New user interface and intuitive Radeon Software Installer that includes options for express install, custom install and clean uninstall. The new installer will also show options for the latest available driver for your system configuration during the install process.
- Apple Mac Pro 3,1 (2008), Mac Pro 4,1 (2009) or Mac Pro 5,1 (2010-2012)- Apple Mac Pro 1,1 (2006) and Mac Pro 2,1 (2007) are also supported after installing Mac OS X 10.9 (Maviericks) or newer- installed Mac OS X 10.8.3 (Mountain Lion) or newer- native support by macOS Mojave/Catalina/Big Sur/Monterey, no drivers needed
Sapphire Hd 7950 Driver For Mac
- compatible with macOS and Windows (via BootCamp)- supports Apple boot screen (gray screen with Apple logo on startup) on DVI and miniDisplayPorts (on 4K displays and miniDisplayPorts boot screen is not available)- uses internal Mac Pro power supply- supports PCI Express 2.0 link under macOS and Windows (on Mac Pro 4,1/5,1)- supports 3 displays simultaneously: 1x dual-link DVI-I, 2x miniDisplayPort 1.2 (HDMI port is inactive), analog displays supported- supports 4K@60Hz on miniDisplayPort ports and 4K@30Hz via DVI- supports OpenGL, OpenCL and Metal in applications and games- supports sound via miniDisplayPorts under macOS (after installing additional driver)- allows an upgrade to macOS Mojave 10.14.6, macOS Catalina 10.15.7, macOS Big Sur 11.7.1 or macOS Monterey 12.0.1 or newer
According to the press release "The HD 7950 Mac Edition is based on AMD's latest Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture. This highly acclaimed architecture delivers a significant graphics performance boost for Mac Pro users in a wide range of applications including gaming, audio or video editing and content creation. For example, gaming frame rates are increased by over 200%, general benchmark performance increased by around 30% and graphics intensive benchmarks increased by as much as 300% compared with the NV 8800GT commonly used in these machines"
"The SAPPHIRE HD 7950 Mac Edition is compatible with Apple Mac Pro models from 2010 and later with an available PCI-Express x16 slot. Two six-pin power cables required are supplied with the card. A driver disk is provided which enables the card to be used with Mac OS X 10.7.5 (Lion), 10.8.2 (Mountain Lion) or later.
The SAPPHIRE HD 7950 Mac Edition can also be used in the latest PC architectures. It has Dual Firmware support via a simple Firmware (Dual BIOS) switch. In one position the Sapphire HD 7950 MAC Edition supports Mac OS X/Windows under non-UEFI compliant mode and in the other it supports Windows with UEFI hybrid firmware enabled. A Windows driver disk is also included.
While these GPUs may share the same family name as the Polaris GPUs, these cards are drastically different, meaning no support in any version of macOS. Similar to Navi and unsupported NVIDIA GPUs, you'll need to disable the Lexa GPU due to how the VESA drivers that unsupported GPUs run off of break sleep and other functions of macOS. Please refer to the Disabling GPUs (opens new window) guide for more info.
The HIS HD 7950 IceQ Turbo is one of the most aggressively overclocked cards in our line-up, with a core running at 900 MHz. What makes the card interesting is its proprietary cooling solution, called Direct Heat Exhaust, or DHE. It purports to be both quiet and effective at moving heat away from the GPU and out of the case.
Radeon HD 7950 Crossfire is a solution of two Radeon HD 7950 put together using AMD'S Crossfire technology. Check the page of Radeon HD 7950 to know more about its chip. Crossfire relies a lot on proper driver support and may suffer from micro-stuttering in lower frame rates (below 30). Benchmarks indicate the performance is overall, is up to 42% better than a single Radeon HD 7950 performing by itself it might be worse (depending on whether or not the 3D game supports crossfire or in the graphics driver) than a single Radeon HD 7950. Expect this combination to draw up to 360 Watt though the average power consumption should be slightly lower. Even the most demanding games will run at the highest settings.
Based on the AMD GCN architecture, the HD 7950 Mac Edition delivers a considerable graphics performance boost for Mac Pro users in a wide range of applications including gaming, audio or video editing, and content creation. Gaming frame rates are increased by over 200%, general benchmark performance by about 30%, and graphics intensive benchmarks by as much as 300% compared with the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT commonly used in these machines.
