from a few feet back. These editors are also either partially deaf, or they just don't give a damn about excessive system noise. Honestly, I don't think they've ever knocked a card for being too loud, even the HD6990.
You are aware that the 7950 is not supposed to directly compete with the 580, right? The 7970 is supposed to beat the 580 and the 7950 is supposed to beat the 570. Just like how the 6970 is supposed to compete with the 580 and the 6950 is supposed to compete with the 570. The shear fact that the non flagship GPU beats the flagship GPU of your competitor is pretty awesome.
AMD has had plenty of time to play catch-up. It's not "pretty awesome" they leap-frogged Nvidia once again. It's a calculated move on AMD's part, for certain. A good one, but "pretty awesome" is very far from "standard dual-monopoly leap-frogging that's gone on since both companies started". Relax.
That said, I DO celebrate and find it ironic that AMDs 7950 is as flag-shippy whoop-ass as Nvidia's 7950 was in its day! I'm looking at my dead beast here right now. Miss you, 7950GT. I... I loved you. I can say that, now.
It is not pretty awesome that your next gen part that you priced slightly below the competitors flagship last gen part outperforms it in some tests. That is to be excepted. The 7950 is not against a gtx 570, its against a gtx670 which is not out yet, and will probably be replaced around the same price point as a 570 with a large performance increase over it, making buying a $450 7950 retarded; as such the 7950 will then get dropped to where the 6950 is now to be competitive.
Anyone who buys a 7950 before AMD at $450 is a chump. 30%+ price drop as soon as Nvidia releases its next gen.