XFX Radeon HD 7950 Black Edition Overclocked 3GB Graphics Card Review

Our first look at the card gives shows us the discrete double dissipation (DD) cooler design from the XFX labs. This cooler design is set to give three times the airflow in and through the card, making the card quieter by up to 13dB and cooler by up to 7 degrees Celsius in comparison to the reference cooler design from AMD. The cover over the cooling system follows that of XFX Black Edition cards with a brushed aluminium plate surrounding the heatsink and on the top a red aluminium plate with the cards name and a reference to XFX’s Ghost Thermal Technology.

On the top of the card we find the two PCIe power connections, although we find rather than having an 8-pin and 6-pin supply like we find on 69xx cards and the 7970, there are two 6-pin connections.

On the other end of the card we see the pair of CrossFire connections for multi-GPU CrossFireX setups.

As we found on our reference 7970 card, here the 7950 comes with four display outputs, which even on its own allows the configuration of Eyefinity. We find a single DVI, HDMI 1.4a and two mini DisplayPort 1.2 connections. Those with DisplayPort 1.2 compatible screens can, providing the screen supports, daisy-chain their screens and thus enable full six screen eyefinity with the one card. The XFX branding into the backplate is not just there for the looks factor, as mentioned in the spec page, the XFX bracket is part of the Duratec Professional Grade aspect of their design. The bracket they use here allows for double the airflow out of the rear lowering temperatures by around 20% and thus allowing for better overclocking.

Taking the cooler off the card gives us a better insight into XFX’s discrete design. First of all the cooler is built on XFX’s Ghost Thermal Technology – this allows air to freely flow in, through and out of the card eliminating the airflow bottle neck that enclosed designs can experience. Next the double dissipation design allows the fans to not only blow air onto the hydrocell which cools the GPU, the airflow also directly cools the heatsink, PCB and various components that are beneath it giving a better performance margin over standard cooler designs.

Underneath the cooler we get a better view of the Ghost Thermal technology that allows for the free airflow, with both sides of the card having very little cover along them. In the middle of the heatsink we can see the HydroCell which cools the GPU core. The hydrocell works in the same way a heatpipe does, by which the liquid inside vaporises on the hot surface against the core, and then condenses again against a condensing wick where the heat is transferred to the heatsink for dissipation. This method is far more effective than any other traditional design and so the core can run cooler and overclocking stability is greater.

With the cooler removed, we can see the business side of the 7950 Black Edition. To the right of the PCB we note that XFX have upgraded all of the power components to include solid capacitors, ferrite core chokes and behind the scenes there is a 20z copper layer over the 1oz standard. All of these upgrades lower the cards temperatures, increase the power efficiency, reduce the power noise that is typically heard when a card is under full load and yet again allows for a better overclock.

The whole basis of this card swirls around the all new Tahiti GPU core which the XFX labs have overclocked to 900MHz and we find it here nestled in the middle with all 3Gb of its GDDR5 Hynix memory neatly surrounding it.

At stock from AMd the 7950 comes with a core clock of 800MHz and a memory speed of 1250MHz (5GHz effective). With the Black Edition overclock, XFX have raised this to 900MHz the core and 1375MHz (5.5GHz effective) for the memory. Looking these speeds, it looks like there is still a bit of headroom for pushing this card a bit further.