AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition Review

by Marco Chiappetta — Friday, June 22, 2012, 12:01 AM EDT

It was exactly 6 months ago to the minute that AMD officially took the wraps off its Tahiti GPU and the original Radeon HD 7970. The Radeon HD 7970 was the first graphics card to feature AMD’s “Graphics Core Next”, or GCN, architecture and when it hit the scene, the Radeon HD 7970 proved to be the fastest single-GPU based graphics card available.

Since that time though, NVIDIA went ahead and released their Kepler-based GK104 GPU and the GeForce GTX 600 series of graphics cards. Although GK104 was comprised of fewer transistors and used less power, it ended up outpacing the Radeon HD 7970 more often than not, and propelled NVIDIA back into a leadership position at the high-end of the graphics card market.

As you can imagine, that didn’t sit well with AMD. So, for Tahiti’s half-birthday, they went ahead and refreshed the Radeon HD 7970, by tweaking a few key aspects of the card and adding some new features. The end result is the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition...

AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition Review

Tags: AMD, Radeon, Gaming, graphics, GPU, 7970, GHz Edition

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com