Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 OC 3GB Video Card Review

The Test System

Before we look at the numbers, let’s take a brief look at the test
system that was used. All testing was done using a fresh install of Windows
7 Ultimate 64-bit and benchmarks were completed on the desktop with no
other software programs running.

Drivers used for testing:

• Catalyst 12.7 Beta – Sapphire Radeon HD 7970
• Catalyst 12.4 WHQL – AMD Radeon HD 6990
• Catalyst 12.2 WHQL – MSI Radeon HD 7970
• GeForce 301.24 – GeForce GTX 680 & GeForce GTX 580
• GeForce 301.34 – GeForce GTX 690 & GeForce GTX 670

Intel X79/LGA2011 Platform

The Intel X79 platform that we used to test the all of the video cards was running the ASUS P9X79 Deluxe motherboard with BIOS 0906 that came
out on 12/22/2011. The Corsair Vengeance 16GB 1866MHz quad channel
memory kit was set to 1866MHz with 1.5v and 9-10-9-27 1T memory timings. The OCZ Vertex 3 240GB SSD was run with firmware version 2.15.

The Intel X79 Test Platform
Component	Brand/Model	Live Pricing
Processor	Intel Core i7-3960X	Click Here
Motherboard	ASUS P9X79 Deluxe	Click Here
Memory	16GB Corsair 1866MHz	Click Here
Video Card	Various	Click Here
Solid-State Drive	OCZ Vertex 3 240GB	Click Here
Cooling	Intel RTS2011LC	Click Here
Power Supply	Corsair AX1200	Click Here
Operating System	Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit	Click Here

Video Cards Tested:

• MSI Radeon HD 7970 Lightning 3GB – 1075MHz Core / 1400MHz Memory
• Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 OC 3GB – 1000MHz Core / 1500MHz Memory
• Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 3GB – 950MHz Core / 1400MHz Memory`
  
• Sapphire HD 7950 3GB – 950MHz Core / 1425MHz Memory
• AMD Radeon HD 6990 OC 4GB – 880MHz Core / 1375MHz Memory
  
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 4GB – 915MHz Core / 1502MHz Memory
  
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2GB – 1006MHz Core / 1502MHz Memory
• EVGA GeForce GTX 680 SC 2GB – 967MHz Core / 1552MHz Memory
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2GB – 915MHz Core / 1502MHz Memory

Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 OC GPU-Z Information:

Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 OC BIOS 2: