AMD Radeon Refresh - HD 7970 GHz Edition (Review)
With all of the expected single-GPU SKUs in the Southern Island product stack launched, you might think that this article would herald the arrival of the "big daddy" dual-GPU Radeon HD 7990. Well, you'd be wrong. And probably disappointed, considering that AMD all but showed off the Radeon HD 7990 at AMD Fusion Developer Summit.
What we are talking about is an update to the flagship Radeon HD 7970, with the HD 7970 GHz Edition. The "GHz Edition" monicker was first used with the mainstream Radeon HD 7770, being the first card to break 1,000 MHz barrier for the core clock. The original Radeon HD 7970 launched with a 925MHz clock, and a 250W max power profile. The GHz Edition of HD 7970 is specced at a base core clock speed of exactly 1GHZ, and a "Boost Clock" of 1.05GHz, while maintaining the original 250W power draw. In all of my testing, the Boost was always boosting, and we were running at 1GHz+
The original Radeon HD 7970 launched at an MSRP of $549 (considered by many to be high), but was reduced to $479 (after NVIDIA brought pressure to bear with the GTX 680). The Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition will sell alongside the original offering, at a price of $499. The GHz carries a price premium of 4.2%. Will we get that much additional performance out of a 13.5% increase in the core clocks?
