June 2nd, 2012
Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition Detailed and Tested
It’s been a while since we heard anything about Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, but thanks to Korean website we have a first look at this new model of Radeon HD 7000 Series. New variant is featuring a core clock of 1075 MHz. First benchmarks suggest that it’s 7% faster than 925MHz model, but it’s quite noisy and power hungry.
This article is based on a review by Cooln.kr, which you can read here.
Card is featuring increased clocks on both core and memory. GPU is now clocked at 1075 MHz (16% more) and memory is set to 1500 MHz (9% more). Since clocks are connected to computing power, card is now faster in pixel and texture fillrate, also memory bandwidth is now higher by 24 GB/s. Since the core is the same as on default model rest of the specs are not changed. According to the source, there is absolutely no change to the design and PCB of the Radeon HD 7970.
Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition Pictures
| GPU Comparison | AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition | AMD Radeon HD 7970 | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core Clock: | 1075 MHz | 925 MHz | 1006/1059 MHz |
| Memory Clock: | 1500 MHz | 1375 MHz | 1502 MHz |
| Effective Memory Clock: | 6000 MHz | 5500 MHz | 6008 MHz |
| Stream Processors: | 2048 | 2048 | 1536 |
| Texture Units: | 128 | 128 | 128 |
| Raster Operating Units: | 32 | 32 | 32 |
| Memory Interface: | 384-bit | 384-bit | 256-bit |
| Memory Size: | 3096 MB | 3096 MB | 2048 MB |
| Pixel Fillrate: | 34.4 GP/s | 29.6 GP/s | 32.2 GP/s |
| Texture Fillrate: | 137.6 GT/s | 118. GT/s | 128.8 GT/s |
| Memory Bandwidth: | 288 GB/s | 264 GB/s | 192.3 GB/s |
| TDP: | 250 W (measured ~310W) | 250 W | 195 W |
Although photos indicate that this is an engineering sample NOT to be tested, it was put through various benchmarks anyway, with the following testing rig:
- Intel Core i5 3770K @ 4.5GHz
- GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD3H
- 8GB DDR3 RAM @ 2133 MHz
Here is how this new variant competes with a standard version of HD 7970 and GeForce GTX 680.
According to this data, new version is faster by 7% than earlier model. The HD 7970 GHz Edition offers a performance of GeForce GTX 680. When we look at other benchmarks then you will notice that GHz Edition offers just the performance of standard version with the same clocks. What is interesting though, is the fact that putting a standard version through 3DMark11 benchmark with a clocks of GHz Edition give better results than GHz Edition itself. It’s hard to understand the cause, but it looks like some dynamic clocks issue, which are oscillating during the test, rather than being more stable (driver issue).
New GHz Edition offers slightly lower power consumption than comparable stock model (~10 Watts less), but it’s still higher than NVIDIA’s GTX 680 TDP. Card is also hotter by 1 degree C in comparison to old 7970 model. Therefore, reviewers do not recommend buying this card. It’s quite easy to predict that it will be more expensive, while offering nothing in return. Since it offers performance of GTX 680 but more noise and power consumption it has to be cheaper than NVIDIA’s card, otherwise, there’s no need to bother about it. But as mentioned earlier, this is only an engineering sample, so those benchmarks may not indicate actual performance.
Cooln.kr did not reveal when will this model be released, but it looks like we may expect it at Computex, or in late June.
Benchmarks
Overclocking
