Introduction

AMD Radeon HD 7950 Crossfire (2/3-way) review

The Radeon HD 7950 was launched this week and received a quite positive vibe in the market. Though my bet is that everybody had hoped for something a little cheaper, the 7900 series are products with a lot of horsepower and also with a lot of reserve.

The graphics engine on the Tahiti GPU was overhauled with the result that in more stringent condition it just performs better. Such conditions would be GPU limited games, and gaming in the massive resolutions with multiple monitor configurations, hence that phat 3 GB graphics memory helps out.

The R7950 might be a sweet-spot for those that wish to follow the mutli-GPU route. Injected in the 400 EUR / 450 USD price tag bracket the product is cheaper opposed to its bigger brother, and with two 7950 cards you'll haul tooshy in performance.

We actually have three cards in house, a R7950 that comes from AMD, which actually is is based on the 7970 PCB. The second card comes from HIS, with a 'normal' and cheaper to produce PCB, a PCB that is to be considered the reference for the R7950. Our third card is the PowerColor R7950 PCS+ which is close to reference, but customized.

We'll setup these three cards up in multi-GPU mode (two and three-way) clock them standard and test multi-GPU performance -- taking it to the next level -- multi-GPU gaming.

Considering a reference card from AMD arrived just in time, in this review we'll show you a little about the technology and the GPU itself of course. More interestingly, we'll have a look at Crossfire performance. As if you figured just one card would be interesting, you have no idea what's coming at you with two and three cards.

Have a peek at the offering, and then march onward into the review, hihoo Tahiti PRO ... here's a teaser.