Gigabyte & MSI HD 7950 Review Comment Thread

[SKYMTL]

With AMD dropping the price of their HD 7900-series, the HD 7950 has come down to a very affordable $399 price point. In this review we take a look at two competing cards from MSI and Gigabyte which incorporate higher clock speeds and custom cooling solutions but neither asks for a huge premium over a reference design.

Read more here: Gigabyte HD 7950 WindForce & MSI HD 7950 Twin Frozr III Review

[Galcobar]

As usual, nice review.

Noticed a couple typos, if I may.
Product Name: HD 7970 Windforce 3X / Twin Frozr III
Page 1 spec panel shows the Twin Frozr at 880 MHz, the paragraph below says a bump of 50 MHz

[Bond007]

Excellent review. Good to see the new pricing go out to non-reference coolers now.

I do like MSI for GPU, but given the lower cost and slightly better acoustics I would go for the Gigabyte.

[Hauk]

First time poster, long time review admirer. Great pics, graphs, and comments, always top notch!

I had my eye on the Gigabyte model since press release but held out till yesterday. Got two of them inbound tomorrow. Other considerations were 7870CF, a single GTX 680, or hold out till big Kepler. As the review states, these cards at $399USD suddenly become relevant.

Question to reviewer, how come you guys don't crack the coolers off for PCB pics? Not critical, but nice to see. I rely on your graphs and analysis, but look elsewhere for PCB pics. Just a thought. Thanks for the superb reviews though

[SKYMTL]

I actually stopped taking off the heatsinks only because some manufacturers have switched to VERY sticky thermal compound. Unfortunately, there is no way to know and about a year ago I made the mistake of yanking a GPU straight off of its PCB....

[Hauk]

Originally Posted by SKYMTL

I actually stopped taking off the heatsinks only because some manufacturers have switched to VERY sticky thermal compound. Unfortunately, there is no way to know and about a year ago I made the mistake of yanking a GPU straight off of its PCB....

The Asus pink stuff is the worst. I've never pulled one off, but came close probably. I like to insure good contact,which has not been an issue on any I've cracked in a few years now. I'll leave these alone after seeing this review, looks like there's good contact:

http://www.vortez.net/index.php?ct=a...=file&id=14430

http://www.vortez.net/index.php?ct=a...=file&id=14488

Killer reviews from Canucks though, graphs are the best by far.

[SKYMTL]

Thanks for the compliments and welcome to our forums!