Exactly ten years ago, the AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition (test) was supposed to take the GPU throne in full force, after the regular AMD Radeon HD 7970 had to admit defeat to the Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 ( Test). With the second try, AMD once again positioned itself at the top of the single-GPU graphics cards.
Tahiti XT2 should counter Kepler
In December 2011, AMD was initially only able to attract customers in the high-end sector with the Radeon HD 7970 (test), as the competitor in the form of the Nvidia Kepler-based GeForce 600 series was still a long way off. AMD had done a good job and with the new GCN architecture significantly increased performance across the board, improved efficiency and increased image quality compared to the previous generation.
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AMD Radeon HD 7970GHz Edition
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The success lasted until Nvidia released the GeForce GTX 680 with the revised Kepler architecture in March 2012, which failed to fully differentiate itself from the Radeon HD 7970, but eventually caught on as an overall package. So AMD had to fight back again.
To get back on top with the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, the regular Radeon HD 7970 got “bored” as follows:
- 925MHz → 1000MHz
- No boost clock → 1050 MHz boost clock
- 3GB GDDR5 @ 2.75GHz → 3GB GDDR5 @ 3.0GHz
- 3.789 GFLOPS (SP) → 4.096 GFLOPS (SP)
- 210 watts TDP → 250 watts TDP
From then on, the Radeon HD 7950, HD 7970, HD 7970 GHz Edition, as well as the GeForce GTX 670 and GTX 680 with the following specifications fought for positions in the high-end gaming area in the top field:
On June 22, 2012, the editors tested an AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition in the reference design, which apart from the specifications did not differ from the AMD Radeon HD 7970 and featured the familiar 2-slot design and a 27″ display. 5cm long. PCB as well as a copper core heat sink, aluminum radiator and 80mm fan.
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Radeon HD Edition 7970 GHz without cooler
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On Windows, the Tahiti XT2 GPU clocked at 300 MHz on the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition to save power. The same thing happened with the 3 gigabytes of graphics memory, which SK Hynix produced at the time.
The AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition achieved its goal of beating the Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 in June 2012 and, in some cases, clearly differed from Nvidia’s leading edge. The editors drew a correspondingly positive conclusion at the time.
The goal of the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition is easy to explain: to beat the GeForce GTX 680. And AMD has easily managed to do it in terms of performance.
With a resolution of 1,920 × 1,080 pixels, aside from eightfold anti-aliasing, it’s “only” enough for a draw, but at the highest resolutions and when using 8 × MSAA, the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition finally stands up and away. .
ComputerBase, June 22, 2012
Expressed in frames per second, the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition in 1080p, 1440p and multi-monitor configuration with 5760 × 1080 pixels left the following image:
However, the editors criticized the sometimes very high power consumption of up to 342 watts under load and the associated noise development of the reference design.
Aside from a few slips in individual benchmarks, AMD had successfully achieved its goal of removing the then-leading Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 from the single-GPU throne and should hold onto the top position until the next generation. . duel.
The editors had already outlined even more detailed information about the Radeon HD 7000 series’ Graphics Core Next architecture for the release of the regular Radeon HD 7970 in December 2011.