[HardOCP] 7970 Lightning Review

[TakeNoPrisoners]

There's nothing wrong with including OC vs OC performance, but its a lot of extra work. What's wrong is taking exceptions and include an OC product as representative of stock performance.

To review overclocked cards correctly requires more work then testing stock cards.

It is worth it as most people on these fourms would benefit from the extra info.

I know I'd be interested to see how cards size up against each other when overclocked. Part of making it fair is to overclock all cards and not just a couple. Many people will say for example that there is no reason to get a 7970 as the 7950 will hit the same speeds when overclocked. Showing the performance of the 7970 overclocked will show them why it is worth it to pay more.

 

[SolMiester]

1100+ is sure shot I guess
1150 is almost certain, like 90% of the times
1200 is certain like 70% of the times perhaps
Chance of 1250 is probably 50-50

However anything above 1150 will probably need aftermarket cooling and anything above 1220-1230 will probably be better with water cooling

Why is it the XFX BEDD unit Anand tested only got to 1150mhz?...is their a driver fix?

 

[Elfear]

Why is it the XFX BEDD unit Anand tested only got to 1150mhz?...is their a driver fix?

IIRC, the cooler on the BEDD is very quiet but doesn't cool as well, particularly the VRMs.

 

[kalrith]

Are you serious???

The reason Anandtech won't use OC cards in their reviews is because they did use an OC Nvidia card when testing new AMD cards and it skewed the results and readers cried foul.

Unbelievable. D:

There was actually a good discussion on this in the most-recent 7870 review. Several people wanted the overclock results to include all the cards at their max overclock. Here's Ryan Smith's response to that:

The reality is that we're sticklers for the scientific method, which means we need as few variables as possible. To keep a DB of overclocked video cards we would need to rebench every overclocked card every time a new driver with a measurable performance impact came out. This isn't practical for purposes of time, nor for that matter do we keep these retail cards on hand. The alternative would be to compare overclocks across different drivers, and we would rather give you fewer accurate numbers than to make such a comparison.

He had some other good responses as well, but I think this one sums it up the best.

 

[skipsneeky2]

I think getting over 1200MHz on a 7970 happens pretty regularly if you're not afraid to bump the voltage. But, ugh... the noise...

Yup i found the noise going from 45 to 55% fanspeed to be annoying enough to drop my clocks from 1200/1600 at 1.186v right back down to 1080/1530.

Happy camper at 1080/1530 at stock voltage still and when i buy a game that rapes this card at 1080p,then maybe i'll overclock it again.:thumbsup: