Best 7950

[giggles9944]

What is the best, and hopefully cheapest, 7950 I can get? I would like one that cools the best, I don't overly care for the silence of it, but if it can cool well and be quiet too, that would be best. Right now I have a XFX double D one picked out. Thank you.

[tp95112]

There all equally good depending on the clock speeds but for cooling a Msi Twin Frozr or a Gigabyte Windforce would be great.  

[ericlee30]

It's a toss up between the Sapphire Vaper-X 7950 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202003 and the HIS H795QMC3G2M 7950 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161429 .

I own the Sapphire Vaper-X 7950, it' overclocks like a boss,it is supper quit at full loud, and the Vaper-X cooler stays really cool. I do not own the HIS 7950 but I have tested it and it rates about the same as the Sapphire Vaper-X 7950. Both are Superior cards and both overclock very well.

[RectangularBox]

I would suggest you find a manufacturing company such as Asus that bins the gpus to test which ones will perform the best in an overclocking situation. Plus asus cards usually look awesome if that's what your after.

[TechFan@ic]

The best 3 7950s in terms of overclock-ability & cooling are the Sapphire Dual-X, the MSI Twinfrozr III & the HIS IceQ2.
A lot of the early Sapphire 7950 vapor-x cards have issues with VRM cooling which caused the card to throttle when overclocked and sometimes even on reference clock speeds.
The XFX 7950 DD possibly has the worst non reference cooler of the bunch.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5476/amd-radeon-7950-review/16

[Lukiose]

The best 3 7950s in terms of overclock-ability & cooling are the Sapphire Dual-X, the MSI Twinfrozr III & the HIS IceQ2.

A lot of the early Sapphire 7950 vapor-x cards have issues with VRM cooling which caused the card to throttle when overclocked and sometimes even on reference clock speeds.

The XFX 7950 DD possibly has the worst non reference cooler of the bunch.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5476/amd-radeon-7950-review/16

The new ones like mine with the 2x8pin connectors work fine though :), Minor OC'd to 1000MHz at stock voltage with no increment in extra power using CCC, stable and quiet.

[Tony N]

I just got a reference 7950 from sapphire (i got it for 269 usd) and i was really loud before i set a custom fan curve. Now the fan almost never goes over 50% and card gets to around 65c playing games. i am planning on WC in the future that is why i got reference, plus it was only 269 dollars.

 

Here's my card if you want to look, they are having the sale they had when i got my card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202030

[TechFan@ic]

The new ones like mine with the 2x8pin connectors work fine though :), Minor OC'd to 1000MHz at stock voltage with no increment in extra power using CCC, stable and quiet.

What have they changed about the design ?

[TechFan@ic]

I just got a reference 7950 from sapphire (i got it for 269 usd) and i was really loud before i set a custom fan curve. Now the fan almost never goes over 50% and card gets to around 65c playing games. i am planning on WC in the future that is why i got reference, plus it was only 269 dollars.

 

Here's my card if you want to look, they are having the sale they had when i got my card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202030

This is actually the reference cooler for the 7970.

Sapphire introduced this card recently, I'm a huge fan of this card, the reference cooler on the 7970 is significantly better than the reference 7950 cooler & it looks sexy !