AMD HD7970 Graphics Card Review

1. Introduction2. The AMD HD79703. The AMD HD7970 (Super High Res Gallery)4. Testing Methodology5. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark6. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage7. Synthetic: 3DMark 118. Synthetic: HQV Benchmark 2.09. Gaming: F1 201110. Gaming: HomeFront11. Gaming: Alien V Predator12. Gaming: Dead Island13. Gaming: Tom Clancy HAWX 214. Gaming: Resident Evil 515. Gaming: Lost Planet 216. Gaming: Far Cry 217. Gaming: Total War: Shogun 218. Technical: Acoustics Performance19. Technical: Thermal Dynamics20. Technical: Power Consumption21. Technical: Overclocking22. Closing Thoughts23. View All Pages

Today AMD release the first card in their 7000 series – the high end HD7970, which is built on the latest 28nm manufacturing process. AMD's HD6970 was a huge success for the company, so the replacement card is certainly going to get a lot of media attention over the coming weeks. AMD claim it has ‘significantly more compute power than the HD6970' with a brand new revolutionary architecture. With new technologies such as ‘ZeroCore' power saving, is this the discrete solution to start 2012 with a bang?

The high end graphics sector has certainly no shortage of lightning quick, expensive products. Dual GPU discrete solutions such as the HD6990 and GTX590 have been leading the performance charts since they were released. In the single GPU sector it would be fair to say that AMD have not been able to oust Nvidia's GTX580 from the top slot, instead targeting the HD6970 at a lower price point. I have had a soft spot for the GTX580 now for a long time, it is one of my favourite video cards of all time.

AMD's HD7970 has been designed from the ground up redress the imbalance and to ensure that AMD remain competitive when Nvidia release their GTX580 replacement, shortly. The HD7970 has 2,047 stream processors and 3GB of GDDR5 memory connected via a 384 bit memory interface, so it certainly doesn't seem to be cutting any performance corners, but is it enough to claim the performance throne as we head into 2012?

AMD are keeping the launch really close to their chest, with partner cards scheduled for a later date. Therefore our sample today has no box, retail packaging or accessories. Also, Crossfire testing will have to follow in a later article.

The HD7970 is built around the classic ‘ATI' (are we allowed to say that?) colour scheme of black and red. The PCB is black.

The HD7970 has received a cooling upgrade, which is long overdue. The fan is wider, with a new blade design which is said to deliver lower noise emissions with enhanced cooling efficiency. Thanks to the wider blades, airflow has also been improved.

The AMD HD7970 is Crossfire capable in 2, 3 and 4 way configurations.

It requires power from a 6 pin and an 8 pin connector.

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 requires a bit of effort to remove, due to the sheer number of screws holding it in place. AMD are calling this the ‘6th generation vapour chamber' with improved cooling and acoustics capabilities. It follows a similar structure to the previous version with the fan directly forcing air sideways across the copper heatsink and out the back of the case.

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 card features a dual BIOS toggle switch. Setting 1 is the unprotected mode allowing the end user to create their own bios configuration. Setting 2 is the factory default.

The HD7970 Tahiti core operates at 925mhz, and the 3GB of GDDR 5 memory runs at 1375mhz (5.5Gbps effective) which is connected via a 384 bit interface for over 264GB/sec of bandwidth. 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.

AMD claim that the new architectural design can deliver up to 4 times the tessellation throughput when compared to the previous generation HD6970.

We did notice during testing with some monitors (including a 50 inch Sharp Aquos 1080p television) that our sample would have a problem holding horizontal sync, with half of the image off the right of the screen. It did work correctly with a Dell 3011U and LaCie 730 monitor however. We only had one sample at hand, so it is impossible to tell yet if this is just limited to our specific early release engineering sample.

On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.

To test today we are using two main systems. The first is our long standing Core i7 970 system, which is overclocked to 4.6ghz today. We have a variety of hardware benchmarked on this system within the last couple of weeks which will make for an interesting market comparison. Not many people will yet have a system with a PCIe 3.0 slot either.

The second system is based around the latest Intel Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition processor which we have overclocked to 4.6ghz paired up with the PCIe 3.0 capable Asus Rampage IV Extreme motherboard. This is the fastest system we have to test the latest graphics hardware.

