XFX R7970 Double Dissipation Graphics Card Review

1. Introduction2. XFX R7970 Double Dissipation Graphics Card3. XFX R7970 DD (Super High Res Gallery)4. Testing Methodology5. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark6. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage7. Synthetic: 3DMark 118. Synthetic: HQV Benchmark V2.09. 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

AMD launched their new flagship HD7970 graphics card in December, and we have been extremely impressed with the solution as it has claimed the top performance slot … knocking the GTX580 from the throne. Today AMD have lifted the NDA on partner cards and we have several reviews for your enjoyment. We had expected that there would be no partner cards with custom cooling solutions at this early stage, but XFX have surprised us by sending a ‘Double Dissipation' model with proprietary dual fan cooler. Excited? you should be.

In 2011, XFX released some of the finest AMD graphics cards, featuring their ‘DD' coolers. Our testing highlighted great performance from this cooling solution, and today we are looking at their latest version of the Double Dissipation cooler, showcased on the XFX R7970.

Isn't this one of the most beautiful video cards you have ever seen? But is it as good as it looks? Time to find out …

The XFX R7970 DD arrives in an oblong box with primary focus on the ‘DD' logo, covered in ice. XFX also place highlight on the large memory buffer – 3GB of GDDR5.

XFX include a wide range of literature with the product, including a power supply pamphlet if you need an upgrade for a new system build. We have reviewed many of the XFX power supplies on Kitguru in recent months and they are worthy of consideration. The bundle also includes a Crossfire cable, several video adapters and a driver disc.

The XFX R7970 Double Dissipation graphics card is beautifully finished, and certainly stands out aesthetically. XFX are using a dual fan configuration housed in a metal cooler. Down the top is a metallic red strip with the name of the product along with ‘Ghost – Thermal Technology' branding.

So what exactly is ‘Ghost – Thermal Technology'? XFX say “Through rigorous testing and analysis we have discovered the optimal thermal design that allows air to pass through the heatsink directly to the PCB and core components. Older enclosed designs often trapped the heat, creating a bottle neck at the exhaust, this can be remedied but at the cost of a higher fan speed which creates excess noise. Our design allows us to keep the fan speeds lower while allowing the heat to dissipate evenly throughout the card.”

This card is using two large fans which are IP-5X designs, offering protection against dust and other small foreign objects which can cause long term damage. This will help ensure maximum performance, even several years down the line. That said, we do recommend that you remove your video card every couple of months for cleaning.

XFX state that these fans last up to 10,000 hours longer than traditional designs.

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

Removing the cooler is straightforward although it takes a little time due to the number of screws holding it in place. 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. Both fans are hooked into the same header cable, which is subsequently connected to the PCB.

The HD7970 is built from 4.3 billion 28nm transistors.

This XFX board is supplied at reference clock speeds. 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.

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 our long standing Core i7 970 system, which is overclocked. We have a variety of hardware benchmarked on this system within the last couple of weeks which will make for an interesting market comparison.

Test System:
Processor: Core i7 970 @ 4.6ghz
Graphics: XFX HD7970 DD
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 SLi
GTX580
GTX570

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.

The XFX HD7970 is a tessellation powerhouse, averaging almost 82 frames per second. When we look at the last generation HD6970 which averages 53.5 frames per second, we can see the noticeable architectural improvements.

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.

The HD7970 is a very capable Direct X 10 card, as this synthetic benchmark highlights. The score of 31,700 points is only around 4,000 points lower than the last generation dual GPU HD6990 flagship, which is an incredible result.

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.

Equally strong Direct X 11 performance, scoring 7,873 points, well ahead of the GTX580, at around 6,500 points.

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

	XFX 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.

A great game, and one that the XFX HD7970 has no problems powering, even with the eye candy maxed.

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.

A great game to play in single player, but not the most demanding of engines, even at these settings. The XFX HD7970 is noticeably faster than the Nvidia GTX580.

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 a taxing Direct X 11 title, causing problems for cards such as the HD6670 and HD6790. The XFX HD7970 however powers through the engine at these high settings, averaging 94 frames per second.

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.

No problems powering this title, averaging around 170 fps during our test environment.

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.

One of the few occasions you will see the GTX580 beating the HD7970, if only by a few frames per second.

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.

