Radeon HD 7950 Crossfire review 2 and 3-way

Product Showcase AMD Reference Radeon HD 7950

So, pictures then, below you can see the Radeon HD 7950 as submitted by AMD, this is a 3GB model.

We deliberately show you these photo's as we did not expect to receive a board like this. This card is based off the R7970 reference design PCB. From what we can tell, only the BIOS and PCIE PEG power connectors have been changed to two 6-pin connectors.

So to compare a little, look at the HIS R7950 shown here and the card all the way above. The cards that have been submitted by the board partners have a smaller PCB, and a different cooler. So what's the real R7950 PCB then you might wonder ? We say the HIS PCB is what is issued as reference design to the board partners.

Connectivity wise the output connectors will vary per brand. But on the reference card we see four connectors supporting all high-resolution monitors. We get two display port connectors (mini), HDMI and a DVI connector. The cards will come with monitor connector dongles and adapters.

Included with all cards will be manual and a demo and driver CD, power converters and an monitor connector converters to get your Eyefinity freak on. Also of course a Crossfire bridge will be included.

Overall a nice and dark/red looking card with what you may expect from AMD. The 4.3 Billion transistor encounting 28nm Tahiti based core is tied to a whopping 3GB memory. The reference cards are clocked at a 800 MHz core frequency and the GDDR5 memory runs at 5.5 Gbps (effective data rate as GDDR5 has a quad data-rate, so effectively that quadruples that number).

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