Hardware AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB Review

We take a look at AMDs first 28nm GPU, which is set to launch in January for £440.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2011/12/22/amd-radeon-hd-7970-3gb-review/1

 

IT's here wooot...

 

Looks like quite an improvement, any gpgpu tests around to actually show if that side has improved too?

As a note the first paragraph in the conclusion mentions this card as 2gb not 3.

 

FINALLY! Bring on the 28nm era!

Probably gonna get shouted at for this, but I was wondering, since this 3GB card beats the 1.5GB GTX580 at high resolutions, would a 3GB GTX580 fare better against it then? I assume it would close the gap between the two (but by how much I'm not sure) since memory usage is more important at higher resolutions.

 

You mean HD 7970 3GB right?

 

OMG! Where did this come from! Thanks for the xmas pressie guys!

 

I was thinking the same thing about the 3gb GTX 580 card's.

To make the test fair they should have included those card's as well, simply to show if this is actually any faster or not as at the moment I cannot tell if it would be worth choosing over a 3gb GTX 580.

I prefer Nvidia card's but if this is actually beating the 3gb GTX 580, and Nvidia don't release something soon to compete with it then I could be making the switch to AMD for my graphic's card's if it is worth it.

 

Roll out the GTX 680 4GB, as this is what I want for my extreme resolution...

 

Clocks like hell! The only game that really tests the water is BF3 and its not as fast as I would have liked to have seen it at 2560x1600.

Add to this the massive improvements you get from the 3GB 580 over the 1.5GB and Im wondering if upgrading from a 580 to this is really even worth it.

Other games run fast enough as it is so even if the 7970 is twice as quick itll not make a noticeable difference.

On first drivers though I am very impressed! Overclocked to within 10% of the 6990 speeds is fantastic and the power consumption and heat output is quite low for the performance it gives.

Now to see what Kepler delivers and to then make the switch to dual cards in the new gen

 

Any chance of some eyefinity testing? I get very odd results when using really high resolutions

 

Incredible overclocking. I want one

 

8x8=32?

Going by the diagram it looks like it has 4 ROPS in each back end unit not eight.

Seems somewhat odd given that it has 6 x 64 bit memory controllers. If anything I would expect a 6 x 8 layout for a 48 ROP back end. Increasing the number of memory controllers without increasing the overall ROP count seems somewhat odd from a balancing point of view.

I am quite liking the BF3 performance shown here, but other sites such as HardOCP have left me a little underwhelmed by the Eyefinity performance (I don't care about single screen performance anymore).

A price of £440 is expected but still quite hard to swallow given that it is more than twice the cost of a decent HD6950 2GB CF setup (Please note I am talking from a multi screen point of view where multi GPU setups are much more attractive).

Overclocked performance looks fantastic though. As does the power consumption & thermals.

Initially after reading the Anand review I was very skeptical about where the HD7950 would fit in. Having now read this review and assuming a similar drop in performance like we saw from the HD6970 to HD6950 (ie; bugger all at the same clocks), I hope we will see a ~ £300 HD7950 that will clock like a monster and make the HD7970 seem somewhat pointless (just like the HD6950 did with the HD6970 in many cases).

 

Looking good, the 7990 will be pretty mental... It'll also probably cost £800 :/

Really interested to see what NVIDIA come up with to rival this; Also to see what games come out in the next 12 months to actually use the horsepower! Anyone know of anything coming out that'll really push the envelope again?

I'm also a little bit relieved as i bought a 6990 a month and a half ago! You would have seen a grown man sob into his breakfast muffin if it had been level pegging with the 6990, as it is i'm still happy. Merry Christmas!

 

Naaah, not worth that money, GTX580 is to close to those results to justify swap...

 

Actually on the point of Kempler. Does anyone know if Nvidia will be adding Surround support to its cards natively? In other words will you be able to run Surround off of one card like AMD Eyefinity?

 

Type-os fixed, thanks for the spots guys.

 

'...the fan spun up to a gently audible level under load to keep the GPU temperature below 80°C.'

Hmmmmm. I wonder what would my ears say about it.

What about multi-display performance, did you forget that?

However, many thanks, nice review....

 

Is there a Folding@Home client that can run on this new architecture? If there is, it would be nice to see some results.

 

We'll be looking at doing some multi-display performance in the New Year, but it's only really useful for comparing AMD cards to other AMD cards, as Nvidia's GPUs require SLI for 3-screens.

 

Surely that's the most important test? I bet more people more from AMD > New AMD than NVidia > AMD