Introduction
Hey guys!
Hows it going? Finally got my hands on the HD 7970 Gigahertz Edition and i thought i should do a review for you. Now the sample i have today is the Matrix Platinum Version of HD 7970 from Asus which is a beast in its own right.
This card is clocked higher than any other 7970 Gigahertz Edition in the market and as such it competes directly with the 7970 Lighting as to the specs. Clocking in at 1100 MHz Core and 1650 MHz memory speed this THE fastest 7970 as of now.
Lets take a look what Asus have in their 7970 offerings and then we shall check out more about this card.
| Model name | MATRIXHD7970P-3GD5(Platinum Edition) | MATRIXHD7970-3GD5 |
| Graphics engine | AMD Radeon™ HD 7970 GHz Edition | |
| Stream processors | 2048 | |
| Bus standard | PCI Express® 3.0 | |
| OpenGL® | OpenGL 4.2 | |
| Video memory | 3072MB GDDR5 | |
| Engine clock | 1100MHz (boost clock)1050MHz (base clock) | 1050MHz (boost clock)1000MHz (base clock) |
| Memory clock | 6600MHz (1650MHz GDDR5) | |
| Memory interface | 384-bit | |
| DVI max resolution | 2560 x 1600 | |
| DVI output | 1 x single link DVI1 x dual link DVI | |
| HDMI output | 1 x HDMI via adapter | |
| HDCP compliant | Yes | |
| DisplayPort | 4 x native DisplayPort | |
| Adapters/cables bundled |
2 x 8-pin power cable, 1 x DVI to HDMI adapter,1 x extended CrossFire™ bridge, 1 x VRM heatsink for liquid nitrogen overclocking |
|
| Software bundled | ASUS utilities and driver GPU Tweak |
|
| Dimensions | 11″ x 5.1″ x 2.1″ (2.6-slot) | |
Specs and Closer look
Now coming to this card specifically lets see what we have in the store for us.
A few pics should take care of it .. right ?
First up..the Box from different angle(sounds cheesy..but cant help it).
The front of the box is typical ROG.The branding and the logo takes up all the space.
Now the main fun starts under the cover err..flap.
The flap has a lot of information about the cards and a nice blowout view of the card.
Inside we see the card nesting in the foam packaging in all its glory.
And at the back we again see a lot of information and specifications which is listed above.
Inside the box we have a standard two box package one housing the card and the other containing the accessories.
On to the next page please..
Not much to say in this part, I will do the pictures do the talking.
First up a blowout view of the Card
Now coming to the actual card lets see what Asus has in store for us.
We have the card
Some standard and non standard accessories
The main attraction here is the leads for VGA hot wire and the extra mofset for liquid Nitrogen cooling setups.
by including these two accessories Asus has made out of the box LN2 overclcoking a bit easier so that overclockers can concentrate on more important matters..like overclocking.
Asus has given ample display out put option to run multi-monitor setup out of the box with Dual DVI,4X Display ports and 1 HDMI ports.
A few more pics and i will wrap this one up
The dual 10 CM fans are the main features of the Direct CU II cooling used in the card and they sure do a real good job,even at 100% they don’t sound like a jet.
This card requires 2x 8 pin PCI-E power cables and as such i would suggest at least a 600W PSU from a reputed brand to be on the safe side.
Here we see one of the signature feature of the Matrix lineup;the load indicator which changes from green to red depending on the GPU load.
The indicator looks very nice if u have a windowed side panel.
The on board OC buttons and the safe mode buttons are a nice addition for anyone who doesn’t want to go too messy with voltages and want a hassle free experience. The Safe mode button would rescue you if you have gone too far with the overclocking along with looking good in the night.
And for the ones who wants to try volts mods Asus have provided soldering points.
So just from the pics we can say Asus dint really care about cutting down on anything when designing the card.
now it time for benchmarks and stuffs that matter.
Test setup and Overclocking
First up let me give you an idea on the test system i will be using.
| CPU | Intel Core i5 2500K |
|---|---|
| Motherboard | Asus P8Z68 Deluxe |
| Ram | Kingston 1600Mhz 16GB DDr3 |
| Storage | Western Digital 320GB HDD (WD320AAKX) |
| Video Card | Asus matrix Platinum HD 7970 |
| Cooling | Noctua NH D14 with Scythe Gentle Typhoon’s |
| Case | Ghetto made bench table |
| Power supply Unit | Corsair AX 1200W |
Drivers used
Catalyst 13.1 WHQL
Catalyst 13.2 Beta 7 for Crysis 3 and Tomb raider.
