AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB DDR5 - AMD Strikes Back
Six months ago, AMD released the Radeon HD 7970 GPU. Since then, it has been facing stiff competition from NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680. In an effort to stay competitive, AMD has just released the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, which offers increased core clock speeds up to 1050MHz. But is it enough for AMD to regain an edge?
AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB DDR5 - AMD Strikes Back
Six months ago, AMD released the Radeon HD 7970 GPU. Since then, it's been facing stiff competition from NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680. In an effort to stay competitive, AMD has just released a new and improved successor to the HD 7970: the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, which offers an increase in core clock speed from 925MHz to 1050MHz, with memory bumped up from 5500MHz DDR to 6000MHz DDR. But is it enough for AMD to regain an edge?
To put things in perspective, these specs give the GHz Edition one of the highest default clock speeds available today. Higher than all factory-overclocked HD 7970 cards currently available, and also higher than NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680 which carries a clock speed of 1006MHz.
While AMD's add-in partners already offer Radeon HD 7970 cards that have been overclocked to 1GHz, many of these cards are using a custom PCB, rather than following AMD’s reference specification, and all of them utilize their own custom cooling system. Additionally, despite previous rumors of improved silicon yields, AMD has confirmed to us that the GHz Edition uses the same base model and silicon as the original Radeon HD 7970. So will the HD 7970's single-fan cooler be able to handle the higher thermals of the overclocked GHz edition?
The Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition is physically identical to the original HD 7970.
Test Setup
As usual, the following are the specs of our trusty graphics card test bed system:
- Intel Core i7-975 (3.33GHz)
- Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P motherboard
- 3 x 1GB DDR3-1333 G.Skill memory in triple channel mode
- Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive
- Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
The list of benchmarks used:
- Futuremark 3DMark 11
- Unigine v2.1 "Heaven"
- Far Cry 2
- Battlefield: Bad Company 2
- Crysis Warhead
- Crysis 2
- Batman: Arkham City
- Dirt 3
The list of cards tested, with a comparison of core and memory clock speeds:
Card | Core Clock Speed | Memory Clock Speed | Driver Version |
AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB GDDR5 | 1050MHz | 6000MHz DDR | AMD Catalyst 12.7 Beta |
AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB GDDR5 | 925MHz | 5500MHz DDR | AMD Catalyst 12.2 Beta |
ASUS Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU 2 TOP 3GB GDDR5 | 1000MHz | 5600MHz DDR | AMD Catalyst 12.3 |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2GB GDDR5 | 1006MHz | 6008MHz DDR | ForceWare 300.99 |
MSI GeForce GTX 680 Twin Frozr 2GB GDDR5 | 1059MHz | 6008MHz DDR | ForceWare 301.10 |
Benchmark Results
The Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition showed on average a 10-15% improvement on the first generation HD 7970, which brought it much closer in line with the performance of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680. As we've noticed with past 7970 cards, they perform best at more taxing benchmarks and at higher resolutions, and this proved true again, with the GHz Edition posting the best score on both Crysis Warhead and Crysis 2.
Performance was roughly in line with ASUS's DirectCU II TOP 7970, which has similar clock speeds, with the GHz Edition performing slightly better due to newer drivers.
However, with the increase in performance, we also saw a big jump in temperature readings. Its single fan cooling system wasn't up to the task, with the GHz Edition by far the hottest card, running at 82 degrees celcius at its hottest with the auto fan control turned on - that's a full 10 degrees hotter than the previous HD 7970.
Using manual control, with the fan speed set to 70%, the card was much cooler, running at about 66 degrees Celsius, but it was also unacceptably loud - by far, one of the loudest fans we've heard on a GPU in recent memory. On a side note, the auto-fan control never revved fan speeds up to this level, despite the rising temperatures.
Power consumption also climbed to alarming levels, with the total system power consumption at load increasing a staggering 40% compared to the previous HD 7970.
Conclusion
The AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition proves that the card has what it takes to compete with NVIDIA, but at US$499, $20 more than the existing HD 7970, it's hard to justify spending the extra money for an overclock that will take you five minutes to do by yourself. We would have liked to see AMD do more than just overclock the core and memory clock speeds as the card's single fan cooling system just isn't sufficient to keep the temperatures down and revving the fan speed up results in a very noisy setup.
Current Radeon HD 7970 owners, there's no need to trade-in or sell it for an upgrade to the GHz edition as you can, of course, just overclock your own unit to reach the same speeds.
For those with older cards thinking about whether to upgrade to the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, if you're not planning on doing any overclocking, the GHz edition is one of the most powerful cards out there (just ensure that you have a good cooling setup in your build), however, if you do intend to do some tweaking yourself, you might be better off with a custom cooler endowed card from one of AMD's add-on partners instead like a couple we've tested here.
It's a very powerful card, but it's nothing new. AMD could have done better.
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