TechRadar Verdict
Pros
- +
Incredible overclocking performance
- +
Quality cooling array
- +
Whisper quiet
Cons
- -
Still only really relevant for the high-resolution crowd
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Sapphire has waded in first with its take on AMD's latest HD 7000 series card, the Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 OverClock edition.
Unlike the AMD Radeon HD 7970 there are unlikely to be very many strictly reference models of the Radeon HD 7950. Instead we're more likely to see card manufacturers taking the opportunity to put their own spin on the PCB, clocks and cooling.
The HD 7970 was a reference model all the way down the line, with overclocked versions only coming much further down the release schedule. The Radeon HD 7950 though is being freed by AMD to allow manufacturers to do whatever they like right from day one.
With the impressive performance of the reference AMD Radeon HD 7950, which we've already seen, any improvement on that is going to be very welcome indeed.
And anything that offers even more overclocking potential with this already blazing fast GPU is just dandy in our books.
AMD's biggest card manufacturer, Sapphire, has opted to re-design the PCB and has created a new twin-fan cooling solution to sit atop the brand new slice of graphical silicon.
Sapphire has also opted to clock its Radeon HD 7950 OverClock edition 100MHz faster than the reference model we've already reviewed.
That's not quite as fast as the AMD Radeon HD 7970's 925MHz, but it's certainly not far short.
In fact, in certain areas, it's actually better.
