

Yesterday, a GPU industry has warmly welcomed a refreshed Tahiti XT2 chip with Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition launch. Supposedly, card was to offer better overclocking potential, through better stability at higher voltages and therefore, allowing to set increased clocks. So did the company managed to fill the gap to GTX 680’s performance?

Most of the reviews are very positive about this card. The GHz Edition is offering similar performance to GeForce GTX 680, only with slightly higher power consumption. AMD has also implemented a new feature called Boost, which is basically the auto-scaled GPU clock. It’s worth mentioning that it’s not very useful feature, for instance, at a default clock set to 1200 MHz, Boost remains at 1050 MHz. So there is not much room for Boost to be manually manipulated (while it depends on TDP and GPU usage).

Before I present to you how did Radeon HD 7970 GHz perform in comparison to half-year old original Radeon HD 7970, take a look at the specs.

Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition Specification

AMD Radeon HD 7970 AMD Radeon HD 7970 “GHz Edition” nVidia GeForce GTX 680 GPU 28nm Tahiti XT2 28 Tahiti XT 28 Kepler GK104 Transistors Count 4.3 billion 4.3 billion 3.54 billion Die Size 365mm² 365mm² 294mm² Stream (CUDA) Processors 2048 2048 1536 Texture Mapping Units 128 128 128 Raster Operating Units 32 32 32 Core Clock 925 MHz 1000 MHz 1006 MHz Boost Clock NA 1050 MHz 1058 MHz Memory Clock 1375 MHz 1500 MHz 1508 MHz Memory Type 3072 MB GDDR5 3072 MB GDDR5 2048 MB GDDR5 Memory Interface 384-bit 384-bit 256-bit PCI Express 1.x/2.0/3.0 1.x/2.0/3.0 1.x/2.0/3.0 Length 281mm 281mm 26cm Power Connectors 1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin 1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin 2x 6-pin TDP 250W 250W 195W Idle Power Consumption 14W 13W 14W Gaming Power Consumption 211W 254W 180W MSRB Price 429$ 499$ 499$

Source: 3DCenter.org

Power Consumption

Idle Multi Display Gaming FurMark TDP Radeon HD 6950 2GB 22W 58W 163W 206W 200W Radeon HD 6970 22W 66W 205W 267W 250W Radeon HD 7850 ~12W ~30W ~110W ~135W ? Radeon HD 7870 13W 31W 127W 159W ? Radeon HD 7950 16W 52W 154W 208W 200W Radeon HD 7970 14W 49W 211W 296W 250W Radeon HD 7970 “GHz Edition” 13W 49W 254W 351W 250W GeForce GTX 560 Ti 16W 57W 153W 193W 170W GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Core 25W 74W 197W 243W 210W GeForce GTX 570 24W 70W 199W 247W 219W GeForce GTX 580 31W 92W 238W 318W 244W GeForce GTX 670 14W 17W 170W 184W 170W GeForce GTX 680 14W 23W 180W 194W 195W

Source: 3DCenter.org

Overclocking Roundup

Overclocking Roundup AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition AMD Radeon HD 7970 Core Clock Memory Clock Core Clock Memory Clock Anandtech 1150 MHz 1600 MHz 1100 MHz 1575 MHz TechPowerUP 1185 MHz 1635 MHz 1075 MHz 1715 MHz Hexus 1150 MHz 1650 MHz 1075 MHz 1525 MHz PC Perspective 1150 MHz – 1025 MHz 1375 MHz Guru3D 1200 MHz 1625 MHz 1052 MHz 1450 MHz Tom’s Hardware 1175 MHz – 1125 MHz 1575 MHz HardOCP 1180 MHz 1600 MHz – – HotHardware 1195 MHz 1550 MHz – – Hardware Heaven 1256 MHz 1648 MHz 1110 MHz 1505 MHz Hardware Canucks 1156 MHz 1561 MHz 1078 MHz 1554 MHz SweClockers 1150 MHz 1600 MHz 1180 MHz 1600 MHz Benchmark 1150 MHz 1580 MHz 1125 MHz 1575 MHz PC Games Hardware 1150 MHz 1750 MHz – – HT4U 1150 MHz 1700 MHz 1070 MHz 1500 MHz Pclab 1190 MHz 1610 MHz 1125 MHz 1575 MHz Average Clock 1172 MHz 1624 MHz 1095 MHz 1544 MHz

Conclusion

AMD did a great job at preparing their refreshed Radeon HD 7970. The new Tahiti XT2 GPU can now be overclocked to an average 1175 MHz, which 7% higher than its original version. Also memory seems to be handling new clock speeds quite well, with the average 1624 MHz (5% better). So yes, card is a very good solution for high-end setups, but it’s up to you to decide whether you need highly overclockable card (Radeon HD 7970 is on the top positions in almost every benchmark record), or just the GeForce GTX 680, which is not that power hungry as AMD’s card.

Both cards are now offered at similar price. The only problem is the availability of the GTX 680, but NVIDIA has still few weeks before GHz Edition officially launches in stores.