7970

[melted829]

hi I purchased an amd 7970 at launch in jan of 2012. was wondering if this is still an ok card? obviously its been a long time. but is it still capable of running any modern game? its GCN 384 bit 3gig GDDR5 memory 2038 apu's ..at the time I think it was top of the line..thanks

 

[Yakk]

Depends on what you mean by modern games. A 7970 will run pretty much any game at 1080 res pretty well. I can run Total War Warhammer in DX12 at 1080 on one 7970 between 50-60 FPS with high/ultra settings. Doom Vulkan runs at a stratospheric 100+ FPS. Frostbyte engine games usually run butter smooth at 1080. It's mostly just the badly optimized engines which might give it trouble.

Amazing for an almost 5 year old GPU.

 

[dogen1]

It's still a good card, and should still be able to handle games a good bit better than a normal PS4. Geometry throughput is probably one of it's bigger weaknesses, so don't forget to experiment with draw distance and model quality when you have to lower settings.

 

[Arachnotronic]

7970 is still a solid card, but don't expect to be able to max everything out at high resolutions.

 

[Yakk]

Oh forgot to mention and it pretty much only happens in gameworks games, use AMD Optimized tesselation or overriding to 16x. They're virtually the same visually and you get a substantial free performance bump.

 

[Black Octagon]

I'm still on my 7970 from 2012 too. Has held its own amazingly well. Would I welcome an upgrade? Sure. Is it essential yet? Not for non-enthusiast gaming, no


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[ZipSpeed]

I'm running the poor man's 7970 and I'm finding my overclocked 7950 is still a very solid card. I can run most games on either high or ultra @ 1080p. Not bad for a card that I paid $230 back in 2012.

 

[Freestyle7]

My 7970 still runs strong; I get 60+ FPS min. on Ultra & 80+ min. on High in BF4 @ 1080p (not sure I'd recommend the 7970 for a higher res. though - seems like the card's sweet spot is 1080p).

 

[dogen1]

Oh forgot to mention and it pretty much only happens in gameworks games, use AMD Optimized tesselation or overriding to 16x. They're virtually the same visually and you get a substantial free performance bump.

That can break some things, so you should probably leave it on AMD optimized or default.

 

[Yakk]

That can break some things, so you should probably leave it on AMD optimized or default.

Break how? Worst case you get more visible line segments in the wireframe. In my experience AMD is really conservative on their optimized setting and it does help considerably, but you can still squeeze out a lot of wasted performance with minimal visual differences.

 

[dogen1]

Break how? Worst case you get more visible line segments in the wireframe. In my experience AMD is really conservative on their optimized setting and it does help considerably, but you can still squeeze out a lot of wasted performance with minimal visual differences.

Tessellation based terrain systems for example.

 

[ZippZ]

I just replaced my 6950 with a 480 and it's like night and day. I can go to high settings instead of low and still get higher FPS in 1920x1200. I got this card for $190 and it'll be a stopgap until good 4k comes to mainstream cards and monitor prices come down a bit more. Maybe in a year or bit more.

 

[WaterFallEND]

This is a very cost-effective card, in China, the end of 2012 can spend 100 dollars to buy 280X (because digging mining collapse), until today it can still cool all 3A games, of course, in 1080P and you are not The pursuit of high quality under the premise.

 

[Yakk]

Tessellation based terrain systems for example.

Example? I play War Thunder which has tesselated a lot of items including the terrain system since becoming a gameworks title and forcing 16x is a godsend to recoup lost performance and prevent performance drops.

 

[dogen1]

Example? I play War Thunder which has tesselated a lot of items including the terrain system since becoming a gameworks title and forcing 16x is a godsend to recoup lost performance and prevent performance drops.

If you set it too low for the witcher 3 you get this.

 

[Smoblikat]

Absolutely, I play every game I want (except Ark to an extent) @ 1080P max settings with my 7970. I even installed several graphics enhancing mods for fallout 4 and didnt notice a drop in FPS at all. If it werent for the 3gb RAM, this would still be an extremely relevant card, but at 1080P ive only encountered 1 game that uses more than 3gb VRAM by default, and thats Ark......