AMD Radeon™ HD 7970 Graphics

Overview

Ready for Microsoft Windows® 8 and DirectX® 11.1 gaming! Learn more.
The world’s first 28nm GPU. The revolutionary new GCN Architecture. Ready for DirectX® 11.1. PCI Express 3.0.¹ The AMD Radeon™ HD 7970 is your personal checklist for ground-breaking technology.
The next generation of AMD Eyefinity technology is here, featuring all-new support for stereo 3D, universal bezel compensation and brand new display configurations. Face it: the best just got better.^2,3
Armed with the new PCI Express 3.0 standard, multi-GPU configurations with AMD CrossFire™ technology are just another way to obliterate the competition with the revolutionary AMD Radeon™ HD 7970.^1,4
Leave no performance behind. Get higher clocks and faster gaming with AMD PowerTune technology on AMD Radeon™ HD 7970 Graphics.⁵
Fold and mine faster than ever with AMD App Acceleration powered by the unprecedented 28nm GCN Architecture.⁶
The market isn’t ready for 4k video, but Radeon™ is. With full support for HDMI® (with 4K) and DisplayPort 1.2 HBR2, the AMD Radeon™ HD 7970 is set for quad HD.

Whitepapers

System Requirements

PCI Express® based PC is required with one X16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard
500W (or greater) power supply with one 150W 8-pin PCI Express power connector and one 75W 6-pin PCI Express power connector recommended.⁷
- NOTE: Minimum recommended system power supply wattage is based on the specific graphics card and the typical power requirements of other system components. Your system may require more or less power. OEM and other pre-assembled PCs may have different power requirements.
Certified power supplies are recommended. Refer to http://ati.amd.com/certifiedPSU for a list of Certified products
Minimum 4GB of system memory
8GB (or more) of system memory recommended for AMD CrossFire™ technology
Installation software requires CD-ROM drive, a keyboard, a mouse, and a display
DVD playback requires DVD drive and a DVD
Blu-ray™ playback requires Blu-ray drive and a Blu-ray disc
For an AMD CrossFire™ system, a second AMD Radeon™ HD 7970 Graphics card, an AMD CrossFire™ Ready motherboard and one AMD CrossFire™ Bridge Interconnect cable is required
Use of 3 or more displays with AMD Eyefinity technology requires a DisplayPort-capable panel or an AMD Eyefinity validated dongle. See http://www.amd.com/EyefinityDongles for a list of validated DisplayPort dongles
Windows Vista® or Windows® 7 operating system. 64-bit operating system highly recommended. Windows® XP not currently supported - see the following support page for additional details: http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/hd7900seriesxpsupport.aspx
Not for industrial or commercial use. See AMD FirePro™ Graphics solutions for these applications.

Specifications

Up to 925MHz Engine Clock
3GB GDDR5 Memory
1375MHz Memory Clock (5.5Gbps GDDR5)
264GB/s memory bandwidth (maximum)
3.79 TFLOPS Single Precision compute power
947 GFLOPS Double Precision compute power
GCN Architecture
- 32 compute units (2048 Stream Processors)
- 128 Texture Units
- 128 Z/Stencil ROP Units
- 32 Color ROP Units
- Dual Geometry Engines
- Dual Asynchronous Compute Engines (ACE)
PCI Express 3.0 x16 bus interface
DirectX® 11.1-capable graphics
- 9th generation programmable hardware tessellation units
- Shader Model 5.0
- DirectCompute 11
- Accelerated multi-threading
- HDR texture compression
- Order-independent transparency
OpenGL 4.2 support
- Partially Resident Textures (PRT)
  - Ultra-high resolution texture streaming
Image quality enhancement technology
- Up to 24x multi-sample and super-sample anti-aliasing modes
- Adaptive anti-aliasing
- Morphological Anti-Aliasing (MLAA)
- 16x angle independent anisotropic texture filtering
- 128-bit floating point HDR rendering
AMD Eyefinity multi-display technology²
- Up to 6 displays supported with DisplayPort 1.2 Multi-Stream Transport
- Independent resolutions, refresh rates, color controls, and video overlays
- Display grouping
  - Combine multiple displays to behave like a single large display
AMD App Acceleration⁶
- OpenCL 1.2 Support
- Microsoft C++ AMP
- DirectCompute 11
- Double Precision Floating Point
- AMD HD Media Accelerator
  - Unified Video Decoder (UVD)
    - H.264
    - VC-1
    - MPEG-2 (SD & HD)
    - MVC (Blu-ray 3D)
    - MPEG-4 Part 2 (DivX/Xvid)
    - Adobe Flash
    - DXVA 1.0 & 2.0 support
  - Enhanced Video Quality features
    - Advanced post-processing and scaling
      - Deblocking
      - Denoising
      - Automatic deinterlacing
      - Mosquito noise reduction
      - Edge enhancement
      - 3:2 pulldown detection
    - Advanced video color correction
      - Brighter whites processing (Blue Stretch)
      - Independent video gamma control
      - Flesh tone correction
      - Color vibrance control
      - Dynamic contrast
      - Dynamic video range control
AMD HD3D technology³
- Stereoscopic 3D display/glasses support
- Blu-ray 3D support
- Stereoscopic 3D gaming
- 3rd party Stereoscopic 3D middleware software support
AMD CrossFire™ multi-GPU technology⁴
- Dual, triple or quad-GPU scaling
Cutting-edge integrated display support
- DisplayPort 1.2
  - Max resolution: 4096x2160 @ 60 Hz per display
  - Multi-Stream
  - 21.6 Gbps bandwidth (HBR2)
  - High bit-rate audio
  - Quad HD/4K/UHDTV display support
  - 1080p60 Stereoscopic 3D (Frame Sequential Format)
- HDMI® (With 4K, 3D, x.v.Color™ and Deep Color)
  - Max resolution: 4096x2160 @ 30 Hz
  - 1080p30 Stereoscopic 3D (Packed Frame Format)
  - Quad HD/4K/UHDTV video display support
- HDMI® (With 4K, 3D, Deep Color and x.v.Color™)
  - Max resolution: 4096x2160
  - 1080p60 Stereoscopic 3D
  - Quad HD/4k video support
- Dual-link DVI with HDCP
  - Max resolution: 2560x1600
- VGA
  - Max resolution: 2048x1536
Integrated HD audio controller
- Output protected high bit rate 7.1 channel surround sound over HDMI with no additional cables required
- Supports AC-3, AAC, Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio formats
AMD PowerPlay™ power management technology³
- Automatic power management with low power idle states
AMD PowerTune technology⁵
- Intelligent TDP management technology
- Dynamic clockspeed/performance enhancement for games
AMD ZeroCore Power⁵
- Ultra-low idle power when the system’s display is off
- Secondary GPUs in an AMD CrossFire™ configuration power down when unneeded
AMD Catalyst™ graphics and HD video configuration software
- Software support for Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP
- AMD Catalyst™ Control Center - AMD Catalyst™ software application and user interface for setup, configuration, and accessing features of AMD Radeon products
- Unified Graphics display driver - AMD Catalyst™ software enabling other PC programs and devices to use advanced graphics, video, and features of AMD Radeon™ products

