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AMD announces Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB

Published on 22nd June 2012 by Gareth Halfacree

AMD's Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB boasts a 1GHz core clock and 6GHz effective memory clock, with AMD claiming it to be the world's fastest single GPU.

AMD has announced the launch of the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB, a new revision of the company's Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture and - it claims - the industry's fastest single-GPU implementation.

'The AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition rounds out our award-winning GCN family, providing world-class gameplay thanks to the industry’s fastest single GPU,' claimed Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager of AMD's GPU division, at the launch. 'Gamers have been hungry for our AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series since our launch last December. We have been able to meet that growing demand as we expanded our AMD Radeon HD 7000 offerings and brought the industry's most advanced graphics across a complete family of leading-edge desktop and notebook graphics cards.'

The AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB boasts, as the name implies, 3GB of GDDR5 memory and a core clock running at 1GHz - a not-insignificant boost over the original Radeon HD 7970 3GB's 925MHz. The boosted core clock, combined with an effective memory clock of 6GHz compared to 5.5GHz on the non-GHz Edition board, means an increase in raw performance from 3,789 gigaflops to 4,096 gigaflops.

Aside from the tweaked clocks, the design is pretty much the same as the existing Radeon HD 7970 3GB: a 28nm GCN core holds 2,048 stream processors, 128 texture units, 32 ROP units and hits an overall Thermal Design Profile (TDP) of 250W, powered by an eight-pin and a six-pin power connector. By maintaining the same power envelope but increasing the speed, AMD has boosted overall efficiency from 15.15 gifaflops per watt to 16.38 gigaflops per watt.

New to the GHz Edition, however, is a feature dubbed AMD PowerTune Technology With Boost, or PTWB. Similar to Nvidia' GPU Boost, the PTWB system allows the card to dynamically overclock itself to 1,050MHz from the stock 1,000MHz when possible - complete with dynamic voltage adjustments. Although it's only a 50MHz increase, every little helps - and it comes without breaking the 250W TDP, although it's possible to clock the board higher through the PowerTune control panel software.

One of the first hardware partners out of the door with a Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB board is Sapphire, which has announced that it will be creating several new models based around AMD's tweaked GPU. The first, the TOXIC Edition, will feature clock speeds boosted beyond even AMD's specifications thanks to a high-quality PCB and digital VRM combination. The TOXIC Edition will be joined by a Vapor-X Edition which swaps out the stock cooling system for Sapphire's vapour chamber cooling technology, reducing noise while allowing for even higher overclocking.

UK retail prices and final specifications for the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB have yet to be confirmed, with AMD setting a US retail price of $499 (around £320 excluding taxes.) The first boards are expected to hit retail channels some time next week.

17 Comments

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Harlequin 22nd June 2012, 10:37

would be interesting to see if that `power boost` is functionable on other amf 7xxx cards as well

feathers 22nd June 2012, 10:40

Not much of an increase in clock speed then.

will_123 22nd June 2012, 10:54

Think this could drive down prices the other GPU's? Was looking at the HD7950 in maybe a month or so...? And going to be getting myself a new Dell monitor as well I think. Rather excited...

Bill

Harlequin 22nd June 2012, 11:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by feathers
Not much of an increase in clock speed then.

and as if by magic feathers arrives in an AMD article with a negative comment.... getting old really fast.

mi1ez 22nd June 2012, 11:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Harlequin
Quote:
Originally Posted by feathers
Not much of an increase in clock speed then.

and as if by magic feathers arrives in an AMD article with a negative comment.... getting old really fast.

He does have a point though,

In order to beat the GTX680 I would have thought it would need more than a 75MHz boost. They must surely need the 50MHz boost to beat it?

Harlequin 22nd June 2012, 11:17

read some reviews - the 75mhz increase means they are tied now AND the ihv`s have allready said 1200mhz ones to come....

will_123 22nd June 2012, 11:22

Here is something that was linked from the Engadget site. Dont know how accurate it is.

http://www.techspot.com/review/546-amd-radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition/page4.html

Harlequin 22nd June 2012, 11:24

in amd games the 7970 pulls further ahead - in nv games the gap is narrowed but the gtx is faster and they are matched in non optimized games.....

im interested to see if the boost can be used on older 7970`s and/or other 77xx/78xx cards

The_Crapman 22nd June 2012, 11:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Harlequin
in amd games the 7970 pulls further ahead - in nv games the gap is narrowed but the gtx is faster and they are matched in non optimized games.....

im interested to see if the boost can be used on older 7970`s and/or other 77xx/78xx cards

probably could with a bios update, much like the 6950->6970 shenanigans.

