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Product Specifications
| General | |
| Brand: | Asus |
| Item Height : | 6 centimetres |
| Item Width: | 25 centimetres |
| Graphics | |
| Graphics Card Description: | AMD Radeon? HD 7970 |
| Graphics RAM Type: | Unknown |
| Graphics Card Ram Size: | 3 GB |
| Additional Specifications | |
| Wattage: | 500 watts |
Technical Details
- CrossfireX Support: Multi GPU Technology for Extreme performance.
- AMD Eyefinity ready: Extend the view across 6 displays to immerse yourself in gameplay and entertainment.
- PCI-E 3.0 Ready: Delivers double the bandwidth per lane of PCIe GEN2 for faster GPU- CPU communication.
- DirectX 11 Ready: Bring new levels of visual realism to gaming.
- AMD HD3D Ready: Optimize stereoscopic 3D gaming and movie watching.
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Product Description
Product Description
The next generation Asus HD7970-3GD5 graphics card has arrived, fitted with a 28nm GPU that packs 4.3bn transistors and is combined with 3GB GDDR5 Memory, it provides users with the speed for smoother gaming. Supporting full DirectX 11, AMD CrossFireX and AMD HD3D, the GPU includes an exclusive tweak utility which allows users to tune the performance of up to four graphics cards and check card status via an intuitive interface.
This GPU Tweak function links the GPU clock frequency to the voltage, so as you scale the GPU clock the voltage automatically follows; a useful tool for inexperienced Overclockers, It also enables users to select between 2D and 3D mode by providing the ability to change the respective clock speeds, voltages and fan speeds of either. Disabling the 2D mode also forces the faster 3D mode, stabilising overclocking and benchmarking results.
Embedded with GPU-Z to access accurate graphics card information, the card also contains a live update driver and BIOS benefiting users with the ability to keep their card in the best condition. Widget monitoring provides the choice to display the most needed information including a full widget, light widget or real time monitoring.
Furthermore, new PCI Express 3.0 delivers improved encoding and twice the performance of the previous PCI Express 2.0 and vision horizons can be expanded across six displays with AMD Eyefinity technology. This technology delivers innovative graphics display capabilities enabling massive desktop workspaces and ultra-immersive visual environments for the ultimate panoramic computing experience.
Product Description
ASUS HD 7970 graphics cards debut 28nm GPU power with GPU Tweak.
- First-ever 28nm GPUs and 3GB GDDR5 for smoother than ever gaming.
- GPU Tweak utility allows you to tune graphics card performance and check card status via an intuitive interface.
- New PCI Express 3.0 delivers improved encoding and twice the performance of PCI Express 2.0.
- Expand your visual horizons across six displays with AMD Eyefinity technology.
- First-ever 28nm GPUs and 3GB GDDR5 for smoother than ever gaming.
- GPU Tweak utility allows you to tune graphics card performance and check card status via an intuitive interface.
- New PCI Express 3.0 delivers improved encoding and twice the performance of PCI Express 2.0.
- Expand your visual horizons across six displays with AMD Eyefinity technology.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase
Since there is quite a lot I want to say about this card I will seperate the review into 'easily' digestible sections. IF you want to avoid the wall of text then scoot on down to the summary/conclusion part.
main points...
benchmarks
=-=-=-=-=-=
[...]
reference design (skip this if you already know what a reference card is)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Upon launch AMD provide the different brand manufacturers with their basic reference spec. These early release reference cards (which should all look pretty much the same) will have the same circuit board layout, heatsink, and fan placements, etc. Thus, there is very little difference (if any) between say a Sapphire reference and ASUS or MSI reference card.
Some short time after reference release the Brand manufacturers will design custom cards, often to increase cooling, noise reduction, overclocking, or other performance solutions at a small premium over the cost of the original reference build.
The HD 7970 reference isn't all that bad. Just take a look at the benchmark results from Tom's in the link above. Although it must be noted that custom designed cards from the likes of ASUS (direct CU II), MSI, Sapphire, etc, will be better.
