ASUS Matrix Radeon HD 7970 Platinum Review
Overclocking the Matrix Radeon HD 7970
Although the ASUS ROG Matrix 7970 Platinum is already overclocked from the factory, we spent a little time overclocking it further using ASUS’ GPU Tweak utility to see what kind of headroom it had left in the tank. For these tests, we gave the GPU a bump in voltage to 1.375v, maxed out the power target, and cranked the fan speed all the way up to see just how far we could push the card with its stock cooler. We then increased the GPU and memory clocks until we experienced instability or visual artifacts, or saw performance degradation.
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ASUS' GPU Tweak Utility Running On The ROG Matrix 7970 Platinum
Ultimately, we were able to take the ASUS ROG Matrix 7970 Platinum up from its default max boost frequency of 1.1GHz to just shy of 1.3GHz with perfect stability. Higher clocks were possible with some games, but we couldn’t complete a full round of tests at anything higher than the 1.29GHz you see pictured here. The memory clock was more finicky and was stable with only a modest 16MHz boost.
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While we had the card overclocked, we re-ran a couple of tests and saw some decent performance gains. Performance in Hitman: Absolution increased by about 8.5% while performance in the F1 2012 benchmark improved by roughly 9.6%. Those are some nice performance gains for what amounts to fiddling with a couple of sliders in ASUS’ included utility. With some extreme cooling and more aggressive voltage tweaks, we have no doubt higher clocks would be possible.