It could be that there is no real change to the card at all, there's just a higher stockclock and a bios change to introduce boosting. this would mean it wouldn't overclock any higher than the original cards and when push to the max, still can't compete. we need a review that pitches 7970 oc'd vs 7970Ghz oc'd vs 670 oc'd vs 680 oc'd.

give it a month or 2 and we'll have a gtx685 with higher stock clocks.

mi1ez 22nd June 2012, 12:22

Looks like the driver provides a fair boost as well as the frequency increase.

feathers 22nd June 2012, 13:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Harlequin
Quote:
Originally Posted by feathers
Not much of an increase in clock speed then.

and as if by magic feathers arrives in an AMD article with a negative comment.... getting old really fast.

Your negative commenting about my negative comments is getting older faster too.

Who wins?

I got nuffink against ATI/AMD by the way... I just don't think bragging about 1ghz from a default 925 is NOT worth talking about and I would say the same if it was an Nvidia GPU. Over the past few months we've heard talk of GPU extreme overclocks close to 2ghz. The GTX 560ti was available at 1ghz ages ago and I'm guessing some previous ATI's also.

From what I've heard the 7970's overclock well so why the conservative factory OC?

Just out of interest... what kind of overclocks are people getting from the 7970?

Marvin-HHGTTG 22nd June 2012, 13:19

To be honest, I don't see what the problem is feathers. The overclock isn't impressive, but it's all that AMD needs to match and even beat the GTX680, so clock for clock the performance is similar. Only the 7970 seems to have more to give overclock wise. 1200MHz+ is common, whereas GTX680s are somewhat limited by Nvidia's boosting scheme and drivers, so it's difficult to tell whether they could go faster if pure clock access would be made available.

I think AMD went with somewhat conservative clocks to begin with, which is what both companies do a lot when they're releasing first. Why release high clocked parts when your competition might not beat it? You can always increase later. It means you don't show your hand.

debs3759 22nd June 2012, 14:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by feathers
From what I've heard the 7970's overclock well so why the conservative factory OC?

The GHz edition isn't an overclock. It's an updated reference card spec as they now have enough good die to be able to guaranatee they will all run at that speed. The original spec was not guaranteed to run that fast, hence the lower original spec.

feathers 22nd June 2012, 15:16

I see. Any increase is a good thing though. Roll on 1800mhz.

The_Crapman 22nd June 2012, 15:24

Couple of interesting 7970 vs 680 reviews:

overclock 680 vs overclocked 7970 (lightning)
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/4636/msi_radeon_hd_7970_lightning_3gb_video_card_overclocked_review/index1.html

7970ghz review, with results for 7950, 7970, 670, 680, jetstream 680 4gb, phantom 680 2gb.
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/4783/amd_radeon_hd_7970_ghz_edition_3gb_video_card_review/index1.html

of the latter, the most interesting result is that the 2gb phantom out performs the 4gb jetstream!

feathers 22nd June 2012, 17:35

Swings and roundybouts. Win some lose some. 7970 very good on Metro 2033, loses out on Dirt 3 but not by much.

The lightning is quite a bit faster on Metro.

mclean007 24th June 2012, 08:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by debs3759
Quote:
Originally Posted by feathers
From what I've heard the 7970's overclock well so why the conservative factory OC?

The GHz edition isn't an overclock. It's an updated reference card spec as they now have enough good die to be able to guaranatee they will all run at that speed. The original spec was not guaranteed to run that fast, hence the lower original spec.

That's irrelevant to the consumer though - it's only a question of who validates the card to run at the higher speed - a factory OC card is still guaranteed to run at its factory OC speed, the only difference is that it is the board vendor (Gigabyte or MSI or whoever) rather than AMD who offers that guarantee. Put it another way - a board vendor can now buy chips from AMD that AMD certifies will run at 1 GHz, whereas before now the chips were only certified to hit 925 MHz. Most of those will surely still hit 1 GHz, but there is no comeback to AMD if some don't. OEMs will still speed bin the chips they get, and cherry pick the best ones to put in factory OC cards at more than 1 GHz.