There is also the option of purchasing a third party cooling mod solution, such as the Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme 7970 VGA Cooler for AMD Radeon. Be warned though, fitting one of these kits to your reference card involves disassembling the current unit and can be quite fiddly in addition to voiding your warranty.
noise
=-=-=
The single fan on the 7970 ref can spin at upto 4000rpm (according to the provided ASUS gpu tweak software). It usually sits at 1000rpm or thereabouts while idling or performing light duties, and is barely audible.
Under a light load, e.g. world of warcraft, it will spin around 1500rpm, and is still quiet.
More modern games will push the gpu even more, increase the heat, and that one small fan will then start to rise above 2k rpm. At that point the noise becomes noticable.
It is certainly not a quiet ref card under extreme load.
Personally I can live with it, although some may find it intrusive.
temperature
=-=-=-=-=-=
For a 28nm chip this thing still burns hot. On furmark I had it upto 87c after 15mins with the fan spinning like a mad man.
The heat is also noticeable oozing out the back of the pc case at the g-card connectors area.
This is inspite of two exhaust fans in the recommended top placements in my pc case, and extra cooling intake from the side case straight onto the card.
Thankfully in game I haven't seen anything near 87c yet, and thats after several hours of non stop 3d gaming.
That's not to say that 87c is a dangeours temp for this gpu. From what I've read this is ok, although not ideal, and especially with the noise the fan makes trying to cool it down.
Under normal conditions, idle/light load, it will amble along quiet and cool at around 40c.
performance
=-=-=-=-=-=
The important bit. Again Tom's benchmarks show you in-depth results in various tests. Personally though I can say that this card has so far played everything I've thrown at it on max settings with an average of 110 fps (95 fps ave on furmark burn in).
One small point about microstutter type effect on various games. I found this was infact caused by the bundled ASUS gpu tweak software with monitoring turned on. So if you find some stutter in game (usually every 4 seconds without fail) then turn off your gpu monitoring gizmos.
Finally, I would recommend using in game VSYNC options, or preferrably D3Doverrider (available in the free RivaTuner tweaking software) to limit frame to 60. This will decrease the load on your card, and subsequently lower temps and quieter gaming.
box, bundled software & drivers
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
On opening the box I was amazed by the lush presentation, then immediately underwhelmed by the absence of any decent instructions. One small panflet showing some dude installing a card from 2005 in 6 photographs isn't ideal.
As always ASUS do provide some sofware, namely their GPU-Tweak overclocking and monitoring software.
Unless you have earmuffs and a fridge freezer placed on top of it I wouldn't recommend clocking this reference card anyway. I believe there are also better software solutions for this purpose if thats your aim.
As mentioned previously the monitoring tab of gpu-tweak caused constant microstutter in every game I played. I'm sure this must have resulted in a few unrequired RMA's. Simply turn it off and problem solved. There are other monitoring solutions, such as gpu-z.
Drivers-wise... there have only been 2 updates (since Feb'2012) from AMD at time of writing. I think they can squeeze even more from this card with future updates, but we'll have to wait to see if/when they do that.
competition
=-=-=-=-=-=
Tom's put this card up against strong competition in the form of NVidia's gt580 and the dual gpu flagships AMD 6990 and Nvidia gt 590.
It's not exactly direct comparisons for various reason. First of all, the gt580 has been around for a while, second of all the 6990/590 are dual gpu cards and would still cost you a lot more than what the 7970 would.
I think the comparisons with the dual gpu cards were drawn to show how close the single gpu of the 7970 could get to them in terms of performance and also power consumption vs performance.
In my opinion this card is a strange orphan, released at a time when AMD thought would be best to cap a few sales before NVidia's kepler based gt 680's arrived and took the crown of fastest single gpu gaming card.
However, depending on what price you can nab one of these 7970's at, it is still an impressive purchase. It outperforms the gt 580, and for power-per-performance-per-buck type of thing it's probably relatively better than the 6990 and gt 590 all things considered.
In short... it competes, and it competes well with the current competition. Problem is the 'current' competition has been around a while, and it's the near future competition AMD should have been more worried about.
summary pro's & con's
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Pro's...
