HIS Radeon HD 7950 ICEQ Turbo review - Introduction

When AMD launched the first series 7900 graphics cards based on the Tahiti XT GPU, the Radeon HD 7970 series was received positively in the market, a product that competes well with the GeForce GTX 580 and it can even keep up with the GeForce GTX 670.

There is a cheaper SKU though, if you are willing to forfeit a little on performance then AMD has the Radeon HD 7950 for you in stock. Now available in the 350 EUR price tag bracket the product will compete with the GeForce GTX 670. In fact, we spotted the product as tested today (IceQ Turbo edition) for 365 EUR and you can pick up a GeForce GTX 670 for the same amount of money if you look around a little.

AMD took the Tahiti XT GPU, sliced away some shader units, clocked it a notch slower and planted it onto a new PCB lined up with a new cooler. Overall the R7950 will not disappoint; good performance, impressive power consumption and great heat and noise levels.

HIS jumped on the 7950 bandwagon as well with several models, and for this review we'll be looking at their Radeon HD 7950 IceQ Turbo model. The product comes factory overclocked very nicely for you as it is running a gentle 900 MHz clock frequency. HIS uses a custom PCB and dual-slot cooler making the card very easy to install. Despite that factory overclock and that cooler the noise levels remain at very low levels whereas the GPU temperatures remain downright excellent as we'll show you in this review.

The graphics card is equipped with two 6-pin PCIe power connectors. As mentioned the card comes factory overclocked at 900 MHz (800 MHz is reference) whereas the memory is clocked at a reference 5000 MHz frequency. But will a 365 EUR pricetag however justify this product?

So welcome to our Radeon HD 7950 review, a product offering very good game performance, a great feature set and a frame buffer that will pop your eyes out as this card has 3 GB of it.

With the GPU developed under the codename "Tahiti PRO" let's have a look at this Southern Islands family member. Next page please, where we'll start up the technology showcase first.