A new iteration of Tahiti XT chip, called XT2, will be powering the upcoming Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. Card, that is eagerly awaited by true AMD fans, will be released in near future.
According to OCAholic, the new Radeon HD 7970, which is also known as GHz Edition, will be featuring a 175 MHz higher clock than original (1100 MHz). This was possible thanks to better cooperation of AMD and TSMC, to produce more refined Tahiti XT2 chips. While this new silicon is being prepared (production starts next week), there are some leaks regarding it’s performance.
As we all know that it was designed to compete with GeForce GTX 680 cards, and it will. Actually even a clock of 1070 MHz is making HD 7970 comparable to NVIDIA’s solution. Additional 30 MHz of factory-overclocking will give it even more speed. While it’s hard to tell whether HD 7970 GE will be faster in every game, it will surely be a worth consideration. You will probably ask yourself, how is this card any better than already released GeForce GTX 680. Well, it will all come to two important aspects – power consumption and the price. Radeon HD 7970 is known for high TDP, noticeably higher than NVIDIA’s Kepler architecture. What is more, under some serious overclocking TDP rises dramatically. The only hope for this product is to release it with a TDP similar to 925 MHz version. It all appears that AMD did just that.
The source also mentions that AMD has included some improvements to the default voltage of this model, lowering it to 1.02 V, which is 0.15 less than original card. This indicates that new HD 7970 GHz Edition will be offering a better performance with similar TDP. Previously released information suggested that this model will consume ~10 Watts more than original — that’s a very small price for almost 200 MHz more. And yes, the real price. This will probably depend on AMD’s AIB partners. But if they decide to increase its the price over GTX 680’s, then the upcoming HD 7970 GHz Edition, may not find many owners.
TSMC will start the production of new Tahiti XT2 chips next week, so we may expect new Radeons in July. Stay tuned for more information.
This chart was based on comprehensive review from HT4U.
- Source: techPowerUp