Resident Evil 5 has always been an AMD favourite, and we can see the huge gains over the GTX580, averaging 155 frames per second.

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.

The XFX HD7970 powers through this engine, matching the GTX580 at around 66/67 frames per second.

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).

The XFX HD7970 may struggle to keep up with the GTX580 with this particular engine, but there are no concerns with the frame rate, averaging just under 100 during our test environment.

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.

A fantastic solution for high resolution gaming with the Direct X 11 based Shogun 2, a real time strategist favourite title from last year.

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

This cooling solution is a huge improvement when compared with the AMD reference card. When gaming it is barely audible and will likely be drown out by a couple of chassis fans. This is one of the quietest high end graphics cards we have tested since we opened.

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.

Not only is the card significantly quieter when gaming, but it is around 8C cooler under gaming and synthetic load, a noteworthy combination.

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.

The XFX card demands a couple less watts at the socket than our reference card. The idle results are particularly impressive.

We always have great success with Sapphire's excellent TriXX tool so we are using the latest beta today for our overclocking results.

An incredible result, achieving almost a 30% overclock from the core – maxing out at 1,200mhz! The memory overclocked to just over 1,500mhz (6,000mhz+ effective). We could push both core and memory speeds higher, but we noticed very minor artifacting with our stress test, so we have aimed for the lowest possible 100% ‘artifact free' settings.

When the HD7970 core is overclocked to 1,200mhz … Direct X 11 performance is actually higher than the dual GPU GTX590 according to 3dMark 11, scoring 9,429 points against 9,293 points. The AMD HD6990 is only slightly ahead, taking top position with 9,867 points. Many people are waiting on the upcoming AMD dual GPU solution, and we can see why.

Our initial feelings for AMD's HD7970 haven't changed since our launch day article was published on the 22nd of December last year. It is easily the fastest single GPU graphics solution on the market, claiming the title from Nvidia's GTX580.

We were expecting to have to wait at least a couple of months before analysing a HD7970 with modified cooling solution so we were shocked to receive this XFX solution for review on partner launch day.

The XFX R7970 Double Dissipation is an unadulterated success and is actually one of the most accomplished video cards I have seen in the ten years I have been reviewing products. There is no doubt that the reference HD7970 is a powerful discrete solution, but as we mentioned on launch day it isn't without fault. Firstly, while AMD have spent time enhancing their reference cooling solution, it is still acutely audible under load. Secondly, the temperatures of the reference card would peak around 90c when placed under synthetic load.

The latest XFX ‘DD' cooler has removed both of these problems from the equation, ensuring significant temperature improvements while eliminating most of the fan noise. Realistically, we all expect a certain amount of noise when gaming with a high end video card, but the XFX R7970 DD is one of the quietest AMD solutions we can remember testing in the last year. This is made all the more impressive as the R7970 is also one of the fastest on the market.

While we don't often get excited about the appearance of a discrete card, the XFX R7970 DD is without question the ‘supermodel' of graphics cards. If Kate Beckinsale was a graphics card, this is what she would look like.

It is our job to find fault with a product, but the only problem we could mention is that we can't comprehend why XFX aren't selling this card in a pre-overclocked state. While the overclocking capabilities will vary from card to card, there is no question that XFX could easily have released this model with the core running at 1GHZ, while still leaving plenty of tolerance safety headroom.

Sure, an enthusiast with software experience can manually overclock the card in the same way we did, or program the secondary bios position with a set of ‘overclocked' parameters, however it seems remiss of XFX to overlook the opportunity, especially for promotional reasons. Perhaps they will sell a more expensive ‘Black Edition' of this product at a later date, although we would be hard pressed to imagine it will be any better than the one we have reviewed today.

According to XFX, this card should be priced around £480 inc vat when it is released in the United Kingdom, which would indicate a £30 price premium over the reference design. I have no doubt it is worth the small premium, especially if noise, overclocking headroom and cooling efficiency are prerequisites.

Pros:

• Without question, one of the finest video cards ever released.
• Cooler than the reference solution.
• Quieter than the reference solution.
• massive overclocking headroom.
• XFX have a good reputation for warranty and support.

Cons:

• XFX should have supplied it in an overclocked state.

Kitguru says: If you want a new HD7970, then it really doesn't get any better than this.

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