[H] Radeon 7970 Overclocking Results, Review & Performance.

[Grooveriding]

AMD Radeon HD 7970 Overclocking Performance Review

Hard got the 7970 to 1260Mhz on the core & 6900Mhz on the memory with voltage added. A 30% overclock!! It is laying waste to an overclocked 580 ( 50% faster in Battlefield 3 ) and the stock 7970 ( 30% faster in Battlefield 3 ).

The 7970 is scaling almost perfectly with overclocking looking at the averages, showing nearly 30% gains in performance from a 30% gain in overclocking the core speed. At these speeds the 7970 is as fast or faster than a Radeon 6990 or GTX 590. Very impressive. Looking forward to seeing what the custom 7970s soon to be released are going to do overclocking wise.

Also want to hear from our members here when they get their 7970s in with the overclocking results they see!

 

[Don Karnage]

GTX 580 is a huge waste of money now at 500.00. Prices need to drop. Do you hear me Nvidia?

 

[jackstar7]

Seeing minimums breaking into 30-40s is really impressive at that rez on a single card.

Hope other reviews corroborate their findings.

 

[Don Karnage]

How much faster is 6970 Xfire compared to a single 7970? Anyone have a % wise?

 

[badb0y]

AMD Radeon HD 7970 Overclocking Performance Review

Hard got the 7970 to 1260Mhz on the core & 6900Mhz on the memory with voltage added. A 30% overclock!!

The 7970 is scaling almost perfectly with overclocking looking at the averages, showing nearly 30% gains in performance from a 30% gain in overclocking. At these speeds the 7970 is as fast or faster than a Radeon 6990 or GTX 590. Very impressive. Looking forward to seeing what the custom 7970s soon to be released are going to do overclocking wise.

Also want to hear from our members here when they get their 7970s in with the overclocking results they see!

 

[Don Karnage]

In the 580's defense an 860 core overclock is freakin weak. They do 950+ pretty easily

 

[VulgarDisplay]

It's just crazy to me that through overclocking the 7970 can almost get another generational leap in performance over the stock 7970. I see a bright future for AMD with GCN. Once they get the 28nm process running smoothly GCN will be great.

Can you imagine if they did a 500mm2 die with GCN? (I can lol, probably use too much power, make too much heat, and be underclocked to make up for it.)

 

[Quantos]

This is not really viable with the reference card, though. If it has to be at 75% fan all the way, that'd be probably very annoying. With a custom fan, though...

 

[Vesku]

Yeah, wouldn't hurt to manually OC the 580 also. Won't change the 580 from being overpriced now that the 7970 is out, though.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

This is not really viable with the reference card, though. If it has to be at 75% fan all the way, that'd be probably very annoying. With a custom fan, though...

With the right headphones it wouldn't be an issue. Although my ASUS 5870 (some beefed up cooler version) sounds like a dust buster at 60% fan speed.

 

[Don Karnage]

Yeah, wouldn't hurt to manually OC the 580 also. Won't change the 580 from being overpriced now that the 7970 is out, though.

Agreed. I'm sure a 950+ core 580 would make it a tad bit closer but the prices need to come down.

 

[Grooveriding]

This is not really viable with the reference card, though. If it has to be at 75% fan all the way, that'd be probably very annoying. With a custom fan, though...

Dude, it couldn't be worse than the roar of my 480s @ 85% fan speed to keep them under 90C temps. :ninja: Granted I have 3 sandwiched though.

Still waiting for the Lightning 7970s to come out, as I am so due for using video cards that are quieter than what I'm using now. Also if this is what reference cards are doing, I want to see what a custom PCB built for overclocking with cherry picked cores is going to do :thumbsup:

 

[VulgarDisplay]

So at their max overclock they are on average 59% faster than the slightly overclocked gtx580. That's insane...

Do want.

 

[Skurge]

Makes you wonder why AMD didn't launch them at 1.1ghz. they seem to gain about 2C in temps at those clocks. But I guess they wanted maximum yields and them when Keplar comes out and the process has improved they can launch a competing product.

So sad it's so expensive here.

 

[toyota]

In addition, we had to manually set the fan to 75% to keep the GPU cool enough. At 75% the fan was very loud and annoying, but it allowed us to achieve this high overclock.


um screw that 1260mhz oc. I would just go with the max 1125mhz oc in overdrive than to put up with all that racket.