Stock settings:
Now coming to the overclocking part. Overclocking the 7970 was a breeze with all the features included.now we already know the Matrix Platinum comes overclocked out of the box so i didn’t expect too much of an overclock on air.
Overclocking was fairly easy with the bundled Asus GPU Tweak utility. Once we got the hang of the different options we settled with a healthy overclock of 1200Mhz on the core. I didn’t touch the memory clock since the scores were negatively affected with memory overclocking. Seems like the Hynix memory chips doesn’t play well on air.
Now over the next few pages I will show the stock performance and the overclocking performances,read on..
Benchmarks: Crysis(1,2,3)
Crysis is a FPS series developed by German developer Crytek and published by Electronic Arts. The series revolves around a group of military protagonists with “nanosuits,” technologically advanced suits of armor that allow them to gain enhanced physical strength, speed, defense, and cloaking abilities. The protagonists face off against hostile North Korean soldiers, heavily-armed mercenaries, and a race of technologically advanced aliens known as the Ceph, who arrived on Earth millions of years ago for unclear reasons, and have recently been awakened. the game uses “cryEngine” which very demanding on the GPU and had made itself an benchmark from the time of its release. The story continues through 3 games.
Settings:
Crysis 1 :AA=4x, Quality: VeryHigh
Crysis 2 :Ultra+High res texture (DX 11 patch applied)
Crysis 3 :8X MSAA Very High Setting 16X AF (AMD suggested for a 7970)
Since Crysis was THE benchmark for all gaming rigs i didn’t expect astronomical FPS.but overall it was playable even with highest settings.
Benchmarks: Metro 2033 & Sniper Elite V2
Next up is one more giant..Metro 2033
It’s a first-person shooter video game with survival horror elements, based on the novel Metro 2033 by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. It was developed by 4A Games in Ukraine and released in March 2010. The game is played from the perspective of Artyom, the player-character. The story takes place in post-apocalyptic Moscow. The game uses 4A Engine which supports Direct3D APIs 9, 10, and 11, along with NVidia’s PhysX and also NVidia’s 3D Vision.
Settings:
Quality: Very High; Antialiasing: MSAA 4X; Texture filtering: AF 4X; Advanced PhysX: Disabled; Tesselation: Enabled; DOF: Enabled
Sniper Elite V2 is a 2012 tactical shooter video game developed by Rebellion Developments.It’s a remake of Rebellion’s 2005 game Sniper Elite. The game takes place in the same timeframe and location—the Battle of Berlin in April–May 1945. The game uses the ASURA engine.
For benchmarking we used the benchmarking demo released by rebellion.
Setting:All maxed out with 2.25X super sampling.
Benchmarks: Dirt 3, Stalker:Call of Pripyat
DiRT 3 is a rallying video game and the third in the Dirt series of the Colin McRae Rally series, developed and published by Codemasters based on the EGO 2.0 engine.The Ego engine was developed to render more detailed damage and physics as well as render large-scale environments.
Setting:Ultra/MSAA 4X
and yes..am also saying..what sorcery is this? but we can see how powerful the card is.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat is an open world first-person shooter video game based on the X-Ray Engine.The X-Ray Engine is a game engine, supporting DirectX 8.1/9.0c/10/10.1/11 and Shader Model 5.0. Up to a million polygons can be on-screen at any one time. The engine features HDR rendering, parallax and normal mapping, soft shadows, motion blur, widescreen support, weather effects and day/night cycles. As with other engines that utilize deferred shading, the X-Ray Engine does not support anti-aliasing and motion blur with enhanced dynamic lighting modes enabled. However, a “fake” form of anti-aliasing can be enabled with the static lighting option; this format utilizes a technique to blur the image to give the false impression of anti-aliasing.
Settings: Ultra/4X DX 11/Sun Shafts preset
Benchmarks: Unreal 3 benchmark, Alien vs predator
Unreal 3 benchmark is based on a game named Passion Leads Army using the Unreal 3 Engine. The third and current generation of the Unreal Engine (UE3) is designed for DirectX (versions 9-11 for Windows and Xbox 360), as well as systems using OpenGL, including the PlayStation 3, Mac OS X, iOS, Android, Stage 3D for Adobe Flash Player 11, PlayStation Vita and Wii U[10]. Its renderer supports many advanced techniques including HDRR, per-pixel lighting, and dynamic shadows.
settings:High 4X MSAA PP on High Tex DYN Shadows on
Aliens VS. Predator DirectX 11 benchmark provides stunning graphics through the use of DirectX 11 Tessellation and DirectX 11 Advanced Shadow features, Geometry Tessellation is applied in an effective manner to enhance and more accurately depict HR GigerÂ’s famous Alien design. Through the use of a variety of adaptive schemes, applying tessellation when and where it is necessary, the perfect blend of performance and eye candy is achieved.
