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We received one of the first Sapphire HD7950 Vapor-X cards direct from the factory in the Far East so didn't get the retail box. Sapphire sent us an image of the retail packaging however before publication, shown above. As we would expect – another moody 3D rendered woman, this time adorned in a kinky white outfit. We have to ask, has someone stolen her snowmobile?
The bundle we received included a few video and power converter cables, Crossfire cable, software disc and HDMI cable.
The Sapphire HD7950 Vapor X Edition is built around a blue PCB with a large twin fan cooler taking centerstage at the front.
The Vapor-X cooler on this model is based on a new vapor chamber designed especially for this series. It is a very heavy graphics card, immediately noticeable when you first pick it up.
Sapphire are using two 90mm fans with aerofoil blades and dust repelling bearings.
The Sapphire HD7950 Vapor X Edition is Crossfire capable in 2, 3 and 4 way configurations. It takes power from a single 8 pin and a single 6 pin PCI E connector. The reference HD7950 is a dual 6 pin configuration, so Sapphire are clearly driving for maximum overclocked performance from the Vapor X.
The HD7950 Vapor-X offers two DVI output connectors, alongside a full sized HDMI and DisplayPort connector. All outputs can be used simultaneously.
The copper heatsink is connected to 2x 6mm and 2x 8mm heatpipes, which run into two separate racks of aluminum fins on either side. Sapphire incorporate several heatsinks to help enhance cooling of the VRM's. The GDDR5 memory is directly cooled by the base of the main cooler above. It is clear that Sapphire haven’t cut any corners in the design of this massive cooling solution.
The card ships with a dual bios, which can be easily selected via the button above.
Above, the two bios settings. For the review today we are testing with the higher 950mhz core setting as we don't imagine anyone buying this powerful gaming card will want to run at the slower speeds. AMD's Tahiti core is built on the 28nm engineering process, equipped with 32 ROP's and 1792 unifed shaders. The 3GB of GDDR5 memory is clocked at 1,250mhz, or 5Gbps effective and is connected via a wide 384 bit memory interface.
