Five Radeon HD 7970 3 GB Cards, Overclocked And Benchmarked

[rdc85]

HIS cooler is quite effective. If one thing they good at is their cooler, and they quite famous for it.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]twztechman[/nom]Exactly - that's why is would have been nice to see these cards compared to a reference 680. From what I have seen, in most games it takes a pretty serious overclock for a 7970 to overtake a reference 680. Not to mention how much more power they are using and how much more noise they make.The real selling point for me on the 680 is the adaptive v-sync. My 30in monitor runs at 60Hz, so with these more powerful cards, this should give me a better all round gaming experience. My last card (Sapphire 6950 Toxic) was a beast of a card - I have it flashed to a 6970 bios and have it overclocked beyond the 6970 specs - but at the resolution I run (2560x1600) tearing just is not an issue. With these more powerful cards, it very likely will be an issue.[/citation]

Adaptive V-Sync is only useful for situations where your minimum frame rate is below 60FPS, but your average and maximum frame rates are far ahead of 60FPS. If your minimum frame rate is at least 60FPS, then adaptive V-Sync will do nothing that regular V-Sync does not do. Adaptive V-Sync is just V-Sync that disables itself if the frame rate drops below 60. It's great if your minimums are right below 60FPS and your averages and maximums are very far ahead (like 80FPS or up), but otherwise, it doesn't do a whole lot. Keeping the minimum frame rate above 60FPS with regular V-Sync disabled will solve the problem and keeping your average and maximum frame rates from going to far over 60FPS without V-Sync enabled also solves the problem. Adaptive V-Sync is genuinely useful, but only in certain situations.

V-Sync gets rid of tearing just like adaptive V-Sync does. So long as your minimums don't drop below 60FPS, then it doesn't matter how high your averages and maximums go if you have V-Sync enabled.

Besides, if Tearing is going to be a problem and you don't want to use V-Sync, then up the quality settings or AA to reduce those frame rates while improving picture quality. Adaptive V-Sync and V-Sync are exactly the same, except adaptive V-Sync turns itself off when the frame rates dip below 60FPS and back on again when they rise over 60FPS (or whatever FPS that matches your display's refresh rate as measured in Hz).

 

[Jaywill]

No mention of coil/cap/choke whine on any of the cards, which has been a common complaint on these cards. Was it not experienced on any of the cards during testing, or is it considered a non-issue for the purposes of this comparison? I was lucky enough to snag the Sapphire OC card at $450 (after the $10 MIR) recently, but I'm worried about the electronic buzzing that's been reported all over the place.

 

[twztechman]

That s a good explanation of v-sync. I am thinking that with my resolution, and wanting to turn on all available features, some games will drop down below 60 FPS on occasion, while usually staying above. So by applying adaptive v-sync, I will get the best of both worlds without having to worry if I need to apply v-sync or not. As powerful as both the 680 and 7970 cards are, I am pretty sure most of my games will run at 60+ FPS - but by applying Adaptive v-sync it won't get choppy if they drop below when there is a lot of action.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]Jaywill[/nom]No mention of coil/cap/choke whine on any of the cards, which has been a common complaint on these cards. Was it not experienced on any of the cards during testing, or is it considered a non-issue for the purposes of this comparison? I was lucky enough to snag the Sapphire OC card at $450 (after the $10 MIR) recently, but I'm worried about the electronic buzzing that's been reported all over the place.[/citation]

I think that if Tom's had such problems, they would have mentioned this. I've known many cards to have it (Nvidia and AMD), so it's probably nothing. Even then, it's not generally not dangerous, just annoying. It's not really something to worry about.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]Jaywill[/nom]No mention of coil/cap/choke whine on any of the cards, which has been a common complaint on these cards. Was it not experienced on any of the cards during testing, or is it considered a non-issue for the purposes of this comparison?[/citation]

For the record, I didn't notice any buzzing or whining during testing.

If I did and it irritated me, I would have mentioned it.

 

[deicided]

[citation][nom]schnitter[/nom]I need to replace my 5870 HD I bought over 3 years ago. I can still play any game on HIGH at 1080p, but I want ULTRA on BF3 and Max Payne 3.Lets hope the 680 GTX becomes available to see what price these AMD cards end up at. I like AMD and how they don't rebrand their cards like nVidia, but $20 cheaper than 680 GTX is not cheap enough to sway me that way.[/citation]


Lol the rebranding thing is a joke, no ? Both companies do it all the time.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]schnitter[/nom]I need to replace my 5870 HD I bought over 3 years ago. I can still play any game on HIGH at 1080p, but I want ULTRA on BF3 and Max Payne 3.Lets hope the 680 GTX becomes available to see what price these AMD cards end up at. I like AMD and how they don't rebrand their cards like nVidia, but $20 cheaper than 680 GTX is not cheap enough to sway me that way.[/citation]

schnitter, meet the new Radeon 6750 and 6770... Oh wait, they are really just re-brands of the 5750 and 5770. AMD does re-branding too, although they might not do it quite as often as Nvidia does. Furthermore, all of the low end Radeon 7000 (7600 family and below) cards are supposed to either be re-brands of the low and mid end Radeon 5000/6000 cards, or at least use the same VLIW5 architecture that came out with Radeon 5000 around three years ago.

 

[Jaywill]

[citation][nom]deicided[/nom]Lol the rebranding thing is a joke, no ? Both companies do it all the time.[/citation]

Thank you very much for clarifying. You obviously applied stress to these cards during your tests, so it gives me hope that my card will be just fine. Now I just need Amazon to ship the darn thing (and buy the rest of my parts heh).

