The Card

Checking out the video card you can see the new Vapor-X cooler that we saw on the HD 7970 GHz Edition. It's a great looking cooler and really is quite large as it overhangs out the back and over the top. It has proven itself in the past and we'll see if it can do the same on the new HD 7950 Boost.

Taking a quick look around you can see towards the back we've got an 8-pin PCIe power connector and alongside that we've got a 6-pin PCIe power connector. Closer to the front you can see we've got our two CrossFire connectors and next to that we have the new "EZ OC Boost" function.

Looking at the I/O side of things you can see we've got two Dual-Link DVI connectors alongside a HDMI port and a full size DisplayPort connector. You can also see there are some vents to help hot air escape out the back of the case.

Specifications

The original HD 7950 brought with it a default core clock of 800MHz while the 3GB of GDDR5 was clocked at 5000MHz QDR. Out of the box the new HD 7950 carries a clock of 850MHz while the memory remains unchanged. With the new boost function, though, the clock speed can be increased to 925MHz depending on the amount of load that's being placed on the GPU.

With the "EZ OC Boost" button pressed on this Sapphire video card, the core clock is instantly set to a default speed of 950MHz. Unfortunately we don't know where the clock speeds goes when boost comes into play. Based on the reference clock, one would assume it would move up to a maximum of 1025MHz. We've emailed Sapphire and will update the review as soon as we can confirm. As for the 3GB of GDDR5, Sapphire has chosen to leave that alone at 5000MHz QDR.