Amd Radeon Hd 7970 Ghz Edition

Power, Temperature, & Noise

Every bit always, we're wrapping upward our expect at a video bill of fare's stock performance with a look at power, temperature, and racket. Officially AMD is property the 7970GE's TDP and PowerTune limits at the same level they were at for the 7970 – 250W – however unofficially because of the higher voltages, higher clockspeeds, and Digital Temperature Estimation eating into the remaining power headroom, nosotros're expecting power usage to increment. The question then is "how much?"

Radeon Hard disk 7970 Series Voltages
Ref 7970GE Base Voltage	Ref 7970GE Boost Voltage	Ref 7970 Base Voltage
1.162v	i.218	1.175v

Because of scrap-to-chip variation, the load voltage of 7970 cards varies with the fleck and how leaky information technology is. Short of a large sample size there's no way to tell what the voltage of an average 7970 or 7970GE is, so we tin only look at what we take.

Unlike the 7970, the 7970GE has ii distinct voltages: a voltage for its base clock, and a higher voltage for its boost clock. For our 7970GE sample the base clock voltage is 1.162v, which is 0.013v lower than our reference 7970's base clock voltage (load voltage). On the other paw our 7970GE'southward boost clock voltage is ane.218, which is 0.056v college than its base clock voltage and 0.043v higher than our reference 7970's load voltage. In practice this means that even with chip-to-bit variation, nosotros'd wait the 7970GE to consume a flake more power than the reference 7970 when it can heave, but equal to (or less) than the 7970 when it'due south stuck at its base clock.

So how does this play out for ability, temperature, and noise? Let's notice out.

Starting with idle power, considering it's the aforementioned GPU on the same lath there are no surprises here. Idle ability consumption is really down by 2W at the wall, just in practice this is such a small departure that it is almost incommunicable to dissever from other sources. Though nosotros wouldn't be surprised if improving TSMC yields combined with AMD'due south binning meant that real power consumption has actually decreased a hair.

Similar to idle, long idle power consumption is also slightly down. NVIDIA doesn't have anything to rival AMD's ZeroCore Power applied science, and then the 7970CE is drawing a full 10W less at the wall, a difference that will become more pronounced when we compare SLI and CF in the time to come.

Moving on to our load power nosotros finally run across our kickoff 7970GE power results, and while it'south not terrible it's non great either. Power at the wall has definitely increased, with our testbed pulling 429W with the 7970GE versus 391 with the 7970. Now non all of this is due to the GPU – a sure per centum is the CPU getting to slumber less often because it needs to set more frames for the faster GPU – but in practice nigh of the divergence is consumed (and exhausted) by the GPU. Then the fact that the 7970GE is drawing 67W more than the GTX 680 at the wall is non insignificant.

For a change of perspective we shift over to OCCT, which is our standard pathological workload and almost entirely GPU-driven. Compared to Metro, the power consumption increase from the 7970 to the 7970GE isn't equally great, but it'south definitely still there. Power has increased by 19W at the wall, which is actually more than we would have expected given the fact that the two have the aforementioned PowerTune limit and the fact that PowerTune should be heavily throttling both cards. Consequently this means that the 7970GE creates an even wider gap between the GTX 680 and AMD's top card, with the 7970GE pulling 43W more at the wall.

Moving on to temperatures, we don't see a major change here. Identical hardware begets identical idle temperatures, which for the 7970GE ways a cool 34C. Though the GTX 680 is a smidge cooler at 32C.

Since nosotros've already seen that GPU power consumption has increased under Metro, nosotros would wait temperatures to also increase under Metro and that's exactly what'southward happened. And actually, temperatures accept increased by quite a lot, from 74C on the 7970 to 81C on the 7970GE. Since both 7970 cards share the same cooler, the 7970GE has to work harder to dissipate that extra power the card consumes, and even then temperatures will still increase some. 81C is yet rather typical for a high finish card, but information technology means there'southward less thermal headroom to play with when overclocking when compared to the 7970. Furthermore it ways the 7970GE is at present warmer than the GTX 680.

Thanks to PowerTune throttling the 7970GE doesn't increase in temperature by most as much under OCCT as information technology does Metro, but nosotros still run into a 4C rise, pushing the 7970GE to 83C. Once more this is rather normal for a high-end card, just it's a sign of what AMD had to sacrifice to reach this level of gaming performance.

Last but not least we have our look at noise. Over again with the same hardware nosotros see no shift in idle noise, with the 7970GE registering at a tranquility 40.2dBA.

Unfortunately for AMD, this is where the 7970GE starts to come off of the rails. It'due south not simply power consumption and temperatures that accept increased for the 7970GE, but load noise also. And it'south past quite a lot. 61.5dBA is without question loud for a video card. In fact the only menu in our GPU 12 database that'due south louder is the Radeon Hd 6990, a dual-GPU menu that was notoriously loud. The fact of the thing is that the 7970GE is significantly louder than whatsoever other card in our benchmark suite, and in all likelihood the only card that could surpass it would exist the GTX 480. As a result the 7970GE isn't just loud but information technology'southward in a category of its ain, exceeding the GTX 680 by nearly 10dBA! Even the vanilla 7970 is 6.3dBA quieter.

Does OCCT end up looking any better? Unfortunately the answer is no. At 63.2dBA it's nonetheless the loudest single-GPU carte in our benchmark suite by near 3dBA, and far, far louder than either the GTX 680 or the 7970. Nosotros're looking at a ten.7dBA gap between the 7970GE and the GTX 680, and a all the same sizable 5.9dBA gap betwixt the 7970GE and 7970.

From these results it'south clear where AMD has had to brand sacrifices to achieve performance that could rival the GTX 680. By using the same card and cooler and at the same time letting power consumption increment to feed that speed, they have boxed themselves into a very ugly situation where the only solution is to run their libation fast and to run it loud. Maybe, maybe with a better cooler they could have kept noise levels similar to the 7970 (which would have meant it would still be louder than the GTX 680), but that's non what we're looking at.

The 7970GE is without question the loudest single-GPU video carte du jour we have seen in quite some time, and that'south nothing for AMD to be proud of. Everyone's limit for noise differs, but when we're talking almost single-GPU cards exceeding 60dB in Metro nosotros accept to seriously ponder whether information technology's something many gamers would be willing to put up with.

Synthetics OC: Power, Temperature, & Noise