Review : AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition Graphics

Conclusion When starting this review we took the decision to look purely at gaming performance in enthusiast conditions. The reason? Well this is an enthusiast product and the reality is that the reference design card will not be sold in any significant quantity, if at all. Instead what we will see are models from manufacturers such as Sapphire, MSI, ASUS and the like releasing some custom models with more power efficient designs, better coolers and out of the box overclocks, no doubt hitting around 1200MHz for the core. When they hit the market, and expect that to be within days, we will take a more detailed look at the comparison between this new 7970 and the GTX 680... including all the usual media and GPU computing tests. For now, anyone looking for an idea of what those results will be, we point you to our recent 7970 OC vs GTX 680 OC review.

So, in terms of performance what does the 7970 GHz Edition give us? Well quite simply it's the 7970 but faster while managing to remain in a similar power bracket. The new refined model is significantly faster, 3DMark clearly shows this, and when gaming we get some great performance at 1920x1080 and in many cases 5760x1080. In the comparison with the GTX 680 we have a card which competes well at 1920x1080, often being faster. When we move up to 5760x1080 there is a gap in experience though, more-so than with the original model. In games such as Max Payne 3 we can play with higher detail on the new AMD card and in others like DiRT Showdown the AMD card quite simply achieves higher framerates. Things don't all go AMDs way though as Diablo 3 is faster on the NVIDIA card and Battlefield 3 pretty much equal across our tested settings... factory overclocked 7970s could tip that in AMDs favour though. Summary While it is unlikely to have existing 7900 series owners reaching for their wallet AMDs new card is a decent improvement on the original 7970. The GHz Edition will push AMDs partners to aim higher with their own models and thanks to a refined GPU may well be the final step towards a 7990.