Pros: Blazing fast card
Cons: The usual AMD driver issues
I'm going to make this short and to the point. I wasn't even going to write a review but I wanted to restore some balance from omg-jumping-up-and-down-with-excitement reviews to something that's a bit more leveled and rational 
The 7950 Boost is a revised edition of the existing 7950. It features 1792 Shader units, 112 Texture units and is clocked at 925MHz (Core Clock) compared to 850 of the original 7950.
This model, the 11196-16-20G Sapphire, has 2x6pin connectors not the 1x6pin & 1x8pin. Thus it may lack the overclocking potential of the ones printed on the 7970 PCB, but 1100 is pretty much guaranteed. Voltage is locked at 1.25v.
This card can play pretty much every current game maxed out. Has the occasional driver issue from time to time but I think we all know this at this point and more or less expect this from AMD. These issues can vary from user to user and some people may not experience any issues at all. In my case this meant getting artifacts in Unigine Heaven and a few DirectX errors resulting in the game crashing in Hitman Absolution. I also notice a line of tearing when watching movies on my TV (HDMI) in the lower third of the screen, but not on my monitor (DP). Issues continue after updating from 13.1 to 13.2 but imo these are more a minor inconvenience, not a deal breaker.
Fans are very quiet temps typically get to around 60c on stock, up to 75c oc'd (1100) @ 65F ambient.
Check here for hard numbers: Bench Results
This is a great card and I am very happy with it. For anyone looking for a good price/ performance ratio this is a great card and even better if you get it with an AMD game bundle. But even at full price (319USD at the time of review) and without games this card hits the sweet spot for price/ performance
The 7950 Boost is a revised edition of the existing 7950. It features 1792 Shader units, 112 Texture units and is clocked at 925MHz (Core Clock) compared to 850 of the original 7950.
This model, the 11196-16-20G Sapphire, has 2x6pin connectors not the 1x6pin & 1x8pin. Thus it may lack the overclocking potential of the ones printed on the 7970 PCB, but 1100 is pretty much guaranteed. Voltage is locked at 1.25v.
This card can play pretty much every current game maxed out. Has the occasional driver issue from time to time but I think we all know this at this point and more or less expect this from AMD. These issues can vary from user to user and some people may not experience any issues at all. In my case this meant getting artifacts in Unigine Heaven and a few DirectX errors resulting in the game crashing in Hitman Absolution. I also notice a line of tearing when watching movies on my TV (HDMI) in the lower third of the screen, but not on my monitor (DP). Issues continue after updating from 13.1 to 13.2 but imo these are more a minor inconvenience, not a deal breaker.
Fans are very quiet temps typically get to around 60c on stock, up to 75c oc'd (1100) @ 65F ambient.
Check here for hard numbers: Bench Results
This is a great card and I am very happy with it. For anyone looking for a good price/ performance ratio this is a great card and even better if you get it with an AMD game bundle. But even at full price (319USD at the time of review) and without games this card hits the sweet spot for price/ performance
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