VTX3D Radeon HD7970 X Edition Review

Did AMD even use Ruby as a mascot after they acquired ATI? VTX3D don't seem to care and we aren't complaining, it is nice to see the feisty lass with the bright red hair again.

The VTX3D bundle is very strong, they include several video and power converter cables and a Crossfire bridge cable. There is also a software disc and a quick installation guide. We do recommend you ignore the potentially outdated drivers on the disc however and snag the latest versions direct from the AMD support site.

Ruby would be proud, VTX3D have finished the card in a red and black colour scheme to match her leather jumpsuit. The cooler isn't leather (?) or metal, but plastic. It isn't as sleek as the XFX DD cooler, but at least VTX3D are using a dual fan configuration. We will analyse the performance later in the review.

The card is built around a black PCB.

Along the top of the card we have two Crossfire connectors, for 2, 3 and 4 way configurations. Next to this is the dual bios switch. Setting 1 is the unprotected mode allowing the end user to create their own bios configuration. Setting 2 is the factory default. The attractive heatpipe based cooler is clearly seen from a top down viewpoint.

The VTX3D Radeon HD7970 X Edition requires an 8 pin and a 6 pin power connector to operate properly.

The card is a dual slot design with a full sized DVI and HDMI port, and two mini Display Port connectors. It is Eyefinity capable and can power up to 6 displays. The HD7970 is the first GPU that can simultaneously output multiple, independent audio streams from the HDMI and mini Displayport connectors at the rear of the card. This is also the first GPU to support 3GHz HDMI with frame packing support for Stereo 3D.

The cooler is removed with 4 screws from the rear and as the images highlight, it is formed around three thick copper heatpipes which lead into two separate racks of aluminum fins on either side of the core. The two fans have the power header merged into a single cable which connects directly to the PCB.

The Tahiti core is protected under a partial cover. The memory onboard is high specification Hynix GDDR5. AMD are using a Chil controller, which is a dual loop 6+2 multiphase PWM design. This offers dynamic voltage control and features input voltage management, allowing up to three input voltages to be monitored to ensure adequate power is delivered to suit the load.

The HD7970 is built from 4.3 billion 28nm transistors.

This is the first HD7970 we have reviewed which is supplied at overclocked speeds, out of the box. The Tahiti core has been overclocked from 925 mhz to 1050mhz and the 3GB of GDDR5 memory has been pushed to 1,425mhz (5.7Gbps effective) from 1,375 mhz (5.5 Gbps effective). This is connected via a wide 384 bit memory interface.

The card features 2,048 stream processors, is fully PCI E Gen3 compliant (up to 32 gb/s of data bandwidth) and incorporates new AMD Powertune and ZeroCore power technology. There are dual geometry engines, eight render back ends, 32 color ROPs per clock and 128 Z/stencil ROPs per clock.

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