Sapphire 7970GE Toxic Review

[3DVagabond]

Tweaktown has a review up. Not the best review site, but they've been scooping others lately. Gotta give them props. 1200MHz core 6gig of RAM! Let the fun begin!

Update: They've added an O/C review
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/4...n_toxic_6gb_video_card_overclocked/index.html

Update II: KitGuru has also added their review. More informative with a better choice of games. "Unorthodox" benching techniques as the settings are all over the place from one benchmark to the other. They even use 2 different systems for standard and Eyefinity testing.

Add Hexus and OverclockersClub

All we need now are the cards.

 

[-Slacker-]

Nice, a 1200mhz 7970 review and what do they test first? HAWX 2. Then Mafia 2, then LP2, only throwing in AvP to avoid getting raised eyebrows.

 

[spinejam]

Nice looking card!

 

[lehtv]

Holy crap that consumes a lot of power. 7850 at the bottom of the chart with 257W total system power consumption at the wall, so about 220W DC. And 7970GE Toxic at 517W which is about 440W DC.... The card itself must consume like 300 watts and it's just a single GPU

 

[blackened23]

Tweaktown has a review up. Not the best review site, but they've been scooping others lately. Gotta give them props. 1200MHz core 6gig of RAM! Let the fun begin!

Tweaktown sucks and is the worst possible place to go for a GPU review. Just look at their pathetic game suite, and they don't bother to test overclocking?

 

[SirPauly]

The site may not be ideal but they sure know how to receive the sku's before everyone else. Looks like an impressive sku!

 

[Silverforce11]

They are in Taiwan, hence the first dibs on new hardware.. its a shame their games are a sad joke, its not even funny.

Srsly 6gb vram why even bother.

 

[HurleyBird]

Srsly 6gb vram why even bother.

Sounds like a steal for HPC

 

[minitron]

LOL like any GPU in the world can drive 6GB worth of eyecandy...

 

[blackened23]

They are in Taiwan, hence the first dibs on new hardware.. its a shame their games are a sad joke, its not even funny.

Srsly 6gb vram why even bother.

Its designed for 5x1 surround, 6gb would help in that case. For single resolution it is worthless though, and that is why tweaktown is worthless. Why test such a card at 1080p....

 

[blackened23]

More specifically, 6gb is designed for stuff like this seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyQoFPO8RyA&feature=plcp

For this resolution, 6gb is helpful -- 2gb will fail at this resolution, but nvidia doesn't support 5x1 anyway. Thats mainly what this card is going after, eyefinity 6. 680 maxes out at 4 screens, AMD supports up to 6, hence the 6gb for 5x1.

This won't stop some from talking smack about anything and everything they possibly can (power consumption (I have 480 quad sli but I *really* care about power consumption guys!!), vRAM, only 1% of users have surround, etc, the list goes on) but there you go, thats what 6gb is for.

 

[toyota]

LOL like any GPU in the world can drive 6GB worth of eyecandy...

you dont get a 6gb or card because you expect to use 6gb. you get it because your other option is 3gb and that may not be enough. that being said, 3gb would be enough unless running several monitors and using multiple cards.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Can't one use additional vram for something other than games, though?

A small video-ram disk, for example

 

[hawtdawg]

No overclocking? WTF? That's all anyone would even want these GE editions for amiright?

 

[lehtv]

It already consumes 300W of power. I doubt it'll overclock much

 

[AdamK47]

6GB and 1200/1600 clocks makes this thing a beast. Too bad it doesn't mention pricing. It has gotta be pretty high.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

If this card consumes 300W of power it consumes as much as GTX 670 SLI. Only that GTX 670 SLI is much faster.

 

[guskline]

If this card consumes 300W of power it consumes as much as GTX 670 SLI. Only that GTX 670 SLI is much faster.

The Golden_Man: I think your sig answered my question. I'm eventually going to run the GTX 670s in SLI in rig 1 below. I have a new Antec 750 Gamer PSU and see that you run them with a Corsair 750 and also overclock your 2600k to 4.5 (I have a 2500k OC'd to 4.5). Sounds like a quality 750 PSU will handle the GTX 670 in SLI. Obviously the 7970GE uses much more power.

 

[3DVagabond]

The power test is run using 3Dmark11 which stresses more than the GPU. The difference between idle and load is for the entire system. We'll need to wait until someone like TechPowerUp reviews it to get the card measurements exclusive of the rest of the system. We'll also get to see it's power usage in games, avg., peak, etc...

 

[The_Golden_Man]

The Golden_Man: I think your sig answered my question. I'm eventually going to run the GTX 670s in SLI in rig 1 below. I have a new Antec 750 Gamer PSU and see that you run them with a Corsair 750 and also overclock your 2600k to 4.5 (I have a 2500k OC'd to 4.5). Sounds like a quality 750 PSU will handle the GTX 670 in SLI. Obviously the 7970GE uses much more power.

A quality 750w PSU works flawless with GTX 670 SLI. You can even go as low as a quality 600 - 650w PSU for GTX 670 SLI.

 

[3DVagabond]

Added O/C review link to OP. Still the same lame benchmark suite, but it does allow direct comparison to original 7970 numbers, at least.

O/C review

 

[blackened23]

Added O/C review link to OP. Still the same lame benchmark suite, but it does allow direct comparison to original 7970 numbers, at least.

O/C review

Performance there is crazy good, even though the game suite sucks like you mentioned. Its compared to overclocked 680s as well....

 

[BallaTheFeared]

AMD is topping the charts, in noise and power consumption.

 

[chimaxi83]

AMD is topping the charts, in noise and power consumption.

At least you have GTX 470 SLI though man :thumbsup:

 

[blackened23]

Its using like 50-55 watts more than the 680 reference does per the chart at http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/48...tion_toxic_6gb_video_card_review/index17.html

Although I will say, the warning is heeded. I really truly care about power consumption when I have an overclocked processor and 2 GPUs with a 1200W PSU, that 10 cents saved per month will add up over the years. Seriously, who cares? Its a good showing and performs crazy good, even though I would never buy that card it looks nice. I would definitely consider it if I wanted to blow a paycheck on a 5x1 surround setup.

Since i'm a mere mortal without 6 screens i'm pretty darn happy with Kepler.