AMD HD7970 GHz Edition review - a boost, but is it enough?

AMD was popping champagne six months ago after the launch of the HD7970, only be shot down a couple of short months later after the launch of the NVIDIA’s GTX680. It’s a sad tale really, as AMD has typically (in the last few years at least) come to market first, only to watch sales plummet as soon as NVIDIA get around to launching its latest product. It seems AMD has had enough of watching NVIDIA steal 7970 sales with the GTX 680, and is now launching a new revision of the 7970 to take back the performance crown.

The way AMD is doing this is by raising the memory clocks from 1375MHz to 1500MHz, giving greater performance in some HD scenarios, and also by boosting the core clock from 925MHz to 1050MHz. Now, we should mention that the card is set to run at a flat 1GHz most of the time, and in a similar way to the ‘GPU Boost’ Nvidia recently developed, the 7970 core can boost an extra 50MHz to 1050MHz, if there is room in the power ceiling to do so.

In our testing we were nearly always seeing a static 1050MHz core clock. As long as the game was somewhat demanding, the card seemed to hold the boost, without dipping and diving like the GTX 680 does. Also, this feature can be instantly discarded and replaced with manual overclocks if you don’t like it interfering with your own settings; again, unlike the GTX 680.

Power consumption in our testing was slightly higher than the standard HD7970, but that’s to be expected, as the stock voltage has been raised ever so slightly and the core clock is now a full 125MHz higher when stressing the GPU. Still nothing to worry about though, as our tests revealed roughly 18W higher power consumption over the standard 7970 – something that will go unnoticed on most household power bills.

If, however, you are a little bit of a greeny, it is worth mentioning that the higher power consumption of this card places it roughly 70W higher than the HD7950, and around 60W higher than the GTX670. For some users this may be a deal breaker, especially if you’re only running a 450W PSU; but for most people, hopefully the small increase in power draw is justified.

As for pushing the power envelope a little further and really seeing what this card can do when overclocked manually, there really isn’t all that much excitement to be had. It seems like it’s more of the same really, with the GHz Edition card performing almost exactly the same on average as any other 7970 we’ve had through our labs. We can’t find any evidence for claims that a GHz Edition is guaranteed to overclock better than a standard card, as our experience has identified both as equals.

Overclocking aside, what happens to the regular HD7970? Does it simply get replaced by the GHz Edition? Well, yes; and, at the same time, no. It’s actually a tricky situation, as AMD will still produce both cards as a reference design, and companies are equally able to produce both rev1.0 and rev 1.1 (standard and GHz Edition) cards side-by-side. The only way of telling will be within the name of the product, but as third parties are already producing cards with core clocks above 1GHz, and even as high as 1080MHz (see the Gigabyte 7970 SOC review on page 40), it kind of makes the whole ‘GHz Edition’ seem like a redundant addition to the market. The only reason it would seem AMD went forward with this model was to officially take back the performance crown, and emphasise the overclock-ability of this chip to its various vendors.

When buying, we’d suggest sticking to a rev 1.0 card to save money, as the GHz Edition (when it finally starts selling in AU) is expected to sell for an extra $20-$50 depending on the vendor. Essentially, all you really need to do is overclock the card yourself using a program like MSI Afterburner, or Sapphire Trixx, and you can get your very own GHz Edition card. It’s only worth picking up a GHz Edition, or any other pre overclocked card, if the price is right, and you’re not comfortable or really bothered tweaking the GPU frequency yourself.