Introduction
AMD's Radeon HD 7950 was launched just a few weeks ago and received generally favourable reviews. The Radeon HD 7950 qualifies as being a high-end graphics card due to its pricing, which is comparative to NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580 with its current market pricing. AMD is aiming at higher energy efficiency compared to its market rival product, and a scope for aggressive cost-cutting, if competition from future NVIDIA product so dictate. In essence, HD 7950 will serve as a fulcrum for both today's high-end price-point, and tomorrow's gamer sweet-spot, again, depending on its competitive environment. This is what makes it an important model for AMD.
Today we have the first review of the MSI Radeon HD 7950 Twin Frozr III.
MSI's new card is based on a customized design of the AMD Radeon HD 7950. MSI has slapped their TwinFrozr III cooler on the card - a thermal design that we have seen before on other cards based on both NVIDIA and ATI.
In addition to a new cooling solution, MSI also changed some minor aspects of the PCB and increased the clock speed of the HD 7950 TwinFrozr III to 880 MHz GPU. Memory remains unchanged at the AMD default of 1250 MHz.
MSI HD 7950 TwinFrozr III Market Segment Analysis | Radeon HD 6950 | GeForce GTX 570 | Radeon HD 6970 | GeForce GTX 580 | Radeon HD 7950 | MSI HD 7950 Twin Frozr III | Radeon HD 7970 | Radeon HD 6990 | GeForce GTX 590 |
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Shader Units | 1408 | 480 | 1536 | 512 | 1792 | 1792 | 2048 | 2x 1536 | 2x 512 |
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ROPs | 32 | 40 | 32 | 48 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 2x 32 | 2x 48 |
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Graphics Processor | Cayman | GF110 | Cayman | GF110 | Tahiti | Tahiti | Tahiti | 2x Cayman | 2x GF110 |
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Transistors | 2640M | 3000M | 2640M | 3000M | 4310M | 4310M | 4310M | 2x 2640M | 2x 3000M |
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Memory Size | 2048 MB | 1280 MB | 2048 MB | 1536 MB | 3072 MB | 3072 MB | 3072 MB | 2x 2048 MB | 2x 1536 MB |
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Memory Bus Width | 256 bit | 320 bit | 256 bit | 384 bit | 384 bit | 384 bit | 384 bit | 2x 256 bit | 2x 384 bit |
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Core Clock | 800 MHz | 732 MHz | 880 MHz | 772 MHz | 800 MHz | 880 MHz | 925 MHz | 830 MHz | 607 MHz |
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Memory Clock | 1250 MHz | 950 MHz | 1375 MHz | 1002 MHz | 1250 MHz | 1250 MHz | 1375 MHz | 1250 MHz | 855 MHz |
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Price | $250 | $330 | $340 | $500 | $470 | $480 | $550 | $700 | $750 |
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