System 1:
Processor: Core i7 970 @ 4.6ghz
Graphics: AMD HD7970
Cooling: Coolit Vantage
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Memory: 6GB ADATA @ 2133mhz 9-10-9-32
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot)

Comparison Cards:
HD6990 (880 core)
HD6970
HD6950
HD6870
HD6790
HD6770
HD6670
GTX590
GTX580
GTX570

System 2:
Processor: Intel i7 3960X EE @ 4.6ghz
Graphics: AMD HD7970
Motherboard: Asus Rampage IV Extreme
Cooler: Antec H20 920
Memory: G.Skill 16GB @ 2400mhz 10-12-10-28
Power Supply: Enermax Platimax 1200W
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Lian Li PC-A77FR Aluminium Red Full Tower Case
Boot Drive: Patriot WildFire 120GB
Secondary Drive: 1TB Samsung

Monitors: Dell U3011 / LaCie 730

Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Catalyst 11.11/11.12 press driver
ForceWare 285.62 WHQL
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark

Games:
HomeFront
Alien V Predator
Dead Island
Tom Clancy HAWX 2
Resident Evil 5
Lost Planet 2
Far Cry 2
F1 2011
Deus Ex: Human Revolution

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.

Some game descriptions are edited from Wikipedia.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We use the following settings: 1920×1080 resolution. Anti Aliasing off. Anisotrophy 4, Tessellation normal. Shaders High. Stereo 3D disabled. API: Direct X 11.

There is no doubt the HD7970 has vastly improved Tessellation performance when compared against the last generation HD6970 graphics card. The Nvidia GTX580 also trails behind the new AMD card, averaging just under 68 fps.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

Incredible performance results with the last generation Direct X 10 based 3DMark Vantage benchmark, scoring over 31,000 points in our long term system. With the added power of the 3960X EE @ 4.6ghz and the improved bandwidth of the PCIe 3.0 slot, the score increases by around 2,500 points.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

The HD7970 is right out there at the front of the performance pack, just behind the dual GPU HD6990 and GTX590. It significantly outperforms the GTX580, one of the fastest cards on the market today.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here

	AMD HD7970
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	5
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	7
Total	196

A score of 196 points is class leading right now, the ideal solution for high definition media playback.

F1 2011 is the newest Direct X 11 racing game from industry pioneers CodeMasters. The 2011 Formula One season is the 62nd FIA Formula One season. The original calendar consisted of twenty rounds, including the inaugural running of the Indian Grand Prix before the cancellation of the Bahrain Grand Prix. Pirelli returns to the sport as tyre supplier for all teams, taking over from Bridgestone. Red Bull Racing are the reigning Constructor’s Champions. Red Bull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel is the defending Drivers’ Champion, one of five World Champions appearing on the grid.

Great results with F1 2011, especially with the Core i7 3960X EE system @ 4.6ghz, averaging 81 fps.

Homefront’s PC version was developed by Digital Extremes, a Canadian developer responsible for numerous Unreal Tournament games and Bioshock ports. It received mixed reports, although Kitguru really likes the single player aspect of this title. The engine isn’t the most demanding on the market, but it requires decent partnering hardware for solid frame rates at 1080p.

Not the most demanding engine on the market today, but the HD7970 manages to power through this without a problem, outperforming both GTX580 and the previous generation HD6970 by a clear margin.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparable throughout reviews.

Alien V Predator is an intensive Direct X 11 engine which can cause problems for many graphics cards at these settings. The new architecture has noticeable improvements over the last generation, averaging over 90 fps compared to just under 70 fps from both GTX580 and HD6970.

Dead Island is a first person horror action-adventure video game developed by Techland and published by Deep Silver for Microsoft Windows. It is centered on the challenge of survival on a zombie-infested open world island with a major emphasis on melee combat. It is rather good fun, for a short while, but it becomes repetitive.

A relatively easy experience for all hardware on test today, with even the modest HD6770 maintaining solid frame rates. The higher performance Core i7 3960X EE system holds a higher frame rate than the older Core i7 970 system, averaging around 180 fps compared against 172 fps.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 is an arcade-style flight action game developed by Ubisoft Romania and published by Ubisoft. After the events of the first game, the H.A.W.X squadron is sent to Middle East, where a high level of violence is being registered, and the appearance of various insurgents leaders in various hotspots. The team also has to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Russian nuclear weapons. The player will be controlling three groups: one American (Hunter), one British (Munro) and one Russian (Sokov), each with its own pilots and supporting characters. There will also be references to other characters in the Tom Clancy universe.

