FRONTPAGE AMD Releases HD 7970 GHz Edition

In what seems to be sort of a 'hey, we're still here!' moment, AMD is celebrating the six month anniversary of its HD 7970 GPU with a refresh. They're raising the GPU and memory clockspeeds on the reference card and releasing the AMD HD 7970 GHz Edition. They are also touting the new capabilities of some game partnerships as well as the improved coding of their Catalyst drivers for the entire 7xxx product stack.

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What's with the overkill on the watermarks in the example images? They're supposed to show the difference between different technologies but you can't see anything with the watermarks all over the pictures.

Blame that on the fools that break NDA. We never have (and never will), but everyone is now saddled with those watermarks.

I see, so those were provided by AMD? Maybe they should just skip those next time because you can't see a thing. It's ironic considering you're supposed to be looking at the difference between the two sides in the pictures.

How unfortunate and amusing.

I fail to see how a minor overclock is worth an NDA and crazy watermarking, personally.

I have the XFX Black Edition which is clocked at 1000 already. In CCC it goes up to 1125. I would think they would try to go a bit higher to stand out a little more? My opinion anyway.

yep my lightning comes stock at 1070 core /shrug

AMD needs Nvidia, and nVidia needs AMD.

without one the other, we be left with rotten GPUs. haha.

If you haven't already, make sure you get the 12.7 Catalyst drivers. I ran PCMark7 again after installing them, and my score raised from 3994 to 5014!

These pictures have more "CONFIDENTIAL" stamps on them than USA's nuclear missile location map

Oh well, the potential to make the 7000 series much faster using improved drivers is not new to us i guess. AMD had kinda crappy drivers and i even think that they can match Nvidia products easely when they finally get the drivers right.

However, after reading some reviews that card seems like a overclocked 7970 without any other advantages. Because the power consume is kinda insane, although a stock clocked 7970 is about same efficiency such as a 680 GTX. The GHZ edition does indeed offer impressive performance and can regulary beat the 680 GTX, however, because its just some high clocked 7970 and not a revolutionary "power save design", i consider it as AMDs rather pointless strike against Nvidia. Although kinda funny how those 2 competitors are able to enrich the GPU market, without them, IT would be not half that entertaining, and much weaker GPUs on the market.

The main improvements however, seems to be done with the newest driver improvements AMD was able to execute. Those improvements does even hit the usual 7970 and the entire 7000 series. Its fun to see that the 7970 got much closer to the 680 GTX, way to close... Nvidia truly have to watch theyr back. Nvidias superiority is currently only focused on the 690 GTX, thats certain, the other cards are at a harsh competition. Why AMD isnt releasing a dual GPU i dont know but i guess AMD is way to busy with different matters and its probably not so easy to cool that card down... because the 7970 seems to run hot and 2 of them is lot of challenge.

Under the image for Deferred Rendering Advantages, it says "Works well on game consoles". So where is the PCI-E slot on xbox 360 and PS3 so I can use a 7970?

I think the GCN architecture as a whole is meant to run great on consoles, which makes sense taking into account that probably all next gen consoles could be running with AMD chips. One of the main issue game consoles got is the lack on RAM. Using those rendering technologys apparently the required RAM amount can be lowered. Not that a console is up to the task anyway, its impossible in term a hardware is specified to run up to 10 (!) years.

Having a upgradeable game console makes no sense however, because then we have kinda the same situation such as we got on PC today. Some users will have a crap console and other user will have a jet engine. That would undercut the whole idea of having a standardized hardware. Its not even possible to develop games with max efficiency in mind in a way like that. Because on PC like half the performance is wasted just in order to support countless of system specs. Its not possible to make the "perfect" programing like that. One of the secrets why MAC OS runs more secure and stable is because of the narrow minded hardware support. Console is even more narrow minded for a reason.

While I do feel obligated to point out the memory upgrade you could buy for the N64 as well as the FX chip in some SNES cartridges, I actually agree across the board with what Ivy said.
GCN as well as the entire APU concept smells strongly of future console guts.

Does anybody else remember the days of directX vs specific APIs? Same game and card in Rendition mode (of 3DFX mode) was a lot faster than in DirectX mode.
Even OpenGL gave DirectX rather of a stomping.
These days I'm sure DirectX is better, but if games were written for specific cards the performance on those cards would be staggering. On the flip side, performance on anything else would be terrible or impossible.

As a final note, given that the Xbox systems run PC hardware inside (more or less) it's theoretically possible to add a PCIe slot. In reality it'd be horrendously difficult and expensive (read: Horrendously expensive and expensive), but it would be possible.

The first Xbox was some sort of weird PC. The newer consoles however got a custom design which is that far away from PC board that it is in no way compatible with foreign PC parts. The next gen consoles could be even more complicated (stuff such as dual GPU) and a design which is far away from a usual PC setup.

I'm thinking from the standpoint of it being a PC CPU and northbridge, the really hard part would be making a PCB to remount the NB on to bring out the PCIe lanes.

wawwwwww more cards that are more overpriced and less practical than just crossfiring their single GPU counterparts!... and that's my pessimistic 2 cents of the day >.<


EDIT: Oops wrong thread... *walks away embarrassed*

This is a single GPU 7970, not a dual GPU 7990...

The arguement can be made for reference clock vs factory OC cards in this case though.

I have Nexuiz and Dirt Showdown (Bundled with GPU), those features definitely make for a sharper more glossy look. As opposed to using standard AA ect...

It's good to see them unlocking more of the potential for some of there own goodies to set themselves apart.

Like nvidia's Physix.

thats cool