Sapphire HD 7970 6GB Toxic Edition Review

The Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition has been designed from the ground up for the demanding enthusiast gamer with a high level of disposal budget. In this regard Sapphire can consider their latest flagship product a complete success.

Furthermore, if you want to play the latest Direct X 11 titles across three screens at 5760×1080, then this is the card I would buy, without hesitation.

Until today, the incredible KFA2 GTX680 Limited OC Edition claimed the ultimate single GPU performance spot, however in the majority of the real world game testing, the Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition managed to outperform the overclocked GTX680. The reference clocked GTX680 doesn't even factor into making a viable challenge.

When I reviewed AMD's latest HD7970 GHZ Edition a short while ago, I concluded my disappointment with the AMD reference cooling solution. Due to the complete omission of cooling heatpipes, and inadequate heatsink, the single small fan had to spin extremely high to maintain a tolerable thermal curve. In this regard Nvidia's GTX680 had the edge.

Sapphire have addressed our concerns by utilising their latest Vapor X cooler which is based around a vapor chamber specifically designed for this card. The heat is moved away by four 6mm and 8mm heatpipes into a huge rack of aluminum fins. Above this are two 90mm aerofoil blades which feature dust repelling bearings.

Under the hood the Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition has a new 8 Phase power design for the GPU VDDC, with an additional single phase each for VDDCI and MVDD. Also, Sapphire use a brand new double sided Black Diamond Choke for the first time, as well as DirectFET technology and all on a 12 layer PCB to ensure the board runs fast and stable.

The performance results are unquestionably impressive. In 7 out of 11 tests, The Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition outperformed the KFA2 GTX680 Limited OC Edition.

To get such incredible performance Sapphire have adopted two 8 pin PCI power connectors which in theory can handle up to 375W of power. Our synthetic testing with Furmark highlighted that the card can actually demand all this power, although when gaming the demands dropped to between 245 watts and 275 watts. The KFA2 GTX680 LTD OC by comparison consumes around 185 watts of power when gaming.

To deal with all this power and heat, the Sapphire Vapor Chamber cooler has to work hard, and the twin fan solution is audible at the default setting. When the ‘Lethal Boost' is enabled, the noise emissions increase further, although we never found the card that intrusive. It is certainly far from silent, but it is actually significantly quieter than the reference HD7970 GHZ Edition we have in our labs (38.4 dBa v 43.4 dBa).

Right now we have no pricing information and we wouldn't like to take a guess, even an educated one. With such a crazy, no compromises board design and a doubled 6GB GDDR5 memory count we can only surmise that this will be priced over £500 inc vat when it reaches UK shores.

Due to the strict engineering tolerances this card will be released in very limited quantities, so getting hold of one might be difficult. As a engineering showcase Sapphire have managed to release the fastest single GPU card on the market. We don't think this will be beaten for quite some time.

Pros:

• Unparalleled performance.
• mega cooling solution.
• two speed modes.
• the ultimate performance card for Eyefinity gaming.

Cons:

• demands a lot of power.
• not the quietest card we have tested.
• It is sure to cost a packet.

Kitguru says: Every so often a card is released that ignites the performance market. We didn't think it was possible, but AMD finally have a class leading HD7970 solution, courtesy of their most famous partner, Sapphire.

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