We are testing in full DX11 mode with all settings to maximum.

An engine which is heavily slanted towards Nvidia hardware, as clearly indicated by the results. No problems for any of the leading cards with this particular engine however, maintaining average frame rates over 100.

Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.

Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made.

Still a great looking Direct X 10 game, but it doesn't prove any problem for the leading hardware. the HD7970 is significantly ahead of the GTX580 and the last generation HD6970.

Lost Planet 2 is a third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the sequel to Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, taking place ten years after the events of the first game, on the same fictional planet. We don’t really enjoy playing this game, but the engine is a great Direct X 11 test of modern hardware.

This engine has always been an Nvidia favourite. The HD7970 has a much higher performance level than the last generation HD6970 graphics card, averaging around 67 fps, compared against 44 fps. This places it slightly ahead of the GTX580.

Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2.

Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer.

Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today.

Settings: 1920×1200, D3D10, Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(8x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Ultra High), Vegetation(Very High), Shading(Ultra High), Terrain(Ultra High), Geometry(Ultra High), Post FX(High), Texture(Ultra High), Shadow(Ultra High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High).

A fantastic open world based game which has always been a superior experience with Nvidia hardware. Regardless, the HD7970 is now very closely matched against the GTX580 flagship.

Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths.

We are using the built in benchmark which is available via the STEAM client for this game.

Performance is class leading, averaging well over 70 fps at 1080p with the highest benchmark image quality settings. The extra power of the latest Core i7 3960 processor with quad channel memory and PCIe 3 slot helps improve performance further, by around 3 fps at 1080p and 20fps at 720p.

We have changed our method of measuring noise levels. We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. We are using a heatpipe based passive power supply and an Intel SSD to keep noise levels to a minimum. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests. Ambient noise in the room is around 20-25dBa. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The reference card is quiet when idle, however when heavily loaded with a game it becomes clearly audible, although never that intrusive. When loaded with Furmark, the fan peaks at around 53%, peaking just over 37 dBa.

When compared to the previous AMD reference cooling designs this is a step forward, although it is still not good enough to cause a concern for AMD's partners with third party custom heatpipe/dual fan cooling solutions.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 25c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.

Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.

The cooler performance is pretty good, for a reference solution anyway. The card hovers around 80c when playing games, and this rises to 88c when loaded with the synthetic Furmark test. We look forward to (not) hearing some third party cooling solutions in the coming months from Sapphire, XFX and other AMD partners.

To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. We measure results while gaming in Crysis Warhead and record the results.

In such an energy aware climate, AMD are making a big deal out of their new ‘ZeroCore Power' technology. Many solutions today use power gating, clock gating and memory compression to reduce idle power requirements, but ZeroCore power technology can completely power down the core GPU while the rest of the system remains active.

AMD say “Nearly all PCs can be configured to turn off their displays after a long period of inactivity. This is known as the long idle state; where the screen is blanked but the rest of the system remains in an active and working power state (ACPI G0/S0). As soon as the system goes into long idle state and applications are not actively changing the screen contents, the GPU enters the ZeroCore power state. In the ZeroCore power state, the GPU core (including the 3D engine / compute units, multimedia and audio engines, displays, memory interfaces, etc.) is completely powered down.

However, one cannot simply remove the GPU and its associated device context completely; particularly when it is the only GPU in the system as is the case in many enthusiast platforms. The operating system and SBIOS must still be aware that a GPU is still present in the system. For this reason, the ZeroCore Power state maintains a very small bus control block to ensure that GPU context is still visible to the operating system and SBIOS. The ZeroCore power state also manages the power sequencing of the GPU to ensure that the power up/down mechanism is self-contained and independent of the rest of the system.

The enablement of the ZeroCore Power feature is controlled by the driver. The driver monitors the display contents and allows the GPU to enter the ZeroCore Power in the condition that the GPU enters long idle and subsequent work requests are no longer being submitted to the engine. If any applications update the screen contents, ZeroCore Power technology can periodically wake the GPU to update the framebuffer contents and put the GPU back into the ZeroCore Power state. Furthermore, applications such as Windows 7 desktop gadgets are architected to minimize activity and save power in the long idle state. These applications are active during screen-on mode to display dynamic content such as weather, RSS feeds, stock symbols, system status, etc. but also have the intelligence to suspend any updates and activity when the system enters long idle. These applications will not wake the GPU from the ZeroCore Power state in long idle.

