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June 22nd, 2012

Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition Reviews Roundup

Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition Reviews Roundup radeon 7970 ghz
So it’s today, when AMD has officially released their updated version of Radeon HD 7970. Card is priced at $499, which is the old price of few months old original HD 7970. Is it worth spending the same amount of money as for GeForce GTX 680?

Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition brings new features. AMD has copied the idea of Boost Clock from NVIDIA. Benchmarks show that the new version of Tahiti XT brings at least 10% better performance than it’s older brother. Unfortunately, as it turned out, refreshed version of HD 7970 does not offer similar power consumption. Some reviewers even say, it’s better to chose ASUS DirectCUII models (which offer lower TDP and the same performance).

New reviews will be added later.

New specification

Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition Reviews Roundup radeon 7970 ghz

Boost clock
Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition Reviews Roundup radeon 7970 ghz

  • DuffmanJR

    AMD doing Boost? lmfao!!!

  • francmic

    anandtech, hardware heaven, and toms are the ones I’m puttin faith in, lets see how the 7970 holds up.
    Well, it pretty much did as expected. Ima stick with tom’s advice and just see this as an opportunity to drive the original 7970′s price down.

  • BestJinjo

    Agreed. Rumors had this card at 1.1ghz with overclocking easily reaching 1.25ghz and original VID at 1.02V range. This respin is nothing like that. I think it’s better to grab the “old” HD7970 for $410-430 if you can catch it at that price with an aftermarket cooler such as Sapphire Dual-X, etc. For $525, there are plenty of factory preoverclocked 680s that are quieter, and will easily match a 1200mhz 7970 while consuming 100-150W less power!

    I am disappointed in this release. Price should have been $449, with original 7970 falling to $399 to better compete with all the quiet factory preoverclocked 670s. I really don’t understand AMD’s strategy this round. They are pulling a Fermi as seen on AnandTech’s power consumption and noise level charts but GTX480 was 15% faster than HD5870 out of the gate and had another 20% overclocking headroom that 5870 didn’t have…..plus strong tessellation performance, 1.5GB of VRAM, that 5870 also didn’t have. This time AMD is trying to sell a dustbuster, power consuming monster for the same price that needs 1200mhz just to match a stock GTX680 at BF3. I feel like “old” versions of HD7970 such as Sapphire Dual-X for $450 on Newegg are still a much better option than this XT2 $500 reference dust buster card.

  • hamza ashoor

    ok… AMD’s wins the perfomance battles
    but losses everything else to NVIDIA

    when someone wants to but 7970 ghz he needs to buy better power supply+better cooling solution.
    7970 is already overheated + some more heat degrees + more watts = another need to buy more better power supply+better cooling solution,while NVIDIA’s GTX 680 can be overclocked on the reference cooling solution greatly.
    so technicly. 7970 GHZ will cost more than GTX 680 (for just 1-> 2% more performance!!!!!!!)

    7970 GHZ is definitlty not worth to buy .

  • hamza ashoor

    sorry for my bad English.

  • BestJinjo

    Well there are HD7970′s with after market cooling such as Asus Direct CUII 7970 or Sapphire Dual-X that can be found for $450-480 and can overclock the same as this binned XT2 version. So the noise issue can be addressed but you are right that the power consumption cannot be addressed. For those who want the double precision compute of the HD7970, it’s still a good buy at $450. For most other gamers, GTX670 at $399 is still the bang for the buck in this segment and consumes a modest amount of power. $400 for Windforce 3x GTX670 is better than $500 GTX680 imo as well. The 680 really doesn’t make any sense unless you are chasing benchmarks.

  • Jerome

    Thats a retarded comment, nvidia also losses in compute as well. These are high end cards so potential buyers have all the necessary means to run them no problem regardless of heat and power consumption. When the GTX 680 came out its performance was very close to the vanilla 7970, now it losses out to the 7970GHZ and it goes on and on. The GTX 680′s are still hard to find btw, so enthusiast wont mind throwing more money for a 7970.

  • Jerome

    I laughed too when Nvidia did it, I was like really (Intel)

  • hamza ashoor

    consumption”
    really…then why people still prefer gtx 670 against 7970 non ghz??
    check this out (sort by popularity): http://community.futuremark.com/hardware/gpu
    (it is future mark so I think all gamers trust thier professionality in 3d testing)
    even 7970 non ghz have alittle bit higher performance..they still prefer the one which consume less power,produce less heat and cheaper??

    dont you see that this is exactly what is happenning now between gtx 680 and 7970 ghz??
    as we know the gtx 680 consume less power,produce less heat and cheaper than the better performer 7970 ghz

    “The GTX 680′s are still hard to find btw, so enthusiast wont mind throwing more money for a 7970″
    have another look at that site and tell me why gtx 680 exists among those hardcore gamers more than 7970 which is “CHEAPER”??

    This is obvious…let me tell you that even hardcore potential gamers concern about power consumption and heat production.

  • Jerome

    lol who are these people that prefer this and that that nonsense. Furthermore 3dmark means very little, enthusiast and hardcore gamers will watercool dude and they have 1000watt power supplies. Here I dont think you even have a decent rig nor a gtx 680 or a 7970. I have both setups in sli and x-fire and wlll gladly post pics, show me what you got or go home! Every review site says that the Vanilla version 7970 is the best buy right now. Nvidia has been producing chip power hungry chips for years and that hasnt swayed people from buying their products.

  • BestJinjo

    In all fairness, he has a point. Power consumption on its own is not important for everyone but noise most certainly is for most gamers. For all intents and purpose, the Reference HD7970 Ghz edition is worthless. It’s louder than the GTX480.

    http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/2012/test-amd-radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition/8/

    and
    http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970_GHz_Edition/27.html

    and
    http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph6025/47623.png

    Unless you just play with headphones, then it’s a non-starter. Also, statistically, only 3% of PC enthusiasts use watercooling or other exotic type of cooling. You stating that “enthusiast and hardcore gamers will watercool” comes off snobbish. I’ve been building PCs for 15 years and watercooling is hands down the biggest waste of $. You get your waterblock for $100 and in 12 months it’s worthless. You spend $500 + $100 on a waterblock for an HD7970, and it’ll still max out around 1350mhz (while a lot of 7970s will do 1200mhz on air). In other words, you will gain less than 10% performance improvement in games. Further, that’s borderline HD7950 CF territory. Of course there will be aftermarket 7970 Ghz editions, but the reference 7970 Ghz is pure marketing since the reference HD7970 cooler of the “old” edition was already too loud for 1200mhz overclocks.

    As it stands, GTX670 for $400 still has cannibalized $350-400 HD7950s and $430-450 HD7970s. For anyone who doesn’t sit there and benchmark 3dMark11 for e-Peen, the cheapest HD7970 worth buying on Newegg is the Sapphire Dual-X for $450, but it’s also prone to coil wine and black screen of death issues. Really, gamers don’t just want a card that’s 10% faster – they look at the overall package. AMD still has nothing that dethrones the 670. They targeted the 680 but it is the 670 that’s making both the 7950 and vanilla 7970 irrelevant for gamers.

    Also, the most hardcore enthusiasts as you put it would be using Quad-SLI 690s, which are actually very quiet cards :). The cream of the crop enthusiasts wouldn’t bother with 680s or 7970s.