Shootouts

AMD Radeon HD 7970 Duel - ASUS vs. Sapphire

By James Lu - 2 May 2012

Test Setup & Specs Comparisons

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 Heaven v2.1
  • Battlefield: Bad Company 2
  • Crysis Warhead
  • Far Cry 2
  • Crysis 2
  • Batman: Arkham City
  • Dirt 3
  • S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

We tested both cards at their out-of-the-box settings; as such, the Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 OC is using its default, factory-shipped, BIOS 1 setting, which gives it a GPU core speed of 950MHz (25MHz higher than reference), and 5700MHz memory (200MHz higher than reference). Naturally, setting it at BIOS 2 setting would enable it to rival the ASUS graphics card, but as you'll see in our results on the following pages, the difference between the two cards are rather miniscule to be concerned about and probably not worthwhile the extra heat output and power consumption.


Test Cards Compared
Model ASUS Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU 2 TOP Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 OC AMD Radeon HD 7970 AMD Radeon HD 7950 AMD Radeon HD 6970 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680
Driver AMD Catalyst 12.3 AMD Catalyst 12.3 AMD Catalyst 12.2 Preview Version AMD Catalyst 12.2 Preview Version AMD Catalyst 11.11 ForceWare 300.99
Core Code  Tahiti XT  Tahiti XT Tahiti XT Tahiti Pro Cayman XT GK104
Transistor Count  4300 million  4300 million 4300 million 4300 million 2640 million 3540 million
Manufacturing Process 28nm 28nm 28nm 28nm 40nm 28nm
Core Clock 1000MHz 950MHz 925MHz 800MHz 880MHz 1006MHz
VRAM 3GB GDDR5 3GB GDDR5 3GB GDDR5 3GB GDDR5 1GB GDDR5 2GB GDDR5
Stream Processors  2048 Stream processing units 2048 Stream processing units 2048 Stream processing units 1792 Stream processing units 512 Stream processing units 1536 Stream processing units
Texture Mapping Units (TMU) or Texture Filtering (TF) units  128 128 128 112 96 128
Raster Operator units (ROP)  32 32 32 32 32 32
Memory Clock  5600MHz GDDR5 5700MHz GDDR5 5500MHz GDDR5 5000MHz GDDR5 5500MHz GDDR5 6008MHz GDDR5
DDR Memory Bus  384-bit 384-bit 384-bit 384-bit 256-bit 256-bit
Memory Bandwidth 268.8GB/s 273.6GB/s 264GB/s 240GB/s 176GB/s 192.3GB/s
PCI Express Interface  PCIe ver 3.0 x16 PCIe ver 3.0 x16 PCIe ver 3.0 x16 PCIe ver 3.0 x16 PCIe ver 2.0 x16 PCIe ver 3.0 x16
Molex Power Connectors  2 x 8-pin 1 x 6-pin, 1 x 8-pin 1 x 6-pin, 1 x 8-pin 2 x 6-pin 1 x 6-pin, 1 x 8-pin 2 x 6-pin
Multi GPU Technology  CrossFireX CrossFireX CrossFireX CrossFireX CrossFireX SLI
DVI Output Support  2 x Single-Link or 1 x Dual-Link (switchable) 1 x Dual-Link 1 x Dual-Link 1 x Dual-Link 2 x Dual-Link 2 x Dual-Link
HDMI 0 1 1 1  1 1
DisplayPort 4
(version 1.2 HBR2)
2
(version 1.2 HBR2)
2
(version 1.2 HBR2)
2
(version 1.2 HBR2)
2
(version 1.2)
2
(version 1.2 HBR2)
HDCP Output Support  Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
SRP (USD$)  US$599 US$470 US$479 (Launch price: US$549)

US$399 (Launch price: US$449)

Launch Price: US$369 US$499
SRP (S$)  S$879 S$822.83 S$849 S$659 - S$829


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