AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition review

We also tested the card in Eyefinity mode with three monitors, for a total resolution of 5,760×1,080. In Dirt 3 at this resolution and with 4x anti-aliasing and Ultra detail, the HD 7970 GHz Edition managed 45.9fps, compared to 41.5fps for the plan HD 7970 – a 10% speed increase.

These results are impressive enough on their own, but AMD had another trick up its sleeve. The beta Catalyst 12.7 drivers promise significant performance gains across all AMD’s graphics cards, and this was certainly the case with the HD 7970 GHz Edition. With Catalyst 12.7 installed, the standard 925MHz HD 7970 jumped up to 100fps in Dirt 3 at 1,920×1,080, while the HD 7970 GHz Edition managed a huge 113fps. In Crysis 2, the new drivers saw the normal HD 7970 increase its frame rate to 44.3fps, while the GHz Edition managed a smooth 48.7fps.

With the new drivers, Dirt 3 in Eyefinity mode saw increases to 46.2fps and 50.6fps for the HD 7970 and HD 7970 GHz Edition. The new, faster HD 7970, coupled with the new drivers, makes the HD 7970 finally a match for the Nvidia GeForce GTX 680, with almost identical frame rates in all our game tests. There was one problem; although we found the beta drivers to be stable during all our game tests, we saw some strange results in Crysis 2 when running in Eyefinity mode at 5,760×1,080. In one test, the benchmark ran at a smooth 35.4fps, which is a huge increase over the 21fps we saw from the HD 7970. However, running the test again after a reboot saw the frame rate drop down to 15fps. We also saw no more than 15fps from the normal HD 7970 using the beta 12.7 drivers. We’ll have to wait for the next driver release to see how well the new card can cope with Crysis 2 on three monitors.

The Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition is a card with better performance than its specifications would suggest, showing that the fairly modest clock speed increase and dynamic overclocking produce some serious benefits. Problems with Crysis 2 in Eyefinity mode aside, the combination of this card and AMD’s latest beta drivers is enough to challenge Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 680 for the high-end graphics card crown. The Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition is also set to be a similar price to the standard HD 7970, at about £350. This makes it about £70 cheaper than the GTX 680, and a far more sensible choice than the absurdly priced and absurdly powerful Nvidia GeForce GTX 690. It may not be the faster card you can buy, then, but its still our new Ultimate graphics card.