As we all know last Tuesday was the official release date for AMDs 7950 graphics cards. We’ve already taken a look at one of the offerings from XFX, but now its Sapphires turn to take centre stage and show us what they can do to spice up the reference design to their tastes.

The 7950 that Sapphire have sent us to tinker with is their Radeon HD 7950 Overclocked Edition. Fresh out of the Sapphire factories, we see this card launched with a 100Mhz overclock on the GPU core, giving it the right to display the OC label, but more crucially we see a remake of a heatpipe cooler design rather than a vapour chamber arrangement that is appearing more and more from other manufacturers.

With the 7950 OC coming to us at a slightly closer reference level when comparing to the XFX Black Edition Overclocked that we looked the other day, naturally we expect it to perform in a similar manner and being very close to reference point, which we can get a feel for what a more stock like card can do in rivalry to its bigger brother; the 7970.

Overclocking and processing performance aside, the basis behind this card is to do with the cooler and how it performs under load and more so when the end user takes it and overclocks it themselves to the next level. Its how it will perform then that matters. And that is what we are hoping to see as we go through our testing.

With the release of the 7970 now passed and the cards making their way out into the big wide world, now is time for AMDs partners to release the slightly toned down version of their jaw dropping card. When we took a look at the 7970 reference card, we was astounded by the power that had been laid in front of us in the form of a single GPU format. The card took all of our test methodology in its stride and barely showed strain at any point – and this was purely a reference card before any of the partners were able to get their labs on the case and tweek them to their own recipes.

The 7950 is built around the same ‘Tahiti’ core as the 7970 but mainly its clocks speeds will be lower at stock. With the 7950 now though the workshops of AMDs partners, now we can really get a feel of what this card can do. XFX have made the push and have made it first to the eTeknix test bench, but with no standard card by far. What we have here to play with is their 7950 Black Edition Overclocked 3Gb card.

The 7950 as one would guess is at the more eco and budget friendly end of the spectrum in comparison to the 7970 and the 7990 when it comes to launch, so is there a huge compromise to be made by saving money or is it still going to thrash the pants off the 6950 and even dare I say it the GTX 580 as well? Well rumour has it that with the right tweeks, the 7950 will easily overclock to and perform at 7970 levels. So would this card be a timely investment or should we still look at the 7970 for its pure processing power?

With AMD releasing the Radeon HD 7950 today, we all knew that things would go a bit differently from when the 7970 launched back in December. The 7970 saw a reference launch with partners bringing out refreshed cards later down the line. The 7950 however was destined to see specialist models being released at launch including custom coolers and overclocked editions.

Today we take a look at the XFX Radeon HD 7950 Black Edition Overclocked 3GB graphics card which offers up a double dissipation cooler which XFX are famous for, as well as being overclocked past its stock speeds and being included in the Black Edition range of products.

Black Edition allows the components to be of the very best quality including a hand-picked custom GPU that is known to surpass certain limits in terms of overclocking.

Whilst this video review offers more of an aesethicc look at the card, we have all of the benchmarks in our full written review which offers a more technical look at things, and in a bit more detail. The video review gives a further look into the styling and design behind the card with our personal opinion on the card from a first glance.

Click here to view the embedded video.

With the 7000 series due to launch soon, and due to us having our hands tied, we can only say soon, meaning sometime in the next 365 days, but it could be sooner rather than later. With this new released eventually coming, we still find that the 6000 series is remaining steady and still going strong with the main contenders really being the Radeon 6850 and 6950 and of course not forgetting the 6970 flagship single GPU card.

With these cards being out a while now, a lot of manufacturers have been giving them a bit of a refresh by adding in extra features and added functionality. We saw this with the Sapphire 6970 FleX BF3 edition card that we looked at recently, which included a variety of technologies directly from Sapphire themselves. One of these technologies involved their fantastic cooling solution, which utilised a vapor chamber design known as the patented Vapor-X technology that has over time made Sapphire famous.

Today we find ourselves with another similar card that’s had the Vapor-X treatment, as well as a nice overclock. We introduce you to the Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Vapor-X OC graphics card, which gives a slightly faster clock and memory speed and improved cooling to handle the overclock in a quiet and effecient manner as we’d expect from a market leader such as Sapphire.

With that all taken care of, let’s get straight into the packaging to see what’s on offer, as Sapphire usually take care of you when it comes to the bundled accessories, so let’s see if the 6850 Vapor-X OC sticks with that philosophy.

Dubbed one of the most highly anticipated games of the year, Battlefield 3 saw pre-orders galore and when it finally arrived, a lot of consumers were sadly let down by their systems, with the intense game needing a lot more juice than first expected.

This gave graphics card manufacturers the chance to revamp a card, add new features or even just bundle in the game for good measure.

The Radeon 6950 is classed as one of the best bang for buck cards on the market, giving a good balance of performance while keeping a few pennies in the bank at the same time. Due to this, it instantly became a hit with consumers and they flocked out to buy them in abundance.

Today we have a Radeon HD 6950 from our good friends at Club3D. It may look standard, but it is basically identical to their patented CoolStream card, but comes with Battlefield 3 included. CoolStream is the cooling technology behind Club3D’s graphics cards, and as we’ve seen in other reviews of their cards, it really is a great cooling solution, so we’re eager to see how this card performs.

2011 has been a big year for gaming with the releases of Batman: Arkham City, Battlefield 3, Modern Warfare 3 and Skyrim to name but a few and getting good quality graphics comes with a price and you can always go one better in the hope of getting the best possible graphics.

AMD and their partners believe in getting the best possible gaming experience through use of Eyefinity, but this can also come at a cost when you start to break it down. You’ll first and foremost, need a card that is capable, three or more monitors and the technology behind it all.

Many cards on the market have two DVI ports, a HDMI and two DisplayPort connectors, which depending on your configuration, could lead to you purchasing some expensive monitors, or some DisplayPort hubs which are quite pricey in their own right. The other option involves purchasing active dongles, but at around £50 a pop, this can also work out costly.

Sapphire started to address this problem by introducing their FleX range of cards, which do the job aboard the card so you don’t have to shell out extra cash. FleX allows you to run three monitors running on DVI independently, without the need for any high priced extras or dongles.

Sapphire have now decided to bring their FleX technology to the Radeon HD 6450 to offer consumers a low cost Eyefinity solution for users on a budget. Whilst it’s not the fastest card on the market, it will allow you to immerse yourself into the game further, so let’s take a look to see what it’s all about.