As with all of our GPU cards, we like to push things to the maximum and to do this we use the latest version of MSI's great Afterburner utility.
The HD7950 is weighs in at a moderate 800MHz on the core and the 1125MHz (4500MHz effective) on the memory which is nothing to be scoffed at. Regardless, I set out overclocking which was surprisingly easy...
With no voltage adjustment available, the core and memory sliders could easily be maxxed out reaching 900MHz on the core and 1250 (5000Mhz effective) on the memory. At this speed the diminuitive HD7750 was rock solid stable which begs the question - why isn't it clocked to this speed as standard?
Power Consumption
To test for power consumption we do not use anything to technical, just a wall meter which measures the total system power draw minus the monitor.
AMD claim an average power draw of 50W and while our results have shown this to be a conservative measurement, it is still the least power hungry of cards on test under load conditions consuming (full system) just 221W.
Temperature
To test temperatures we measured idle temperatures after booting windows, letting all applications finish loading and ran a few benchmarks. Once the benchmarks were complete we left the card to reach a cooling plateau where we then took the idle temperatures. For the load tests, we ran Furmark for 20 minutes, taking the absolute maximum temperature attained.
The card performed surprisingly well given the small heatsink. Topping out at 70c was a great result for the baby of the HD7700 range. Idle temperatures were also good under both stock and overclocked conditions and while 81c was beginning to reach uncomfortable levels, it was still well within the realm of safe operating conditions. I was also shocked at how quiet the card was. I barely noticed it above the enclosure fans with the GPU only raising a whine when placed under the most extreme stress of Furmark.
Let's move on to our suite of benchmarks...
The HD7950 is weighs in at a moderate 800MHz on the core and the 1125MHz (4500MHz effective) on the memory which is nothing to be scoffed at. Regardless, I set out overclocking which was surprisingly easy...
With no voltage adjustment available, the core and memory sliders could easily be maxxed out reaching 900MHz on the core and 1250 (5000Mhz effective) on the memory. At this speed the diminuitive HD7750 was rock solid stable which begs the question - why isn't it clocked to this speed as standard?
Power Consumption
To test for power consumption we do not use anything to technical, just a wall meter which measures the total system power draw minus the monitor.
AMD claim an average power draw of 50W and while our results have shown this to be a conservative measurement, it is still the least power hungry of cards on test under load conditions consuming (full system) just 221W.
Temperature
To test temperatures we measured idle temperatures after booting windows, letting all applications finish loading and ran a few benchmarks. Once the benchmarks were complete we left the card to reach a cooling plateau where we then took the idle temperatures. For the load tests, we ran Furmark for 20 minutes, taking the absolute maximum temperature attained.
The card performed surprisingly well given the small heatsink. Topping out at 70c was a great result for the baby of the HD7700 range. Idle temperatures were also good under both stock and overclocked conditions and while 81c was beginning to reach uncomfortable levels, it was still well within the realm of safe operating conditions. I was also shocked at how quiet the card was. I barely noticed it above the enclosure fans with the GPU only raising a whine when placed under the most extreme stress of Furmark.
Let's move on to our suite of benchmarks...
