Powercolor AMD Radeon HD7950 850MHZ 3GB 1250MHZ GDDR5 DVI HDMI Mini-DP PCI-E DX11 Video Card

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Switched from Nvidia to this...took me a few months to make up my mind and wait for the right price.I picked this up for a really good price, I almost think it was a glitch in the system so I'll refrain from saying what I got it for.Don't make the same mistake I did, thinking, I could leave my Nvidia drivers installed to test this card in case there are any issues with it.I had choppy graphics and eventually when trying to edit registry I ended up having to do a clean install.After the clean install, it ran perfectly...good graphics, the cooler is quiet...I don't hear it until 70% fan speed and I haven't had to have it set that high even in games.I manually adjust the fan profile to keep the card cooler and I'm getting temps around 50celcius at 50% fan speed.I plan to OC it but not just yet. I have read great things about it's OC headroom and might even flash the bios to a non boost to get the full headroom out of it. In general it's not bad though, you're looking at 1.069v at 925mhz boost which is really nice.Great card, good value, will buy another for SLI if I can get it as cheap or cheaper than my first.

Comment:
This card is excellent. I was able to overclock to 1000 Mhz Core and Memory yo 1575 Mhz ( Memory is quad data rate hence you get an effective 6300 Gbps effective.) I also gave the power control setting the extra 20% (you increase the board TDP 160(W) x 1.20(MP) towards 200 Watt, this gives you more overclocking headroom) See http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/radeon_hd_7950_overclock_guide,2.html for a good OC guide.I didn't bother with the MSI Afterburn yet, but from what I see it's pretty easy to do and can add almost 10+ FPS to a game like Battlefield 3 on ultra settings. BF3 is one game I play a lot with this card and I constantly see 80-100 FPS and never below 70FPS. Everything on ultra (no motion blur as I hate it.)Card did feel a little "Plasticy" but seams to hold up well. Price/Performance is great Plus I got 3 free games. *** AND you should know that you can hang on to that offer as AMD says right on the never Settle reload website (read the small text)they may be adding more games and the key is valid until the end of the year. So if you don't see anything you like wait them out... rumor mill is saying BF4...Rome 2... to name a few... Look it up on google :)The card is quite long at 11"My only real complaint is that the DVI-DL is the only video port that supports VGA to DVI. Unfortunately for me I have an older VGA flat screen I use for a second monitor that has to run on this port. My main monitor is a Samsung 3D and can run at 120Htz, but since it has to run on the DVI-SL or an HDMI it wont go over 60 Htz. I have yet to find a solution to this problem. (Not sure if there is one. I know the DVI-SL only supports 60 Hrz)Other then this small technical problem this card is awesome.

Comment:
Excellent card that plays nearly all titles on max details and settings without breaking a sweat. Does require some tweaking for optimized cooling performance as stock voltage is a bit high. Would recommend using MSI Afterburner to undervolt and/or overclock.

Comment:
I cant believe this card doesnt have more reviews. I am very impressed with this card to date and am considering getting another. Model ax7950 3gbd5-2dhv5e.The cards cooler works very well, keeps core at 65c even overclocked to 1150/1675mhz with stock fan profile normally maxing about 55% fan. Fan is fairly quiet and I cant really notice it until 70%. Ram goes so high because the actual ram modules are spec'd 6ghz chips just like on the 7970 models. Probably the best part is the price for all this performance. Unlocked voltage although it is a boost model so you are at 1.25v(which seems to be plenty) unless you can find a non-boost bios to flash.The only cons being the fact that there is no vrm heat sink, although you can monitor temps in gpu-z and they havent gone over 80c which is pretty good. The fans do blow through the heat sink onto the vrms anyway.Card feels cheap in your hands and has a little flex. Some support under the fan assembly would go a long way to fixing this.Will recommend to friends.