The Radeon HD 7950 is becoming a popular choice among gamers as it provides a better price vs. performance ratio when compared to other 7000 series cards. When compared to its bigger brother the Radeon HD 7970 it is just 7% slower on average, yet it also costs a little over 10% less.

Meanwhile the HD 7950 is also 14% faster than the GeForce GTX 580 and 32% faster than the Radeon HD 6970. However Nvidia did recently spoil the value of the Radeon HD 7950 with their much faster yet equally priced GeForce GTX 670.

That said, for now the GTX 670 looks to be suffering from the same availability issues as the GTX 680 and although it features an MSRP of just $400 and provides 15% more performance than the Radeon HD 7950, buying one is near impossible.

On the other hand there are now plenty of Radeon HD 7950 graphics cards to choose from and very few are based on the AMD reference design. The HIS Radeon HD 7950 IceQ Turbo is the perfect example of a unique 7950 graphics card, so let’s take a closer look...

The HD 7950 GPU is fabricated on a 28nm process, making it possible for AMD to squeeze 4313 million transistors into a 352mm2 die.

By default the GPU core runs at 800MHz, 14% lower than the HD 7970, and the GDDR5 memory operates 9% slower at 1250MHz. These are the same core and memory frequencies as the HD 6950. However, HIS’s HD 7950 is overclocked to 900MHz and 1250MHz. The 13% increase in core clock speed should have a positive impact on performance.

Whereas the HD 6950 utilized a 256-bit bus, the HD 7950's is 384-bit, boosting the available memory bandwidth from 160GB/s to a considerably healthier 240GB/s.

As you'd expect, the HD 7950's core configuration is cut down from the HD 7970. The speedier card has 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs, while the HD 7950 packs 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and the same 32 ROPs (13% less SPUs and TAUs).

What makes this HIS iteration unique is its IceQ solution with "Black Hole Impeller". The cooler uses a large 80 x 21.5mm blower fan which is connected to a custom shroud. In front of this fan is a massive heatsink which features four nickel plated copper heatpipes.

Connected to the large copper base of the heatsink is a unique RAM heat spreader, which is designed to cool the GDDR5 modules. HIS claims that this cooler is up to 12 degrees cooler than AMD’s reference version.

To feed the card enough juice, AMD includes dual 6-pin PCI Express power connectors. This is the same setup used on the HD 6950, 5870, 6870 as well as the GTX 580 and 570 graphics cards.

Naturally, the HD 7950 supports Crossfire, so it has a pair of connectors to bridge two or more cards. The only other ports are on the I/O panel where you'll find a dual DL-DVI connector, a single HDMI 1.4a port, and two mini-DisplayPort 1.2 sockets.

All HD 7950s support a max resolution of 2560x1600 on up to three monitors. With a multi-stream hub, using the mini-DisplayPort 1.2 sockets, the card can power up to six screens.

Hardware - Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition (3.30GHz) - x4 4GB G.Skill DDR3-1600(CAS 8-8-8-20) - Crucial m4 512GB (SATA 6Gb/s) - AMD Radeon HD 7970 (3072MB) - HIS Radeon HD 7950 (3072MB) - Gigabyte Radeon HD 7950 (3072MB) - Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 (2048MB) - AMD Radeon HD 7870 (2048MB) - AMD Radeon HD 7850 (2048MB) - Gigabyte Radeon HD 6990 (4096MB) - Gigabyte Radeon HD 6970 (2048MB) - VisionTek Radeon HD 6950 (2048MB) - Asus Radeon HD 6870 (1024MB) - HIS Radeon HD 5870 (1024MB) - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 590 (3072MB) - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 (1536MB) - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 570 (1280MB) - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 Ti (1024MB) - Gigabyte G1.Assassin2 (Intel X79) - OCZ ZX Series (1250w) Software - Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit - Nvidia Forceware 301.34 - AMD Catalyst 12.4

The HIS 7950 IceQ Turbo was 12% faster than a standard Radeon HD 7950 graphics card in the 3Dmark 11 extreme benchmark with a score of 2560. This meant that the HIS 7950 IceQ Turbo was just 6% slower than the Radeon HD 7970.

When testing at 2560x1600 with Aliens vs. Predator we found that the HIS 7950 IceQ Turbo was on average just 1fps faster than a standard 7950 graphics card. This 3% performance increase isn’t exactly anything to write home about and we are hoping to see larger gains in other games.