 

[toyota]

Makes you wonder why AMD didn't launch them at 1.1ghz. they seem to gain about 2C in temps at those clocks. But I guess they wanted maximum yields and them when Keplar comes out and the process has improved they can launch a competing product.

So sad it's so expensive here.

probably because not all of them could even hit that and they needed to get as many out as possible.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

probably because not all of them could even hit that and they needed to get as many out as possible.

I'm sure it has a lot to do with keeping power consumption in check also. I would think with a voltage increase most cards could reach 1125ghz on the core. AMD more than likely had a certain wattage planned out well in advance and set clocks to keep at that wattage.

 

[blackened23]

In the 580's defense an 860 core overclock is freakin weak. They do 950+ pretty easily

You are very mistaken sir. They definitely do NOT do 950+ easily

You pretty much need something like an MSI lightning or gigabyte SOC to do 950. And even then it is not guaranteed. I had a reference 580 before my lightnings (which I returned to amazon) which couldn't get past 815, even with voltage tweaking. After that I decided it was MSI Lightning or bust.

I know a TON of people and IRL friends that cant' get past 825 with their EVGA reference cards. Its definitely not easy dude Some can, some can't. GTX 580s also get hella hot with voltage increases, especially reference cards.

 

[Spikesoldier]

i want to see what temps would be like with a monster heatsink like the thermalright shaman with an oc of like ~1200.

it would be worth picking up that monster with a new top end card. if i had 650 to blow right now...

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

You are very mistaken sir. They definitely do NOT do 950+ easily

You pretty much need something like an MSI lightning or gigabyte SOC to do 950. And even then it is not guaranteed. I had a reference 580 before my lightnings (which I returned to amazon) which couldn't get past 815, even with voltage tweaking. After that I decided it was MSI Lightning or bust.

I know a TON of people and IRL friends that cant' get past 825 with their EVGA reference cards. Its definitely not easy dude Some can, some can't. GTX 580s also get hella hot with voltage increases, especially reference cards.

This. Reference 580 could do 810 and that's as high as I was willing to go as temps were getting pretty high. Got an Asus DCII and it could do 901mhz. So yeah 950 is not common at all

 

[Don Karnage]

You are very mistaken sir. They definitely do NOT do 950+ easily

You pretty much need something like an MSI lightning or gigabyte SOC to do 950. And even then it is not guaranteed. I had a reference 580 before my lightnings (which I returned to amazon) which couldn't get past 815, even with voltage tweaking. After that I decided it was MSI Lightning or bust.

I know a TON of people and IRL friends that cant' get past 825 with their EVGA reference cards. Its definitely not easy dude Some can, some can't. GTX 580s also get hella hot with voltage increases, especially reference cards.

Wow really? I stumbled upon a 1Ghz core thread over at the EVGA forums. Guess i shouldn't have assumed that. The highest i saw was a 580 Matrix review that overclocked there's to 1070 core

 

[Arachnotronic]

Wow really? I stumbled upon a 1Ghz core thread over at the EVGA forums. Guess i shouldn't have assumed that. The highest i saw was a 580 Matrix review that overclocked there's to 1070 core

My old Zotac reference GTX 580 did about 850 stable.

 

[kami]

Reference 580s dont have nearly as good of a power system as the custom ones, plus the reference cooler is also weaker. For the high end 580s, I would agree 950 is pretty normal. Not for reference though.

Back on topic that's a nice OC but I am not impressed by it besting a 580, that should be expected for a new generation. Would rather wait to see where the equivalent kepler stands against the 7970. This does make the 580 overpriced though. Should be lowered to the low-400s because of the release of the 7970.

 

[Nintendesert]

Reference 580s dont have nearly as good of a power system as the custom ones, plus the reference cooler is also weaker. For the high end 580s, I would agree 950 is pretty normal. Not for reference though.

Back on topic that's a nice OC but I am not impressed by it besting a 580, that should be expected for a new generation. Would rather wait to see where the equivalent kepler stands against the 7970. This does make the 580 overpriced though. Should be lowered to the low-400s because of the release of the 7970.

Only problem I have with that is that Kepler unfortunately is nowhere to be seen. Perhaps I missed some CES news today though. Only thing Nvidia can counter the 7970 with right now is the 580. I wish they'd drop the price for it though.

 

[darkewaffle]

I'm sure I just missed this somewhere, but the OC's operational voltage is 1.3V. What's the stock setting?