Setting: Very high preset,4X MSAA,16X Anti,SSAO,Tessellation,Advanced shadows.
A few more benchmarks and am going to wrap this up..promise!
Benchmarks: BF3, Hitman Absolution, Tomb raider
I am going to wrap the gaming performance part with 3 GPU heavy games.
Battlefield 3 is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE and published by Electronic Arts. It is a direct sequel to 2005′s Battlefield 2, and the twelfth installment in the Battlefield franchise. The game uses Frostbite 2 which is the next generation of Frostbite Engine. It takes full advantage of the DirectX 11 API and 64-bit processors,with no support for DirectX 9 so NO XP.It also features enhanced in-game destruction with Destruction 3.0, creating more refined physics than its predecessor and quasi-realtime radiosity using Geomerics’ Enlighten technology.
Settings: All maxed out Ultra 4X MSAA.
Hitman: Absolution (HMA) is an action-adventure stealth game developed by IO Interactive and published by Square Enix.It is the fifth entry in the Hitman game series, and runs on IO Interactive’s proprietary Glacier 2 game engine.
One of the key points in this game is the lighting and its ability to render upto 1200 NPC at a time.
Settings: High 4X MSAA Post Processing on High Textures Dynamic Shadows on.
Tomb Raider is an action-adventure video game. Published by Square Enix, Tomb Raider is the fifth title developed by Crystal Dynamics in the Tomb Raider franchise. As the first entry in a new Tomb Raider continuity, the game is a reboot that emphasizes the reconstructed origins of the culturally influential lead character Lara Croft.
Settings: Ultra preset.
Next stop, computing benchmarks.
Computing Performance
Now we test the card as to how it performs in computing calculation with its GCN architecture.
Not much to say about this benchmarks..the graphs will speak for themselves.
First up is LuxMark-an OpenCL benchmark based on LuxRender. LuxRender is a physically based and unbiased rendering engine. Based on state of the art algorithms, LuxRender simulates the flow of light according to physical equations, thus producing realistic images of photographic quality
Scene:room
next up is DirectCompute and Opencl benchmark
now i didn’t have any other card from the green side to compare but what i can gather the 7970 holds a respectable lead over any other single gpu cards out there in computing performance.
Synthetics
okey..i know you guys are pretty bored by now so am gonna finally wrap it up with some synthetics results.
3DMark is a computer benchmarking tool created and developed by Futuremark Corporation (formerly MadOnion.com and initially Futuremark) to determine the performance of a computer’s 3D graphic rendering and CPU workload processing capabilities.The higher the score the better the system. As each 3DMark is based on a specific version of the DirectX API scores cannot be compared across the different releases.We have tested two version which is by overclockers and benchmarker’s world-wide.
Next up is one hilarious benchmark where a cat invades a city and ultimately is stopped by a girl and her cat.Soundtrack is very catchy..and the benchmark is quite heavy on some systems.
So..that wraps up the benchmarks part.
lets finish this..shall we?
Final Words
When the HD7970 came out, it was the performance king in the high-end segment then came GTX 680 which took away its crown in gaming.The 7970 Gigahertz edition was AMD’s answer to Nvidia for taking back the performance crown and it succeeded by trading blows with the 680 in gaming and decimating it in the computing part since the Keplar generation of GPU’s have no CU’s. Whereas with the new GCN architecture AMD manged to blend both Computing and gaming performance in one chip.
I personality always look for quality over quantity when it comes to computer components and as such i tend to look at every components with a very critical eye.
When I received this product i had high hopes since this is a premium top of the line product and am happy to say it didn’t disappoint me and i had a lot of fun reviewing this card.
Coming to this card in particular Asus has brought out a monster performance wise.
From a gamers point of view it can play any kind of games i could throw at it, even Crysis 3 at acceptable frame rates.So that’s a winner in my book.
From an overclocker’s point of view this card has everything an overclocker could ever want from his tools.
So all in all a good card made by Asus
In terms of ratings it’s a 4.5/5 from me, and when i have shown the performance number to my team they agreed to my views.
So there you have it..
a 4.5/5 from Team OCFreaks and i would recommenced this to anyone who wants the best of the best at a sub 40K budget.
so that takes care of my review.
In the end i would like to thank a few people:
- Asus India for providng me the sample.
- Team OCFreaks for supporting me throughout.
- Mr Sanjib Ray for helping me out with his camera and his valuable tips on photography,without him the pictures would have been much worse.
Until next time..
Sumon Pathak