AMD Radeon HD 7970 Review: 28nm And Graphics Core Next, Together As One

[Pantsu]

At some point OCing GDDR5 will start producing negative results due to error correction. Not sure if that's the case in that 1900 MHz OC, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Nice custom card from XFX! Personally I went for a Sapphire in the end. The prices are rather horrible in Europe, paid 524€ incl.shipping for mine, while most cards are 550-600€ with no stock.

[cold2010]

XFX HD 7970 Black Edition



Radeon HD 7970



XFX HD 7970




OC




XFX HD 7970



http://www.hardware.fr/focus/59/xfx-...rclocking.html

[SKYMTL]

1900MHz on 6Gbps GDDR5 modules is certainly a stretch. If even one small error is detected, the EC will kick in and throttle throughput quite significantly. I'd say that even with more voltage, 7Gbps is the upper range of those ICs before EC gets enabled.

[bill_d]

hmm so the reference cooler is better than the xfx two fan BE one
oh well water should help alot

[GoldenTiger]

I still am wondering A) where the heck MSI is on newegg, and B) why no one else at all has had them in-stock except for one price-hiked model at amazon ($682).

[Manicdan]

hmm so the reference cooler is better than the xfx two fan BE one
oh well water should help alot

i think its bad case airflow. the cpu, MB, memory, all much higher temps aswell for the xfx heatsink, which should not be the case even with 2x 120mm silent fans for about 50CFM of exhaust.

[jam2k]

Link

[eXa]

Impressive OC!

[BababooeyHTJ]

Where is 7950?

[Piotrsama]

On hold.

[bladerash]

Where is 7950?

Thanks to some idiots ing about a paperlaunch of the HD7970 on 22 december, they've decided not to lift the NDA of HD7950 untill it's available at the store.

[AliG]

Thanks to some idiots ing about a paperlaunch of the HD7970 on 22 december, they've decided not to lift the NDA of HD7950 untill it's available at the store.

Did AMD ever say this themselves? I feel like you are making a big assumption there

[gumballguy]

@SKYMTL

Could you check something for me? In the days of the 5000 series, there is a bug in the AMD cards that prevents it from reducing memory clocks when multiple monitors are connected. Power usage of my pc at idle skyrockets as a result (IIRC, 100w more). Have they fixed this with the 7000 series? (your review only mentions power draw with multiple cards and one monitor, not with one card and multiple monitors).

[SKYMTL]

@SKYMTL

Could you check something for me? In the days of the 5000 series, there is a bug in the AMD cards that prevents it from reducing memory clocks when multiple monitors are connected. Power usage of my pc at idle skyrockets as a result (IIRC, 100w more). Have they fixed this with the 7000 series? (your review only mentions power draw with multiple cards and one monitor, not with one card and multiple monitors).

I'm using a single HD 6850 across two 30" displays for content creation and I don't see much difference in idle power consumption between single and dual monitor setup. That's using the 11.12 driver mind you so maybe there was an issue in the past but I haven't seen it.

[slamms]

ALL Radeon 7970 in one topic: http://oclab.ru/topic/radeon-hd7970-...proizvoditeley

[bladerash]

Did AMD ever say this themselves? I feel like you are making a big assumption there

They don't have to..

they were gonna do the same to the HD7950 as they did with the HD7970, but decided not to.
Think for youself why else they would do that? Some things don't need to be said bro...

[gumballguy]

I'm using a single HD 6850 across two 30" displays for content creation and I don't see much difference in idle power consumption between single and dual monitor setup. That's using the 11.12 driver mind you so maybe there was an issue in the past but I haven't seen it.

Thanks. It was a 5000 series issue, wasnt sure about 6000 though

[dasa]

Thanks. It was a 5000 series issue, wasnt sure about 6000 though

looks like its a issue for all cards
multi monitor consumption is still a fair bit higher than a single monitor and fairly similar to 5870 but thankfully a long way short of gtx480
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/26.html

[Pantsu]

Using multiple monitors requires higher clocks, that's not something unexpected. Although I think there is room for improvement there. Personally I just use CCC presets to only have monitors on that I'm actually using.

[Lanek]

I dont think its an "issue", more a result of using multi-monitor: GTX580, 32W > 95W / 5870, 16W > 48W / 7970, 12W > 45W

Agree with you Pantsu, it's maybe something Nvidia and AMD could start to optimise. ( need say Idle and Zerocore power consumption, is allready extremely nice ( 12W, 1.1W ).

7950 confirmed for 31th Jan: http://www.fudzilla.com/graphics/ite...n-january-31st

[gumballguy]

Using multiple monitors requires higher clocks, that's not something unexpected. Although I think there is room for improvement there. Personally I just use CCC presets to only have monitors on that I'm actually using.

Well, its not core clocks doing it but ram clocks aren't reduced.

I'm not an engineer, but I would think underclocking the ram at desktop for two monitors is perfectly acceptable in terms of hardware performance.

30w extra is enough that they really should fix it. However, it's acceptable. It's well below the 100w I'm getting on my 5870 / eyefinity setup.

[Chickenfeed]

The higher (fixed) memory clock while running more than 1 display is to avoid a flicker that occures when the gpu changes power states. This also is the case when using a 120HZ display ( 1 or more ) When I was using my 5870, I ended up modding my bios so I still would have low power 2d states, I just had to deal with the flicker ( ie whenever you launched or closed a game mostly, I personally didn't find it *that* annoying ) I still felt the desktop with areo ran just as smooth and dandy at stock 2d clocks at 120HZ so the higher clocks are certainly not for performance reasons. Even when running a second display I noted the same.

Nvidia gpus have the same behaivior but the work around is a little easier. You can use Inspectors multi monitor power saver application to override the power states on a per application basis. I did this with my 3d display so my 580 would idle at a more reasonable level otherwise it would run full 3d clocks at all times ( which when overclocked with an overvolt easily added 75 watts on the desktop and Im sure with stock cooling it would inrease the noise level a fair bit as well )

I'm really impressed with the 7970 power usage with crossfire. If this carries over for 120hz and eyefinity they would be a lot more attractive than Nvidias offerings in that regard. Running 3 580s for surround is a total power sucker especially if your machine spends a significant time at idle ( which most do )

[Klarko]

Has anything been said about mining numbers?

[dasa]

Thanks Chickenfeed all this time i never spotted that setting in inspector. My second display is just a hdmi output for audio i had already lowered the idle\load v for the card with a bios update from 995-1113mv down to 925-1038mv since doing that inspector tweak the systems idle power use just dropped from 205w to 149w
Dont suppose there is also a way to disable the second monitor i cant see without disabling audio?

Yeah the power usage and overclocking potential of 7970 has really peaked my interest

[Piotrsama]

Has anything been said about mining numbers?

THG benched it:

Or here if image doesn't show:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...n,3104-14.html