AMD Radeon HD 7970 Quad CrossfireX: The Stock Air Cooling Champion

[siopao1984]

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Test Setup:This time we've upgraded our CPU cooling to a XSPC RX360 kit and clocked it higher at 4.8GHz (LinX 4gb 10 runs stable). Unfortunately we still couldn't get any of the available overclocking tools to set voltages or core clocks beyond 1125MHz on simultaneously all 4 cards without running into BSODs or weird artifacts, so we were forced to use the restrictive AMD Overdrive to run our cards @ 1100/1500MHz

The Tests:

3DMark 11 v1.03 Extreme Preset (AMD Radeon HD 7970 video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition Processor,ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. RAMPAGE IV EXTREME score: X10233 3DMarks)3DMark 11 v1.03 Performance Preset (AMD Radeon HD 7970 video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition Processor,ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. RAMPAGE IV EXTREME score: P23578 3DMarks)3DMark Vantage Performance Preset (AMD Radeon HD 7970 video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition Processor,ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. RAMPAGE IV EXTREME score: P64906 3DMarks)Unigine Heaven Benchmark (hwbot.org Submission)LuxMark OpenCL Benchmark Tool (single card scores 1923

Read more: AMD Radeon HD 7970 Quad CrossfireX: The Stock Air Cooling Champion by VR-Zone.com

[siopao1984]

Game Tests and Eyefinity

Alien vs Predator (DX11)

Resolution: 1920 x 1080

Texture Quality: 3
Shadow Quality: 3
Anisotropic Filtering: 16
SSAO: ON
Vertical Sync: OFF
DX11 Tessellation: ON
DX11 Advanced Shadows: ON
DX11 MSAA Samples: 4



Battlefield 3 (DX11) 1080p Ultra Preset
Going Hunting Single Player Level Fraps Runthrough



Min 180fps
Max 202fps
Avg 198.991fps


We ran into a nice to have problem here - BF3's Frostbite 2 engine capped the FPS ceiling at 200, which is not a problem for our quadfire setup to hit!



Battlefield 3 (DX11) 5760x1080 Ultra Preset

Going Hunting Single Player Level Fraps Runthrough



Editor's note: this writer is an obtuse fellow and insists on running the fans @ 100%, creating an unnecessary ruckus to annoy the others in the office. When left at AUTO on load it is actually barely audible.

Min 70fps
Max 140fps
Avg 112.153fps

DiRT 3 (DX11) 5760x1080

Monaco Route 0



Resolution 5760x1080
Min 154.1312fps
Avg 205.101fps


4-Way CrossfireX Power Usage during Battlefield 3 gameplay



Global Warming Indeed



Epilogue:

At VR-Zone, we like to think that our team and our readers are brand agnostic and worship only the best stuff available. We salute the AMD Radeon HD 7970 for its all rounded abilities, but for the sake of competition and the evolution of the human race, we hope that NVIDIA have an answer for this in the soon to be announced Kepler GK104.

The numbers shown today are in the territory of subzero LN2 overclocked 4-way GTX580s of yesteryear, achieved with stock air cooling and no voltage bump at all. This excellence does come at a hefty price though - US$2196 (based on retail SRP of $549) for the cards and then some more for a beefy power supply and decent case/cooling.

Meanwhile, Andre Yang of Team PURE has his quadfire 7970 setup at a whopping 1600/1900MHz and a 5.6GHz SNB-E under LN2 over at kingpincooling forums, comprehensively smashing all previous 3D benchmarking records.