 

[Jaywill]

[citation][nom]Cleeve[/nom]For the record, I didn't notice any buzzing or whining during testing.If I did and it irritated me, I would have mentioned it.[/citation]

Edit - Sorry, I quoted the wrong comment in my previous reply. Re-posting for clarity's sake.

Thank you very much for clarifying. You obviously applied stress to these cards during your tests, so it gives me hope that my card will be just fine. Now I just need Amazon to ship the darn thing (and buy the rest of my parts heh).

 

[slabbo]

I still think if you run both 680 and the 7970's at the exact same clocks (gpu and memory) you'll find that's there's not much difference in either card (I think Nvidia might have a slight lead). The 680's came out after the 7970's and bumped up the stock clock speeds to make it appear it's actually a faster card, which is also explains why there's so few 680's in retail...they are too busy sorting chips that can run the bumped up stock clocks. While the 7970's seem to be underclocked because of the much higher OC'ing head room those cards have.

 

[slabbo]

[citation][nom]Cleeve[/nom]For the record, I didn't notice any buzzing or whining during testing.If I did and it irritated me, I would have mentioned it.[/citation]
no, they are talking about stuttering issues with the 680's
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=226227

 

[deicided]

[citation][nom]slabbo[/nom]no, they are talking about stuttering issues with the 680'shttp://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=226227[/citation]

Just looks like a bunch of AMD fanboys started trolling the Nvidia website, there's nothing new about that. who bitches about a cards performance and doesn't even check their driver versions first.../facepalm

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]slabbo[/nom]no, they are talking about stuttering issues with the 680'shttp://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=226227[/citation]

That is a problem with V-Sync, not the 680. What happened there is they didn't know what V-Sync does. They said that the only work around to the problem was manipulating game settings so that FPS never drops below 60 when V-Sync is active when that is how it is for ALL graphics cards. If the 680's adaptive V-Sync is working, then it should fix their problems perfectly.

[citation][nom]deicided[/nom]Just looks like a bunch of AMD fanboys started trolling the Nvidia website, there's nothing new about that. who bitches about a cards performance and doesn't even check their driver versions first.../facepalm[/citation]

They're not trolls, just ignorant of how V-Sync works. Installing the 300.83 drivers probably enabled adaptive V-Sync by default.

 

[youssef 2010]

[citation][nom]deicided[/nom]Just looks like a bunch of AMD fanboys started trolling the Nvidia website, there's nothing new about that. who bitches about a cards performance and doesn't even check their driver versions first.../facepalm[/citation]

If one of them was an AMD fanboy they would've ditched the 680 and bought a 7970. One of them was coming from 2x 590s in SLI and he changed everything in his system but the GPU and the same weird stuttering continues. If he didn't have an SSD, you could say that he was running a crappy HDD but that's not the case.

Both AMD and Nvidia have driver issues, but Nvidia's history is a lot darker than AMD's when it comes to drivers.

 

[halcyon]

[citation][nom]youssef 2010[/nom]If one of them was an AMD fanboy they would've ditched the 680 and bought a 7970. One of them was coming from 2x 590s in SLI and he changed everything in his system but the GPU and the same weird stuttering continues. If he didn't have an SSD, you could say that he was running a crappy HDD but that's not the case.Both AMD and Nvidia have driver issues, but Nvidia's history is a lot darker than AMD's when it comes to drivers.[/citation]
I'm not sure I agree with the "darker" history business but for years and years I thought nVidia had superior drivers to AMD until just recently. ...which totally surprised me really. What I've found recently is that in 2D they're both solid but in at least 2 games I've had weird issues with nVidia drivers...poor image quality and, when running 2 x 570's in SLi, bad artifacting. These problems went away when I switched to my current graphics setup. I know that's just my experience but I agree...both AMD and nVidia have driver issues from time to time.

 

[aviral]

Please try to get the graphical charts of these with Nvidia 680/690.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]halcyon[/nom]I'm not sure I agree with the "darker" history business but for years and years I thought nVidia had superior drivers to AMD until just recently. ...which totally surprised me really. What I've found recently is that in 2D they're both solid but in at least 2 games I've had weird issues with nVidia drivers...poor image quality and, when running 2 x 570's in SLi, bad artifacting. These problems went away when I switched to my current graphics setup. I know that's just my experience but I agree...both AMD and nVidia have driver issues from time to time.[/citation]

I think by "darker", youssef 2010 was referring to how Nvidia often got together with developers so they would optimize for Nvidia over Ati/AMD to make the lower end Nvidia cards able to beat higher end Ati/AMD cards.

 

[AlbinoKid]

i think the care coming out with ghz editions of the 7970s

 

[Guest]

The Sapphire Radeon 7970 OC is currently priced at $479 on NewEgg.com (June 7, 2012)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102982

 

[Rockdpm]

http://www.totalpowerpc.com/index.html#ecwid:category=1808844&mode=product&product=10451017

 

[master_chen]

Have both MSi Lighting and Sapphire - loving every second of it.
Sapphire is in my main rig right now, while Lighting I use only for special OverClocking occasions.
They are purrrrfect.

 

[sonofhendrix]

I have just recently purchased this card. But i am very reluctant to try these agressive overclocks and voltage increases such as the stable settings reported in this article. Reason being what happens if you do that and you start getting memory artifacts and it turns out you burnt out the memory,. Thats your 350 quid card recked and im pretty sure the warrenty is going to be no use either.

What do you reckon??

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]sonofhendrix[/nom]Thats your 350 quid card recked and im pretty sure the warrenty is going to be no use either.What do you reckon??[/citation]

I reckon you should do what you're comfortable with.

Try increasing the clocks without increasing the voltage and see how high you can go, and if you like up the voltage very slightly, too.

 

[soddo]

apparently the gigabyte has a locked gpu voltage now