Meet the box!!
The card is considerably longer than HD5850.
Barely fit into my casing. Good thing the power adaptors goes in the top.
I usually buy the lower bin version of the flagship GPU every year. Difference is, for the first time as a hardware enthusiast, i skip 1 whole GPU generation before upgrading. That 3 years mind you, a really long time in the world of computer hardware. Blame it on cross platform games major publishers churn out every year, even now my HD5850 runs most games smoothly with little compromise on quality.
In fact, the main contributing factor to upgrade is price (more on that later) instead of performance.
Performance: 10/10
Instead of going of hard numbers which you can get from major review sites, i would give a vague idea of what to expect from this card in real world situation at 1080p.
First up is crysis 2 with its questionable load of tessellation favoring the green goblins. It churns out a respectable 40+fps with occasional drop to 30+fps.
Next come the battlefield 3, another unoptimized game for the red camp. Its frame rate is pretty much in the range of crysis 2 too.
Lastly, the most demanding RTS every time; Total war Shogun 2. At zoomed out combat with everything on, it runs at 40-50fps. During huge battles and zoomed in, it drops to 30 fps. But again who plays RTS zoomed in anyway?
And thats pretty much the most demanding titles in my library. Its not like you would be interested with the performance of diablo 3 on a high end card right? WIth my vertical sync on, other titles simply run at 60fps constantly.
Simply put, this card is playable with every ridiculous shit you throw at it at 1080p. Until the next gen consoles is released, theres little chance this card needs a replacement anytime soon.
Temperature: 8/10
With summer in full swing and a room without air condition, 7950 is stuck in a closed casing. With working condition as bad foxconn, most high end cards could not handle the heat. Remember 8800gt? That single slot bugger runs at melting hot 90+C in the same condition.
This card idle at a pretty uncomfortable temperature of 48C. Under OCCT it soars to 80C. But under normal gaming condition, the worst i get was 76C after 2 hours of crysis 2. With my recent addiction of diablo 3, this card runs at a mere 70C. All good at the temperature department but theres a price to pay.
I hope you guessed correctly whats the compromise to get such awesome good temp.
Noise: 5/10
This card came with a custom MSI designed heatsink. It had a central blower with a smaller than HD5850 heatsink. All the voltage regulators are laid naked. The heatsink lacks visible heatpipe and i m unsure if it features any vapor chamber. Surprise how this card can get decent temps? Spin the fan like a jet engine that is.
Ok sorry i exaggerated as its way better than the awesome FX5800 years ago. But its way above my reference HD5850 with audible sound of the air being pushed. Major review sites measured the reference HD7950 at 50+db with a less than 5db delta compared to HD5850. But my perception is its more likely at 60+db for this card. The highest recorded fan speed is while running OCCT which is close to 70%. Theres a high chance MSI use a less efficient cooler to keep its BOM down resulting in this uncomfortable amount of noisy being generated.
Bearable but a serious con for an otherwise great card.
Price: 10/10
This card is absolutely dirt cheap after promotion by MSI's local distributor. As a comparison a HD7870 goes for 443SGD while this card during its promotional period only cost 399SGD! 50SGD less for a higher performing card, how cool is that?
Conclusion: 8/10
In general a great card to own if you could find it at low prices. This card was initially released at insane prices due to lack of competition from Nvidia. With Nvidia release of GTX6 series, AMD reluctantly lowered its price a tad lower. As mentioned in my previous review of a laptop, computers have generally reached the fast enough performance level. Till now i have no incentive to upgrade my CPU even after installing HD7950. This card should serve any users well till the next generation consoles and 1440p TVs arrive, whichever comes first.
A brief note on power is that this card runs comfortably with my 650W bronze label PSU. With a HD5870 level of power consumption while generating twice its performance is worth praising.
Regrettably, the card stellar performance is marred by lackluster cooling by MSI. This card however cater very well to users with a tight budget while reluctant to purchase a mid range card.
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