With AMD’s 28nm Southern Islands architecture finally upon us, gamers are finally getting a taste of high performance without the high power consumption associated with previous generations’ flagship offerings. The HD 7970 was first released and for the most part it pulled far ahead of NVIDIA’s GTX 580 and now we’re being introduced to AMD’s more affordable Tahiti-based card: the HD 7950. The HD 7950 retains most of the HD 7970’s heart and soul while being offered at a more reasonable $449 for the reference version courtesy of a cut down core and lower clock speeds. Naturally, board partners have been quick to differentiate themselves from the competition and XFX is among the first to take an aggressive stance towards cooling and overclocking the HD 7950. Their HD 7950 Black Edition Double Dissipation may be a mouthful to say but it currently ranks among the most appealing cards currently on the market.