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AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB GDDR5 PCIe

The AMD ATI Radeon HD 7970 measures 27 cm long (10.6 in), the GPU core is clocked at 925MHz, and the GDDR5 memory operates at the same frequency of 1375MHz (5.5GHz DDR). Still, pairing that frequency with a 384-bit memory bus gives the HD 7970 264GB/s of theoretical bandwidth. The HD 7970 carries 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs, up 33% from 1536 SPUs and 96 TAUs, it's also the first PCI Express 3.0-compatible card.

Based on 22 reviews

Excellent:

13
Good:

5
Average:

4
Bad:

0

Pros

Fastest single-GPU graphics card we’ve tested to date.
Significantly faster than Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 580, especially at extreme resolutions.
Improved power savings when idle.
Support for 4K video and other forward-looking features.
Brand-new design suited for graphics and compute.
Fastest single-GPU card around.
Strong power-draw credentials.
Best-in-class video performance.
Native full size HDMI & DisplayPort output.
Dual BIOS.
3 GB of memory.
Adds support for PCIExpress 3.0 and DirectX 11.1.
Support for multiple independent audio streams.

Cons

Extremely expensive.
4K video content and TVs likely won’t be common for a year or more.
Performance advantage edges off at highest resolutions.
Requires two PCIe power connectors.
Blocks a second expansion slot.
Noisy in 3D.
CCC Overdrive limits too low.
PowerTune and ZeroCore may complicate advanced overclocking.

By TechSpot on December 27, 2011

For the last 12 months, AMD has had the Radeon HD 6970 be its premier single GPU graphics card, competing head to head with the GeForce GTX 570 and at times challenging the mighty GTX 580. For about $369 today, you can still get one hell of a graphics...

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By Vortez on April 24, 2012

Whichever your preference of graphics card manufacturer, whether you sit with the green team or the red, both factions will serve you extremely well. If I were forced to choose between the two as a single graphics card, the KFA2 GTX680 wins out. It...

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By PCWorld New Zealand on March 26, 2012

It has been roughly 18 months since AMD launched its last family of graphics processing units (GPUs) but we now finally have some hot new silicon from the California-based semiconductor company.Codenamed Southern Islands (replacing last season’s...

80
By Bare Feats on March 02, 2012

Does Apple's delay of the next Mac Pro portend its impending doom? Will it go the way of the Xserve? As of this writing, it's been 584 days since the Mac Pro was updated. We remain hopeful. If there is to be a 2012 Mac Pro, it is likely that the...

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By BeHardware on February 21, 2012

With a new architecture, the introduction of the 28 nm manufacturing process and over four billion transistors, the Tahiti GPU and the Radeon HD 7970 have been the cause of much excitement. Has AMD managed to do as well as it did with the launch of...

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By Computer Shopper on January 31, 2012

AMD retakes the crown for single-chip gaming-graphics performance with the Radeon HD 7970. With its high price, however, and the fact that some of its future-looking features are far over the horizon, discerning gamers may want to wait before...

80
By AnandTech on January 27, 2012

With the release of AMD’s Radeon HD 7970 it’s clear that AMD has once again regained the single-GPU performance crown. But while the 7970’s place in the current GPU hierarchy is well established, we’re still trying to better...

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By X-bit Labs on January 14, 2012

The AMD Radeon HD 7970 graphics card based on the Tahiti processor with the Graphics Core Next architecture is undoubtedly the fastest single-GPU solution available today. And it will remain such until Nvidia’s next-generation Kepler-based...

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By Overclock3D on January 09, 2012

Obviously when testing a set up this extreme the conclusion is pretty academic.No-one in their right mind would run Quadfire. It takes too much power, we needed two Corsair AX1200 PSUs for this test. It produces too much heat. It's stupidly...

67
By TweakTown on January 06, 2012

With the last generation of video cards from AMD and NVIDIA, a lot of people felt a bit hard done by. Sure, the GTX 480 to GTX 580 and HD 5970 to HD 6970 brought with it some nice performance gains, but there wasn't the technological leap that we...

97