AMD ZeroCore Power technology delivers tremendous energy savings. Many PCs remain in the long idle state for a variety of use cases that are highly relevant to everyday consumers, enthusiasts and professionals. In ZeroCore Power mode, users can still enjoy non-graphics activities such as file serving/streaming, motherboard audio and music, and remote access while the GPU core is essentially powered off.”

When in the long idle state, we measured around 4 watts of power drain which is very impressive. Normal idle mode demanded around 13 watts of power. This rose to 221 watts when gaming, and around 270 watts under Furmark load.

Today we are using Catalyst Control Center to overclock the card, as many of our usual tools don't yet support the new architecture.

We managed to push the core to 1015mhz, which is a great achievement for a reference cooled card. We would expect further gains when AMD partners release their nhanced custom cooling solutions over the next couple of months. Initially we managed to overclock the GDDR5 memory to around 1,500mhz, but we noticed some very minor artifacting past 1430mhz and decided to settle on the safest figure possible.

The overclock helped to increase the overall 3DMark 11 score from 7904 points to almost 8,400 points. A very healthy increase indeed.

The battle for graphics card dominance in the high end sector rarely slows down. The AMD HD7970 is the first major release for AMD in a very long time and it has succeeded in ousting the nVidia GTX580 from the top position in the single GPU marketplace.

There is no doubt that the AMD HD7970 is setting a new performance benchmark … a score of over 8,000 points in 3DMark 11 for instance has been the firm stomping ground of the dual GPU GTX590 and HD6990 this year. When AMD release the upcoming ultra high end dual GPU HD7990 (no, this name is not confirmed) we would imagine the performance will be in a completely new performance zone.

AMD have managed to incorporate new power saving technologies which will appeal to the ‘green' audience and the latest 6th generation vapor cooler is a significant improvement when compared against the last generation. The use of a large fan blade design helps to reduce noise emissions while maintaining high airflow to keep the thermal dynamics in check. It still won't cause a concern for companies such as Sapphire or XFX, who release superior third party coolers a few months after launch, but it is satisfying to document that AMD are trying to improve their reference solutions.

80c under load is a positive result for a reference cooler, but we would expect a dual fan, custom heatpipe configuration to drop temperatures by a further 10c under load, to around 70c. This won't happen for some time however, as many AMD partners will be releasing cards based around this reference cooler in the coming weeks.

Pricing in the United Kingdom is one of the most important buying decisions. According to AMD, the cost of the HD7970 will be $549 and therefore around the £450 (inc vat) zone in the United Kingdom. So, even though AMD are marketing this as the replacement for the HD6970, the price differences are huge – after all, HD6970's are aimed at the sub £300 price point. Looking at the bigger picture, we can see that many of the GTX580 cards are retailing for as little at £360 inc vat. Some of the overclocked GTX580's are under £400 inc vat, which is extremely impressive. Even the flagship Asus GTX580 Matrix Platinum has recently seen a price drop to £420 inc vat. So while the HD7970 is faster than the GTX580, it does sport a £30-£90 price premium.

What other high performance choices are there?

Nvidia's dual GPU GTX590 is faster than the HD7970, however UK costs seems to be so varied that it is difficult to nail down a solid price. Overclockers in the UK are one of the few companies to have stock right now, selling three versions of the GTX590 – all for £800 inc vat. No, that isn't a typo, £800 inc vat! Dabs are selling the Gigabyte GTX590 for £600 inc vat, but none are currently in stock, with '10 due soon'. Availability of this card has been a problem now for some time.

AMD's flagship, dual GPU HD6990 is still the fastest solution of them all, however it suffers from severe channel shortage today, much like the GTX590. Stock is difficult to track, with Amazon listing the VTX3D HD6990 at £520 inc vat, although they sold out of the last handful of cards a few days before this review was published. If HD6990 availability was better and generally priced under £550 inc vat, then it might prove the biggest sales problem for the new card.

The HD7970 gives AMD the opportunity to close 2011 on a very positive note, and it bodes well for the rest of the 7000 series which will be released early next year.

Pros:

• New performance leader in the single GPU sector.
• latest vapor cooler is a solid advancement for AMD.
• power drain is excellent.

Cons:

• Single fan.
• around £450, it is expensive.
• our sample experienced some unusual horizontal sync lock issues with some monitors/televisions.

Kitguru says: A new performance leader for AMD and a strong end to the year.

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