PowerColor HD7970 Overclocking & Eyefinity Review

Conclusion

When we were testing the VTX3D at stock we were blown away by the immense performance available with the HD7970. Of course we were chomping at the bit to overclock it, and boy was it worth the wait.

The most important thing is ease of overclocking. It’s all very well us going on about the performance enhancement that overclocking brings, but we’re aware that not everyone is comfortable with pushing their hardware beyond the recommended limits. Especially if you’re a little tight for cash, as most of us are, the last thing you need is to release the magic smoke.

Thankfully the HD7970 is a complete breeze to overclock. No need to fret about temperatures or voltages. Simply load up Catalyst, unlock the overclocking, slide the GPU slider to the end, apply and you’re done.

And heavens to betsy it’s worth doing. Whilst the stock results are damn impressive, when overclocked it’s a total animal. Gobbling up everything we threw at it without a flinch. When the HD7970 is beating out the HD6990 and pretty often smokes the GTX590 too, then what can we do but smile and nod at the enormous leap forwards AMD have made.

Let there be no doubt, this is the fastest single-GPU card available. If you want the hottest thing right now then this is it.

As for Eyefinity, it’s not quite there yet. There are some titles that work perfectly well, but a single card isn’t quite capable of running everything at the moment.

Of course being a reference design there isn’t much to talk about with the PowerColor side of things. It’s nice that they have used plan cardboard for the internal packaging, because every bit of the environment we can save is a good thing. It’s also nice to have a free copy of Dirt 3. The only thing about that is that anyone who has brought a GPU in the last 12 months has probably got a free one already, so a different game would have been nice.

A stunning card that is only improved by the overclocking. Of course it gets the OC3D Gold Award.

   

Thanks to PowerColor for supplying the HD7970 for review. Discuss in our forums.