Footnotes

Additional hardware (e.g. Blu-ray drive, HD or 10-bit monitor, TV tuner) and/or software (e.g. multimedia applications) are required for the full enablement of some features. Not all features may be supported on all components or systems - check with your component or system manufacturer for specific model capabilities and supported technologies.

Utilization of PCI Express 3.0 bandwidth requires a mainboard equipped with a PCI Express 3.0 PHY. Not all mainboards feature this technology – check with your component or system manufacturer for specific model capabilities.
AMD Eyefinity technology works with games that support non-standard aspect ratios, which is required for panning across multiple displays. To enable more than two displays, additional panels with native DisplayPort™ connectors, and/or DisplayPort™ compliant active adapters to convert your monitor’s native input to your cards DisplayPort™ or Mini-DisplayPort™ connector(s), are required. Support for six simultaneous displays may require complementary products compatible with DisplayPort 1.2 Multi-Stream Transport. Maximum number of configured displays may vary - check with your component or system manufacturer for specific model capabilities and supported technologies. SLS (“Single Large Surface”) functionality requires an identical display resolution on all configured displays.
AMD HD3D is a technology designed to enable stereoscopic 3D support in games, movies and/or photos. Requires 3D stereo drivers, glasses, and display. Not all features may be supported on all components or systems – check with your component or system manufacturer for specific model capabilities and supported technologies. A list of supported stereoscopic 3D hardware is available at http://www.amd.com/HD3D.
AMD CrossFire™ technology requires an AMD CrossFire Ready motherboard, an AMD CrossFire™ Bridge Interconnect (for each additional graphics card) and may require a specialized power supply.
AMD PowerPlay™ and AMD PowerTune are technologies offered by certain AMD Radeon™ products, which are designed to intelligently manage GPU power consumption in response to certain GPU load conditions. Not all products feature all technologies – check with your component or system manufacturer for specific model capabilities.
AMD App Acceleration is a set of technologies designed to improve video quality and enhance application performance. Full enablement of some features requires support for OpenCL™, DirectCompute or DirectX® Video Acceleration (DXVA). Not all products have all features and full enablement of some capabilities and may require complementary products.
Minimum recommended system power supply wattage is based on the specific graphics card and the typical power requirements of other system components. Your system may require more or less power. OEM and other pre-assembled PCs may have different power requirements.

Reviews

Bit-tech

“With its higher clock speeds, superior stream processor count and more efficient architecture, we were fully expecting the Radeon HD 7970 3GB to offer a substantial increase in performance over the Radeon HD 6970 2GB and it didn't disappoint.”

eTeknix

“The 7970 showed performance like we’ve never seen on a single GPU card before, with blistering fast results in every test we ran, on multiple resolutions.”

Expert Reviews

“The Radeon HD 7970 is a hugely impressive card. AMD has managed to squeeze a massive amount of power from a single GPU while keeping the power requirements the same as its significantly less powerful predecessor.”

Kit Guru

“AMD's HD7970 is a lightning fast graphics card set to appease performance gamers who want the maximum image quality at the highest resolutions.”

“The HD7970 sets a new performance standard in the high end, ousting the GTX580 from the single GPU top spot, without breaking a sweat.”

“AMD launched their new flagship HD7970 graphics card in December, and we have been extremely impressed with the solution as it has claimed the top performance slot … knocking the GTX580 from the throne.”