Out with the old, in with the new. Let’s welcome the newest kid on the block, the Radeon HD 7970, part of AMD’s spanking new Southern Islands GPU family. This card is the industry’s first with a few things, it uses the first ever high-performance GPU built on the 28 nanometer silicon fabrication process; Radeon HD 7970 is the industry’s first card compliant with Microsoft’s DirectX 11.1 API, which will ship with the next major version of Windows; and is the first card to use the PCI Express 3.0 x16 bus, that doubles system interface bandwidth to 32 Gb/s and is touted by motherboard manufacturers as the next big thing since PCI.

New generations of GPUs naturally bring with them performance increments, some times even 100% that of preceding generations, they also serve as launch-vehicles for new features that quickly go on to become industry standards, and help the technology grow. The Radeon HD 7970 has both of these responsibilities resting on its shoulders: to score performance wins, and pack some killer new features that matter to the end-user.

The AMD Radeon HD 7970 is a unique card from a market-positioning standpoint. After Radeon HD 2900 series, and the completion of ATI’s merger with AMD, the company took up a unique model of product development that ensured it could have competitive products out in the market targeting every segment, while not having to spend much on making large GPUs. Its goal with a new GPU architecture always involved making a killer high-performance (not high-end) GPU, and using it both ways: in dual-GPU cards as high-end products, and by disabling some components/features to carve out cheaper/cost-effective products.

• READ MORE (Source): AMD Radeon HD 7970 Review – Page 1/32 | techPowerUp