* Great performance in all modern games, and most likely all others for the next few years
* Prices should come down soon, if they haven't already, since gt 680 release is imminent
* 7970 Reference cards aren't all that bad
* Can be customised with an Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme 7970 VGA Cooler for AMD Radeon to make the reference suitable for over clocking
* Quiet on light/medium duties
Con's...
* AMD Driver support is lacking at the moment, with only 2 driver updates since feb'12
* Can be noisy under power load
* Requires a case with good cooling
* Card is massive - lengh of it is slightly longer than the width of your ATX motherboard, on the Z68 I have this overhangs at the sata 3 connectors making it fiddly to connect/disconnect those
* The NVidia gt 680 is (almost?) out, and from early reports beats the 7970 in gaming performance at a similar price range (see pro's above for possible benefit due to this)
conclusion
=-=-=-=-=-=
I wanted to love this card so much. I am a long time ATI fanboy, and been put off NVidia with bad experiences in the past. It's just... I am left with a few negative points on reviewing my purchase.
Because of demand this card has actually gone up in price since I bought it for a bargain on pre-order. But I still don't feel smug about it, because lurking around the corner is the gt 680, and there is still part of me wishes I had hung on... just a few months longer.
That said, the HD 7970 is a good card. It IS one of the best available, just not THE best.
I'm still hovering between 3 stars and 4 stars, because it really comes down to the price reaction.
There's no way you can recommend the 7970 over the gt 680 if it's at the same price point, but if my suspicions come true and the price does come down then it's perhaps edging more towards the 4 star.
edit: just noticed the price has indeed dropped on this model. I think it's still 3 and a half stars, but I'll give it 4 based on the fact that it should become even cheaper over the coming months, and hopefully AMD will have released some driver updates by then too.
main points...
benchmarks
=-=-=-=-=-=
[...]
reference design (skip this if you already know what a reference card is)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Upon launch AMD provide the different brand manufacturers with their basic reference spec. These early release reference cards (which should all look pretty much the same) will have the same circuit board layout, heatsink, and fan placements, etc. Thus, there is very little difference (if any) between say a Sapphire reference and ASUS or MSI reference card.
Some short time after reference release the Brand manufacturers will design custom cards, often to increase cooling, noise reduction, overclocking, or other performance solutions at a small premium over the cost of the original reference build.
The HD 7970 reference isn't all that bad. Just take a look at the benchmark results from Tom's in the link above. Although it must be noted that custom designed cards from the likes of ASUS (direct CU II), MSI, Sapphire, etc, will be better.
There is also the option of purchasing a third party cooling mod solution, such as the Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme 7970 VGA Cooler for AMD Radeon. Be warned though, fitting one of these kits to your reference card involves disassembling the current unit and can be quite fiddly in addition to voiding your warranty.
noise
=-=-=
The single fan on the 7970 ref can spin at upto 4000rpm (according to the provided ASUS gpu tweak software). It usually sits at 1000rpm or thereabouts while idling or performing light duties, and is barely audible.
Under a light load, e.g. world of warcraft, it will spin around 1500rpm, and is still quiet.
More modern games will push the gpu even more, increase the heat, and that one small fan will then start to rise above 2k rpm. At that point the noise becomes noticable.
It is certainly not a quiet ref card under extreme load.
Personally I can live with it, although some may find it intrusive.
temperature
=-=-=-=-=-=
For a 28nm chip this thing still burns hot. On furmark I had it upto 87c after 15mins with the fan spinning like a mad man.
The heat is also noticeable oozing out the back of the pc case at the g-card connectors area.
This is inspite of two exhaust fans in the recommended top placements in my pc case, and extra cooling intake from the side case straight onto the card.
Thankfully in game I haven't seen anything near 87c yet, and thats after several hours of non stop 3d gaming.
That's not to say that 87c is a dangeours temp for this gpu. From what I've read this is ok, although not ideal, and especially with the noise the fan makes trying to cool it down.
Under normal conditions, idle/light load, it will amble along quiet and cool at around 40c.
performance
=-=-=-=-=-=
The important bit. Again Tom's benchmarks show you in-depth results in various tests. Personally though I can say that this card has so far played everything I've thrown at it on max settings with an average of 110 fps (95 fps ave on furmark burn in).
