Leaked document with non-reference HD 7970 - 44% factory overclock

[Taipan]

Not sure if I would believe this, seems a bit too good to be true even if the reference power consumption is low... would be nice if it was true though!! Good publicity for Sapphire thats for sure.

Choose a version with 1335Mhz instead of 925Mhz.

Or choose a version with 6GB VRAM plus 6 Mini-DPorts, I don't think I could use that VRAM unless I had 3 screens and crossfire to pump the settings right up.

I'm mostly interested in the 1335Mhz, for a single-card triple monitor solution nice and simple.

http://vr-zone.com/articles/sapphire-readies-hd-7970-with-1335-mhz-gpu-clock/14397.html#
http://wccftech.com/sapphire-nonreference-radeon-hd7970-models-listed-flex-6g-edition-hd7970-feature-6gb-memory/

[Gilly]

Going to call BS on this, if Sapphire can guarantee a 44% overclock, why wouldn't AMD up the clock speed say 30% as a base performance figure? I don't get why they wouldn't want to take their product as far as it can go, but let OEM's do that. Very odd.

[ViciousXUSMC]

I think its real, the die shrink can yield way better overclocks than older cards had and if they are willing to put voltage into it thats an easy overclock. AMD probably wants to take a safe route and send out cards at a very safe running speed for minimal risk of artifact, failure, etc and leave it to the vendors to up the specs as they see fit.

They may be hand picking the boards and testing them for those speeds, upping the cooling to compensate for an increase in voltage. Probably will cost a premium and not be 100% capable for stock cards not pretested and setup to run at these speeds.

[Gilly]

Apparently the 1335Mhz core card will have water cooling, so yeah maybe that will have some very high voltage pumping through it.

I also neglected to see that all the review samples seem to hit 1125Mhz without issue, so I guess it is possible! Depends how close to the edge 1125 is :P

[Haldi]

first i thought it's a hoax!

But now i'm running mine on 1275mhz!

And i heard that XFX Black Edition runs 1400mhz on Stock voltage!

Well, gonna tell you Firday/Saturday, then i know for myself if they do :D

[Taipan]

You have the card? Cool I'm also looking at the Black Edition.

Only thing that stopped me buying is driver issues with non-mainstream games. Reviewers only looked at the top games and not things like flight sims.

Users report DCS A-10C and Blackshark doesn't run, crashes after 5 minutes. X-Plane has major performance issues. BMS Falcon DOES run ok.

BUT my favourite flight sim Rise of Flight there are no reports yet, this is the main thing for me.

Any chance you could test Rise of Flight if it runs ok?
It's free from http://riseofflight.com if you haven't got it then it's worth having, even just to go online and jump in someones back seat for a ride as a rear gunner and look around the place.

[nbk13nw]

Taipan,

I am running a XFX HD7970 Black Edition and will let you know what I find. Downloading the ROF demo now.