Battlefield 3 provided us with an impressive 11% performance gain at 2560x1600 when comparing the HIS 7950 IceQ Turbo to a standard 7950 graphics card. With an average of 40fps the HIS 7950 IceQ Turbo was just 5% slower than the Radeon HD 7970 and GeForce GTX 670 graphics cards.

When testing with Crysis 2 at 2560x1600 we saw an impressive 15% performance increase when comparing the HIS 7950 IceQ Turbo to a standard 7950 graphics card. Rendering 30fps on average meant that the HIS 7950 IceQ Turbo was also 7% faster than the GeForce GTX 670 and just 6% slower than the Radeon HD 7970 and GTX 680 graphics cards.

The HIS 7950 IceQ Turbo provided a 22% performance increase at 2560x1600 when testing with Dragon Age II. This meant that it matched the GeForce GTX 580, while it was still 11% slower than the GTX 670.

The HIS 7950 IceQ Turbo was just 5% faster than a standard 7950 graphics card at 2560x1600 with an average of 58fps. However the overclocked HIS 7950 IceQ Turbo was able to match the performance of the GeForce GTX 670 in this game.

When testing with Dirt 3 we found that the HIS 7950 IceQ Turbo was 12% faster than a standard 7950 graphics card, which is an impressive improvement. However despite the performance boost the HIS 7950 IceQ Turbo was still 22% slower than the GeForce GTX 670 in this title.

The HIS 7950 IceQ Turbo averaged 43fps in Metro 2033, making it 8% faster than a standard 7950 graphics card as well as the GeForce GTX 670.

Finally when testing with The Witcher 2 we found that the HIS 7950 IceQ Turbo averaged 47fps, making it 7% faster than a standard 7950 graphics card. Meanwhile it was also able to beat the GeForce GTX 670 by a narrow margin, delivering 2% more performance.

In Battlefield 3 our custom overclock for the HIS 7950 IceQ Turbo took the average frame rate to 68fps, which was enough to overtake the GeForce GTX 670.

When testing with Metro 2033 we found that our custom overclocked HIS 7950 IceQ Turbo was able to average 79fps, making it 10% faster than the factory overclocked configuration and 16% faster than the standard 7950.

The last game we tested our overclock with was Crysis 2 and here we saw a 10% increase in frame rate, going from the 41fps of the factory overclock to 45fps.

Despite providing a respectable performance boost over AMD's reference design, HIS's 7950 IceQ Turbo only consumed a hair more power, which, incidentally, is a fraction more than the old HD 5870. Impressively, the HIS 7950 IceQ Turbo also used less power than the GTX 560 Ti.

HIS claims that the 7950 IceQ Turbo operates 12 degrees cooler than a 7950 graphics card using the AMD reference cooler. Unfortunately we have only tested the Gigabyte WindForce 3 version of the 7950, so we do not have a reference card for comparison. Nevertheless we felt a load temperature of just 63 degrees was impressive enough.

Those willing to dabble with a little extra overclocking should be able to get HD 7970-like speed out of any HD 7950, but HIS's model made the task easier by coming partly overclocked. Its IceQ cooler also helped to keep the card's temperatures in check while making nary a peep.

The HIS 7950 IceQ Turbo also averaged 32% faster than AMD's previous-gen flagship and it bested Nvidia's GTX 580 by 14%, when testing games at 2560x1600. Make no mistake: the HD 7950 is dang fast. But is it worth $400?

Having launched the Radeon HD 7950 with an MSRP of $450, it wasn’t long after Nvidia unleashed their GeForce GTX 680 that AMD re-evaluated their pricing and dropped the 7950 to $400. At this price the Radeon HD 7950 and GeForce GTX 670 now do battle, and it’s a battle Nvidia are winning.

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Should you have the choice of the GeForce GTX 670 or Radeon HD 7950 the obvious choice should be the GTX 670, for the same money you get a more efficient graphics card. However for now poor availability of the GTX 670 has narrowed the choice down to the 7950, and the HIS model that we reviewed today is abundantly available.

While the GeForce GTX 670 is a better choice, truth be told you are not going to go wrong with the HIS 7950 IceQ Turbo. It is on average just 7% slower than the GeForce GTX 670 and yet despite that will provide playable performance in the latest games at resolutions as extreme as 2560x1600. Once again HIS has delivered a stellar graphics card and we would be proud to own a 7950 IceQ Turbo.