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Last month we reviewed the latest flagship GPU from Sapphire, the incredible HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition. The 7970 Toxic managed to get the enthusiast audience salivating, although most simply couldn't afford the bank breaking asking price. In an attempt to rectify this today we are looking at the brand new HD7950 Vapor X card – another pimped out, heavily modified solution from the company, but targeted at a more affordable price point. Our sample was one of the first from the factory, before even the retail boxes were printed.
AMD's HD7950 has enjoyed success this year, targeting the high end gamer who wants to play the latest Direct X 11 titles with all the eye candy maxed at full high definition resolutions.
Previous testing has highlighted that when overclocked, the HD7950 can nearly compete against the more expensive HD7970. Priced between £240 and £290, it has hit the sweet spot for high performance gaming throughout 2012.
Can Sapphire once again lead the way with their heavily customised HD7950 Vapor X solution?
| Product | AMD HD7970 GHZ Ed |
Sapphire HD7950 Vapor-X Edition AMD HD7950 |
AMD HD7870 | AMD HD7850 |
| Core Clock speed | 1050mhz | 850mhz-950mhz 800mhz |
1000mhz | 860mhz |
| Transistors | 4.31 billion | 4.31 billion | 2.8 billion | 2.8 billion |
| Stream Processors | 2,048 | 1,792 | 1,280 | 1,024 |
| Compute Performance | 3.79 TFLOPS | 2.87 TFLOPS | 2.56 TFLOPS | 1.76 TFLOPS |
| Texture Units | 128 | 112 | 80 | 64 |
| Texture Fillrate | 134.4 GT/s | 89.6 GT/s | 80 GT/s | 55.0 GT/s |
| ROPs | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 |
| Pixel Fillrate | 33.6 GP/s | 25.6 GP/s | 32.0 GP/s | 27.52 GP/s |
| Z/Stencil | 128 | 128 | 128 | 128 |
| Memory Type | 3GB GDDR5 | 3GB GDDR5 | 2GB GDDR5 | 2GB GDDR5 |
| Memory Clock | 1,500mhz |
1,250mhz | 1,200mhz | 1,200mhz |
| Memory Data Rate | 6 GBps | 5.0 Gbps | 4.8 Gbps | 4.8 Gbps |
| Memory Bandwidth | 288 GB/s | 240 GB/s | 153.6 GB/s | 153.6 GB/s |
Sapphire have enhanced this card by offering a dual bios, with the secondary core overclock boost speed set to 950mhz. The remainder of the specifications are the same as the reference card.
