whats this 7950 with boost? is it just a factory overclock?
Basically AMD updated the bios following on from the 7970 update. There was an awful lot of headroom for clocking even on stock volts (like 200mhz for most cards above the 810 stock). So AMD updated the bios.
It now runs at 850mhz on stock vs 810 originally but you also get a turbo like nvidia already had. This allows the card to boost to 925.
More info here..
I personally would stick with a standard 7950. In order to guarantee the Turbo they set the Turbo voltage to peak at 1.25v which is a lot of power. I can get 1050mhz on my 7950s at the stock 1.093v so that is a crazy amount for them to decide to shove through. I have my GPUs watercooled so heat and fan noise isn't an issue but it will be unless you get a decent 3rd party cooler.
P.S. I get about 1200Mhz at 1.25v so you can see that they have totally gone over the top on volts. Also you will likely get a lot of capacitor squeal at those volts.
The price difference between the 7950 and 7870 looks pretty small with both sitting around the £200 mark so I'd get a 7950 with a decent aftermarket cooler. Then set the core to around 1000mhz and memory to about 1500mhz on stock volts with MSI AB you are on to a blinder.
I'd get this. A 7970 is definitely not worth another £100 and a 670, although excellent, is little outmatched at that price too.
Arguably the 7870 is an excellent purchase too. You could get
this for £190 which makes for a really tough decision. Both the 7950 and 7870 are very competitively priced and have outstanding performance per pound. A 7850 with a decent 3rd party cooler is too close in price to compete in my opinion.
looking at a new gpu for xmas. its between a tf4 7870 or a xfx 7950. both around the same price. Is there enough of a performance gain between it for me to put up with the louder xfx cooler (from what i've read) or will an overclocked 7870 be enough?
