Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 OC 3GB Overclocked Further

For those of you keen to see this happening on film, be sure to check out the below video where you can see exactly how we pushed this card and got these fantastic results.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljzFxajdLcs[/youtube]

So let’s just take a minute to reflect on what we’ve done here today. Essentially we have pushed a card to its limits which we’ve done before on other cards, but we’ve also accomplished results that we really didn’t expect and this has left me gobsmacked to say the least.

With performance like this being capable from this card, it leads us to wonder why certain companies are still offering a stock version of the 7970 when similar performance can be had from the cheaper variant 7950.

When we looked at other games and benchmarks we did find some slightly variances between the overclock we accomplished. 3DMark 11 is a good benchmark due to its broad spectrum of users, but certain other applications, such as Metro 2033 and Dirt 3 simply weren’t able to use these high speeds, and found us having to reduce the core click down closer to the 1220MHz marker. We tell you this because many sites out there will only test using a single application, much like we have, but will not warn you that this wasn’t 100% stable, when looking at other applications.

We already knew that the 7950 came with an impressive set of performance figures, and Sapphire managed to push things further with their “Overclocked Edition” and we utilised that to push things even further and with a near silent operation at the same time.

What I am most keen to see is when we Sapphire utilise their famous Vapor-X cooler onto this card and we could possibly push things even further, as the OC edition simply has a nifty heatsink design but it does the job tremendously, but as we all know, the vapour chamber cooler is the superior and it’s what Sapphire have built some of their success on.

Some may see the 7950 as an expensive card, but we’ve just dispelled that theory as no other single GPU card on the market can offer this type of performance for that price whilst incorporating the new technologies that AMD have to offer.

Sure it takes a little time to tinker here and there and to find that magical sweet spot that we all crave, but we know as enthusiasts ourselves, nothing makes us happier than to have a play with our graphics cards and to really see what the true potential behind them is.