HD 7950 Best Brand?

[AC_Avatar100400]

Hay everyone so recently a friend asked me to build his pc and atm im chosing a graf card atm were looking at cards around 350$ aus.
So far i found the 7950s on my local store to have the best price for performance so far.Please dont say buy a 660ti i hate Nvidia
My main question with the 7950 what brand would best for overclocking out of these?.

VTX3D Radeon HD7950 3GB X-Edition
HIS Radeon HD7950 3GB
Gigabyte Radeon HD7950 3GB Overclocked
Sapphire Radeon HD7950 3GB OC Edition V2
ASUS Radeon HD7950 DirectCu II 3GB

So far im leaning towards the Asus Direct CU2
Or wait a week for the Gigabyte 7950.
Any thoughs or advice would be apreciated.

[XBEAST]

I'd go with ASUS. Wasn't a fan of them, but their latest cards rock. Silent, good overclockers, have good VRM.

Originally Posted by AC_Avatar100400

Please dont say buy a 660ti i hate Nvidia

Not reasonable, but at least you're being honest. Enjoy your AMD-licious drivers

EDIT: just checked that that ASUS 7950 is an old three-slot design. It's not as silent as new dual-slot cooler used on 670/660 Ti/660/7870 V2. Shame they don't release 680, 7970 and 7950 with new cooler.

[Kohlendioxidus]

I got HIS 7950 ICeQ Turbo and I'm blasted. Cool, quiet and factory overclock.

[AC_Avatar100400]

Originally Posted by XBEAST

I'd go with ASUS. Wasn't a fan of them, but their latest cards rock. Silent, good overclockers, have good VRM.


Not reasonable, but at least you're being honest. Enjoy your AMD-licious drivers

EDIT: just checked that that ASUS 7950 is an old three-slot design. It's not as silent as new dual-slot cooler used on 670/660 Ti/660/7870 V2. Shame they don't release 680, 7970 and 7950 with new cooler.

I hate Nvidia cause i have had 4 Nvidia cards blow up and never a amd card + both have **** drivers.

[PNeV]

From personal experience, AVOID the VTX3D 7950 X-Edition, I had one that wouldn't run at the stated speeds out of the box. I made a thread on it you can read here: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread....light=bad+7950

After this I got the MSI 7950 Twin Frozr III. These cards are now coming on the 7970 PCB with the 8 + 6 Pin power. Its overclocked at the moment to 1100/1575 by merely putting the PowerTune slider to 20% and Core Voltage to 1093mv. Easy as pie. This card gets my vote but other good brands are the ASUS DirectCU II if you have the room for it or the Gigabyte Windforce card.

[XBEAST]

Originally Posted by AC_Avatar100400

I hate Nvidia cause i have had 4 Nvidia cards blow up and never a amd card + both have **** drivers.

That's related to video card manufacturer, not the chip maker. What can I say, bad luck.

[AC_Avatar100400]

Originally Posted by PNeV

From personal experience, AVOID the VTX3D 7950 X-Edition, I had one that wouldn't run at the stated speeds out of the box. I made a thread on it you can read here: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread....light=bad+7950

After this I got the MSI 7950 Twin Frozr III. These cards are now coming on the 7970 PCB with the 8 + 6 Pin power. Its overclocked at the moment to 1100/1575 by merely putting the PowerTune slider to 20% and Core Voltage to 1093mv. Easy as pie. This card gets my vote but other good brands are the ASUS DirectCU II if you have the room for it or the Gigabyte Windforce card.

Thanks for the input and yeah i figured the VTX3D were dodgy.
Think i mite get the DirectCU II or the Gigabyte model both seem good.
And also i dont hate nvidia poor choice of words i dislike there cards and im sticking with what hasnt blown up in years sorry to Nvidia.

[King4x4]

Gigabyte Windforce hands down.

Got two of them flashed with 7970GE bios and rocking a stable 1.1ghz overclock and the cards never go over 73'C and the fans never reached 65%. They are really quite!

[yasamoka]

Watch out for the ASUS 7950/70 DCII models! When they were first manufactured, they had a defect in their coolers which caused the cooler to not apply enough pressure on the GPU (and other components I guess) and cool things properly. People were seeing good GPU temperatures but those that looked a bit deeper saw very high VRM temps, like 105C. Although VRMs can take far more than GPUs (130-140C vs 100-105C usually), the stock VRMs heat nowhere as much. Now granted, it is claimed that VRMs run at their peak efficiency at a higher temperature than those stock VRMs run, and such. The custom VRMs are smaller and can give more power, yada yada

But techpowerup posted an article about this card, it showed an infrared sensor reading that mapped the card's hot regions. The back of the card was a scalding 115C.