One small point about microstutter type effect on various games. I found this was infact caused by the bundled ASUS gpu tweak software with monitoring turned on. So if you find some stutter in game (usually every 4 seconds without fail) then turn off your gpu monitoring gizmos.
Finally, I would recommend using in game VSYNC options, or preferrably D3Doverrider (available in the free RivaTuner tweaking software) to limit frame to 60. This will decrease the load on your card, and subsequently lower temps and quieter gaming.
box, bundled software & drivers
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
On opening the box I was amazed by the lush presentation, then immediately underwhelmed by the absence of any decent instructions. One small panflet showing some dude installing a card from 2005 in 6 photographs isn't ideal.
As always ASUS do provide some sofware, namely their GPU-Tweak overclocking and monitoring software.
Unless you have earmuffs and a fridge freezer placed on top of it I wouldn't recommend clocking this reference card anyway. I believe there are also better software solutions for this purpose if thats your aim.
As mentioned previously the monitoring tab of gpu-tweak caused constant microstutter in every game I played. I'm sure this must have resulted in a few unrequired RMA's. Simply turn it off and problem solved. There are other monitoring solutions, such as gpu-z.
Drivers-wise... there have only been 2 updates (since Feb'2012) from AMD at time of writing. I think they can squeeze even more from this card with future updates, but we'll have to wait to see if/when they do that.
competition
=-=-=-=-=-=
Tom's put this card up against strong competition in the form of NVidia's gt580 and the dual gpu flagships AMD 6990 and Nvidia gt 590.
It's not exactly direct comparisons for various reason. First of all, the gt580 has been around for a while, second of all the 6990/590 are dual gpu cards and would still cost you a lot more than what the 7970 would.
I think the comparisons with the dual gpu cards were drawn to show how close the single gpu of the 7970 could get to them in terms of performance and also power consumption vs performance.
In my opinion this card is a strange orphan, released at a time when AMD thought would be best to cap a few sales before NVidia's kepler based gt 680's arrived and took the crown of fastest single gpu gaming card.
However, depending on what price you can nab one of these 7970's at, it is still an impressive purchase. It outperforms the gt 580, and for power-per-performance-per-buck type of thing it's probably relatively better than the 6990 and gt 590 all things considered.
In short... it competes, and it competes well with the current competition. Problem is the 'current' competition has been around a while, and it's the near future competition AMD should have been more worried about.
summary pro's & con's
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Pro's...
* Great performance in all modern games, and most likely all others for the next few years
* Prices should come down soon, if they haven't already, since gt 680 release is imminent
* 7970 Reference cards aren't all that bad
* Can be customised with an Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme 7970 VGA Cooler for AMD Radeon to make the reference suitable for over clocking
* Quiet on light/medium duties
Con's...
* AMD Driver support is lacking at the moment, with only 2 driver updates since feb'12
* Can be noisy under power load
* Requires a case with good cooling
* Card is massive - lengh of it is slightly longer than the width of your ATX motherboard, on the Z68 I have this overhangs at the sata 3 connectors making it fiddly to connect/disconnect those
* The NVidia gt 680 is (almost?) out, and from early reports beats the 7970 in gaming performance at a similar price range (see pro's above for possible benefit due to this)
conclusion
=-=-=-=-=-=
I wanted to love this card so much. I am a long time ATI fanboy, and been put off NVidia with bad experiences in the past. It's just... I am left with a few negative points on reviewing my purchase.
Because of demand this card has actually gone up in price since I bought it for a bargain on pre-order. But I still don't feel smug about it, because lurking around the corner is the gt 680, and there is still part of me wishes I had hung on... just a few months longer.
That said, the HD 7970 is a good card. It IS one of the best available, just not THE best.
I'm still hovering between 3 stars and 4 stars, because it really comes down to the price reaction.
There's no way you can recommend the 7970 over the gt 680 if it's at the same price point, but if my suspicions come true and the price does come down then it's perhaps edging more towards the 4 star.
edit: just noticed the price has indeed dropped on this model. I think it's still 3 and a half stars, but I'll give it 4 based on the fact that it should become even cheaper over the coming months, and hopefully AMD will have released some driver updates by then too.
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