Compatible with Apple Mac Pro models from 2010 and later with an available PCI-Express x 16 slot, the HD 7950 Mac Edition comes with a driver disk, which enables it to be used with Mac OS X 10.7.5 (Lion), 10.8.2 (Mountain Lion) or later. Incorporating AMD's PowerPlay technology, the video card includes Dual Firmware support via a simple Firmware (Dual BIOS) switch.
The Sapphire HD 7950 Mac Edition also supports Windows with UEFI hybrid firmware enabled, with support for additional features such as hardware acceleration of video decoding, HDMI audio pass through and additional display resolutions.
In fact, accentuating its stronger ties to game developers, AMD has taken to bundling a trio of these games with its Radeon HD 7950 cards. Cramming that sort of gaming goodness into the box with a graphics card certainly changes the value equation.
The curve tells us that the high-latency frames only comprise about five percent of the total frames produced by the 7950. Still, since those long render times are present, the 7950 actually trails the GeForce GTX 660 Ti in our two latency-sensitive metrics.
Well. Even though we have the image quality settings cranked at a resolution of 25601440, neither of these cards struggles in the least with the rendering workload. The result is an almost identical finish in every metric, with the slightest of advantages to the 7950 in the latency-focused numbers.
Both of these cards are reasonably quiet at idle, but the 7950 becomes virtually silent in ZeroCore Power mode, when its fans stop spinning. Then, only the faint whine of our slow-spinning CPU cooler generates any sound above the noise floor of our test environment.
Perhaps did you start joining AMD forums to complain about drivers? After you got over the plague AMD gave you, did you suddenly develop an intense desire to remind everyone how ATI used to make horrible drivers and that ATI thought TruForm was the best thing since the Rage MAXX?
For your 2nd point, to make it fair, GPUs are generally compared on price. If you can buy a GTX670 for $280 USD on Newegg, then a comparison to the GTX670 for a prospective buyer would be perfectly valid. Right now GTX660Ti is priced very similarly to HD7950 boost cards, while you can find HD7970 1Ghz versions for $360-370, which is similar to GTX670s.
I suspect that problem is from a stupid bug with AMD drivers and WDM 2.0. WDM has always been quirky throughout its history with odd bugs that happen under certain games (mostly legacy stuff that depends on Directdraw).
This article showed that the Radeon definitely has issues with Windows 8 (and uses the same testing methods as here, I believe the only other site to do so), and that was with older drivers/games/video cards: [url
You know it could be possible that AMD is just having issues with AC3 code, which is possible considering the conclusions page (if you cared enough to read it). Scott makes it pretty clear that he tried to clean up the AMD results by changing drivers, test systems, and even a different 7950. If you have some evidence showing Nvidia engineering the results, I am sure that Scott would be open to including it.
So: thank you, TR, for changing the way we can compare this stuff. I like to think we see driver improvements like this as a direct result of the work you do, and in that case, no matter which card is faster / better / more bang for buck, everybody wins.
Games like Medal of Honor warfighter are clearly faster on HD 7950 boost. in fact HD 7950 boost is equal to GTX 670. HD 7950 boost is 30% faster than GTX 660 Ti. hardocp shows the HD 7950 boost faster than GTX 670 at 1440p with 4x MSAA. the HD 7950 boost with 4X MSAA matches GTX 660 Ti with 2x MSAA. its not even funny. no amount of factory overclock can make up a 30% performance deficit.
This new TR testing methodology seems to be raising more questions than answers when the results are a complete 180* from every other professional review site that tested HD7950 boost vs. GTX660Ti recently. I am not even sure it reports the smoothness of gameplay properly. When I look at a frames per second spread over the testing period, I can clearly compare two GPUs and compare frame rate dips of one to the other over the testing period.
Scott, I appreciate the work that goes into making a review like this but it still leaves me wanting more. What I would like to see is when you have a card like this 7950 that is performing poorly on the 99th percentile test but well in the FPS test when tested at the edge, how about backing off on some of the options to see where it does well in both tests. What I mean is take any of the games and back off on some of the options (perhaps on the AA or back down on the resolution) and see where the card starts to perform close to the same in both 99th percentile and FPS.
nice work. i would love to see a follow up with the 2 cards overclocked to the max and/or with 7970, 670 and 680. im wondering if the issues amd has is strictly a driver problem or is something else because you always hear people say nvidia has better drivers then amd. also in hitman and borderlands if you did a blind test would you be able to tell the difference between the 2 cards? i read a review of the 7870 on tomshardware and they said the 7870 has blurrier textures then previous cards. i always wonder if either company reduces the IQ on certain cards so they can get better fps and are more competitive. 2ff7e9595c
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