High failure rates were common with these models as well.

ASUS did not do anything about that first batch, they released them to the market. It's not known which batch fixed the issues or whether they fixed them at all, you need to check.

I saved myself the trouble and got a reference 7970 (Gigabyte 7970 OC, Windforce). AMD's reference designs are quite higher quality than Nvidia's reference designs. Non-reference AMD designs are not as vital to have as Nvidia's. Proven by the fact that non-reference AMD cards this gen did not OC as well, or more than (let's just say more than, to be safe) reference cards. We're talking about stuff like the MSI 7970 Lightning.

Sapphire 7970 OC comes with an additional power phase for memory (2 phases instead of 1 phase), so it's slightly modified from stock. I guess it's the same arrangement of components however, and can fit custom coolers like reference models, so it can be considered reference +. It has been shown to achieve some of the highest memory OCs between 7970s. I'm not sure about the 7950 Sapphires though, but if they do come with additional memory phases, it's a plus over reference models. (Always watch out for cooler compatibilities down the line).

However, the Sapphire 7970 OCs have a somewhat elevated failure rate (not high, mind). If you can return defective cards, then go for it if it meets the above conditions. Where I live, we don't have these specific cards in the market in the first place. We ship them from the US.

So yeah, reference models this gen are good regardless, but remains the issue of coil whine, which is non-existent on good non-reference models which use different components.

[Lowki]

This is my second xfx card cant complain.

[AC_Avatar100400]

Originally Posted by yasamoka

Watch out for the ASUS 7950/70 DCII models! When they were first manufactured, they had a defect in their coolers which caused the cooler to not apply enough pressure on the GPU (and other components I guess) and cool things properly. People were seeing good GPU temperatures but those that looked a bit deeper saw very high VRM temps, like 105C. Although VRMs can take far more than GPUs (130-140C vs 100-105C usually), the stock VRMs heat nowhere as much. Now granted, it is claimed that VRMs run at their peak efficiency at a higher temperature than those stock VRMs run, and such. The custom VRMs are smaller and can give more power, yada yada

But techpowerup posted an article about this card, it showed an infrared sensor reading that mapped the card's hot regions. The back of the card was a scalding 115C.

High failure rates were common with these models as well.

ASUS did not do anything about that first batch, they released them to the market. It's not known which batch fixed the issues or whether they fixed them at all, you need to check.

I saved myself the trouble and got a reference 7970 (Gigabyte 7970 OC, Windforce). AMD's reference designs are quite higher quality than Nvidia's reference designs. Non-reference AMD designs are not as vital to have as Nvidia's. Proven by the fact that non-reference AMD cards this gen did not OC as well, or more than (let's just say more than, to be safe) reference cards. We're talking about stuff like the MSI 7970 Lightning.

Sapphire 7970 OC comes with an additional power phase for memory (2 phases instead of 1 phase), so it's slightly modified from stock. I guess it's the same arrangement of components however, and can fit custom coolers like reference models, so it can be considered reference +. It has been shown to achieve some of the highest memory OCs between 7970s. I'm not sure about the 7950 Sapphires though, but if they do come with additional memory phases, it's a plus over reference models. (Always watch out for cooler compatibilities down the line).

However, the Sapphire 7970 OCs have a somewhat elevated failure rate (not high, mind). If you can return defective cards, then go for it if it meets the above conditions. Where I live, we don't have these specific cards in the market in the first place. We ship them from the US.

So yeah, reference models this gen are good regardless, but remains the issue of coil whine, which is non-existent on good non-reference models which use different components.

Very good reply but i said 7950 not 7970 and even with that info i think i will wait for the Gigabyte 7950s to be in stock in the next 2 weeks thanks for all the help guys .

[yasamoka]

Originally Posted by AC_Avatar100400

Very good reply but i said 7950 not 7970 and even with that info i think i will wait for the Gigabyte 7950s to be in stock in the next 2 weeks thanks for all the help guys .

Thanks. I noticed that you mentioned 7950. However, I had experience with the 7970. Thought I would share the info I have obtained with you, since the 7970 / 7950 cards are very similar anyways.

If you can find the MSI 7950 TFIII card as well, that would be great. It has the 7970 PCB and a very good cooler. Check it out if you can.

The Gigabyte card is very nice. I got the Gigabyte 7970, and the two cards are very similar.