Graphics card comparison
Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition vs Radeon HD 8970 OEM
AMD
Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition
3072 Mb GDDR5
Released 22 Jun 2012
DESKTOP
VS
AMD
Radeon HD 8970 OEM
3072 Mb GDDR5
Released 8 Jan 2013
DESKTOP
Summary
Reasons to consider the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition
- Supports Direct3D 12 Async Compute
- Supports ReLive (allows game streaming/recording with minimum performance penalty)
- Supports Mantle
- Based on an outdated architecture (AMD GCN), there may be no performance optimizations for current games and applications
Reasons to consider the Radeon HD 8970 OEM
- 50 watts lower power draw. This might be a strong point if your current power supply is not enough to handle the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition .
- Supports Direct3D 12 Async Compute
- Supports ReLive (allows game streaming/recording with minimum performance penalty)
- Supports Mantle
- Based on an outdated architecture (AMD GCN), there may be no performance optimizations for current games and applications
Our verdict
No clear winner declared
We have no data to declare a winner at this time.
Specifications
Core configuration
| Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition | Radeon HD 8970 OEM |
|---|
| GPU Name | Tahiti (Tahiti XT2) | Tahiti (Tahiti XT) |
| Fab Process | 28 nm | 28 nm |
| Die Size | 352 mm² | 352 mm² |
| Transistors | 4,313 million | 4,313 million |
| Shaders | 2048 | 2048 |
| Compute Units | 32 | 32 |
| Core clock | 1000 MHz | 925 MHz |
| ROPs | 32 | 32 |
| TMUs | 128 | 128 |
Memory configuration
| Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition | Radeon HD 8970 OEM |
|---|
| Memory Type | GDDR5 | GDDR5 |
| Bus Width | 384 bit | 384 bit |
| Memory Speed | 1500 MHz
6000 MHz effective | 1375 MHz
5500 MHz effective |
| Memory Size | 3072 Mb | 3072 Mb |
Additional details
| Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition | Radeon HD 8970 OEM |
|---|
| TDP | 300 watts | 250 watts |
| Release Date | 22 Jun 2012 | 8 Jan 2013 |
Raw performance comparison
Pixel Rate
- Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition32.00 GP/s
- Radeon HD 8970 OEM29.60 GP/s
GigaPixels - higher is better
Texel Rate
- Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition128.00 GT/s
- Radeon HD 8970 OEM118.00 GT/s
GigaTexels - higher is better
Memory bandwidth
- Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition288.00 GB/s
- Radeon HD 8970 OEM264.00 GB/s
GB/s - higher is better
Single precision performance
- Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition4096.00 GFLOPs
- Radeon HD 8970 OEM3789.00 GFLOPs
GFLOPs - higher is better