The HD 7970 3GB gets a massive overclock and
a new cooler
AMD's top-end GPU, the Radeon HD 7970 3GB,
was recently re-released as a GHz edition, which was essentially the same card
with a faster core clock of (surprisingly) 1GHz, compared to the standard
925MHz. HIS has decided that this overclock wasn't enough, however, and has
taken the GHz Edition and overclocked it some more. The result is its X Turbo
edition, which features a boost core clock of a whopping 1180MHz. Even so, at
$731, the card is incredibly expensive, and $127 more than a standard GHz
edition.
HIS
Radeon HD 7970 3GB X Turbo
As the GPU is the same as in all HD 7970
3GB cards, it features 2,048 stream processors, 128 texture units and 32 ROPs.
The card's 3GB of GDDR5 is also the same as the GHz Edition, because HIS has
chosen to leave it at the 1.5GHz (6GHz effective) clock speed that the GHz
Edition boasted. With its 384-bit memory interface, it thus has a total memory
bandwidth of 288GB/s. For anyone with a spare $3182 to hand, the card also
supports up to four-way CrossFire.
HIS has boosted the connectivity of the HD
7970 3GB by adding two more mini-display ports, giving it a total of four,
alongside the HDMI and dual-link DVI ports. A card like this is aimed at those
gaming across multiple monitors, and supports five-screen Eyefinity, but a
switch on the back changes the DVI port to single-link mode, in the process
enabling six-screen Eyefinity support, which is a nifty addition.
The standard AMD red and black cooler has
also been ditched with the X Turbo, in favour of HIS's own black and silver
IceQ X2 cooling solution. It features five heatpipes and a massive array of
aluminium fins and provides cooling to the memory chips and power circuitry
too. While the dual 89mm fans work well, keeping the card extremely cool and
quiet even under heavy load, they do blow hot air into your case, so good case
ventilation is a must.
The
standard AMD red and black cooler has also been ditched with the X Turbo, in
favour of HIS's own black and silver IceQ X2 cooling solution
The PCB layout is similar to the standard
HD 7970 3GB cards, but HIS has taken the chance to boost the power circuitry
significantly from 5+1+1 phase power to 18+1+1 phase power, which is what
enables the card to maintain such a healthy overclock. Consequently, dual
eight-pin PCI-E power connectors are required to power this beast. There are
also LEDs, which change color based on how much voltage the card is consuming
and how fast the fans are spinning.
The performance on offer with the X Turbo
is supreme. It tears through games at their highest settings even at 2560x1600
and on multiple screens, outperforms both the HD 7970 GHz 3GB edition and the
GTX 680 2GB, making it quite possibly the fastest single-GPU card on the
planet. It can even be overclocked more by around 6% on the core clock and 12%
on the memory, which sees it pull even further ahead of the competition.
All this performance comes at a hefty
price, however. Even given the excellent cooling and connectivity, the 6% or so
of extra performance that it offers over standard GHz Editions of the HD 7970
3GB is not worth the extra $127 that it costs, because this is more than a 20%
price increase. Desirable it certainly is, but a sensible purchase it is not.
mm Matthew Lambert
Cool, quiet and ludicrously fast, but it
costs far too much
Benchmarks
3DMark11 Basic, Performance Preset
·
AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB: 8,626
·
HIS Radeon HD 7970 3GB X Turbo: 9,190
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Details
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Price:
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$731
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Manufacturer:
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HIS
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Website:
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www.hisdigital.com/
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Required spec:
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Two free PCI-E expansion slots, 310mm
graphics card clearance, two eight-pin PCI-E power connectors
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Quality:
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10
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Value:
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5
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Overall:
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7
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