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AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB DDR5 - AMD Strikes Back

By James Lu - 22 Jun 2012

Benchmark Results

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.

     

     

     

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7.0
  • Performance 7.5
  • Features 7
  • Value 7
The Good
One of the highest default clock speeds around
Great performance
The Bad
No physical improvements on previous Radeon HD 7970
High temperature
High power consumption
Fan is very loud at high speeds
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