PowerColor PCS+ HD7950 Review

👤by Richard Weatherstone Comments 📅31-01-12
Closer Look

Heatsink Assembly

The heatsink has 3 large heatpipes that stretch out from the core at both sides across the aluminium fins to maximise heat spread. We have seen with previous graphics card reviews that this method proves to be a very effective method of heat dissipation which will hopefully be the case with this card.


Core Baseplate

Rather than using direct contact to the core, the heatpipes are soldered to the copper baseplate which then make contact via the core. The thermal interface material used is very good and well applied so should not need replacing as it gives very good contact to the exposed Tahiti Pro core.


Naked HD7950

With the cooler removed we see that the PowerColor PCG is not a reference affair. The same configuration is used regarding the 3GB of GDDR5 memory framing the core however what makes this card a little different is the VRM area.


Voltage Regulation Module

The PowerColor PCS+ HD7950 uses a 6+2+1 power phase design which will hopefully enhance overclock-ability ensuring the ultimate in stable power delivery and filtering. The VRM utilises a digital PWM which also makes the PowerColor card efficient and the Ferrite core chokes should also make for a quiet (read none-squeal) GPU.


CHiL

The CHiL regulator ensures that this card can be overclocked to the absolute maximum as both the clockspeed frequencies and voltages can be adjusted (via MSI Afterburner).


3072MB GDDR5

As with the stock HD7950, the PowerColor PCS+ features 3GB of HYNIX memory with the product code of H5GQ2H24MFA T2C which is rated at 5GHz - we will see just how far we can push this memory but from past experience, 5.5 should be achievable without to much trouble.

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