Five Radeon HD 7970 3 GB Cards, Overclocked And Benchmarked
GeForce GTX 680 cards are nowhere to be found, and the Radeon HD 7970 recently dropped to a much more attractive price. We thought it was time to round up a handful of Tahiti-based cards to see how board partners are improving upon AMD's original recipe.
Test System Setup And Benchmarks
In order to compare the performance of these high-end graphics cards, we're employing an X79 Express-based platform and overclocking Core i7-3960X processor.
Of course, isolating relative performance is important, so game and synthetic benchmark results are key. But the power, temperature, and noise tests are just as critical.
| Test System | |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i7-3960X (Sandy Bridge-E), 3.3 GHz, Six Cores, LGA 2011, 15 MB Shared L3 Cache, Hyper-Threading enabled. Overclocked to 4.25 GHz |
| Motherboard | ASRock X79 Extreme9 (LGA 2011) Chipset: Intel X79 Express |
| Networking | On-Board Gigabit LAN controller |
| Memory | Corsair Vengeance LP PC3-16000, 4 x 4 GB, 1600 MT/s, CL 8-8-8-24-2T |
| Graphics | Gigabyte GV-R797OC-3GD1000 MHz GPU, 3 GB GDDR5 at 1375 MHzHIS 7970 IceQ X2 Turbo X1120 MHz GPU, 3 GB GDDR5 at 1400 MHzHIS 7970 IceQ X2 Turbo*1050 MHz GPU, 3 GB GDDR5 at 1400 MHz*simulated by underclocking the Turbo XMSI R7970 Lightning1070 MHz GPU, 3 GB GDDR5 at 1400 MHzSapphire HD 7970 OC950 MHz GPU (1000 MHz Alt. BIOS), 3 GB GDDR5 at 1425 MHz (1450 MHz Alt. BIOS)VisionTek Radeon HD 7970925 MHz GPU, 3 GB GDDR5 at 1375 MHz |
| Hard Drive | Samsung 256 GB (SSD) |
| Power | ePower EP-1200E10-T2 1200 W ATX12V, EPS12V |
| Software and Drivers | |
| Operating System | Microsoft Windows 7 x64, Service Pack 1 |
| DirectX | DirectX 11 |
| Graphics Drivers | Catalyst 12.3 WHQL |
| Benchmarks | |
| 3DMark 11 | Version: 1.0.1.0, Benchmark Only |
| Crysis 2 | Adrenaline Crysis 2 Benchmark Tool 1.0.1.13, Times Square, DirectX 11 |
| Aliens vs. Predator | Version 1.0.0.0, DirectX 11 Benchmark |
| Metro 2033 | Full Game, Built-In Benchmark, "Frontline" Scene DX9, High, AAA, 4x AF, No PhysX |
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Current page: Test System Setup And Benchmarks
Prev Page VisionTek Radeon HD 7970 Next Page Benchmark Results: 3DMark 11 And Crysis 2Don Woligroski was a former senior hardware editor for Tom's Hardware. He has covered a wide range of PC hardware topics, including CPUs, GPUs, system building, and emerging technologies.
-
aznshinobi I need a new pair of pants. Definitely graphics card eye candy. Specially the Sapphire one IMO. Do I hear giveaway THG?Reply -
schnitter I need to replace my 5870 HD I bought over 3 years ago. I can still play any game on HIGH at 1080p, but I want ULTRA on BF3 and Max Payne 3.Reply
Lets hope the 680 GTX becomes available to see what price these AMD cards end up at. I like AMD and how they don't rebrand their cards like nVidia, but $20 cheaper than 680 GTX is not cheap enough to sway me that way. -
hellfire24 why a reference card(visiontek 7970) with non reference competitors?Reply
i am impressed with HIS IceQ X2 Turbo X but still MSi lightning is my favorite.they have beefier VRMs,great cooling and are overclocking beasts.
-
confish21 Nice write up! Really helps when trying to peg down a card. Will be revisiting alot!Reply -
blazorthon nekromobovisiontek for "Particularly at its modest $279 price." $379 or $479??Reply
$479.99 (USD) is more or less the cheapest price point for any Radeon 7970. -
weatherdude Cool review. It'd be nice if SI units were included in the weights and lengths though. Guess I'll have to do a little math. It's very nice to know that the non-reference coolers are much quieter (excluding Gigabyte's) than the original design.Reply
Let's see some typos:
In the 'Test System Setup And Benchmarks' page in the Operating System row it is written as Microsoft Windows 7 x6. I assume it's supposed to be x64.
In the first paragraph of the 'Sapphire HD 7970 OC' page the card is described as "HD 7970 PC".