Club3D HD7970 RoyalAce Graphics Card Review

The winter months can be depressing, with saturating rain and icy snow pervading dark evenings, so why not spend some money on a new graphics card for yourself, tuck up tight in bed and game on a big high definition television set? Club3D might have the answer in the shape of their HD7970 RoyalAce graphics card, featuring enhanced clock speeds, lower noise emissions and proprietary cooling system. It won't be easy for them however, they are facing stiff competition from the likes of Sapphire, Asus, VTX3D and MSI. Today we answer the big question, is their HD7970 'RoyalAce' worth the money? We have only reviewed one Club3D card (HD7870 Royal King) before and I was not impressed with the cooling system at all, it was woefully inadequate and we simply couldn't recommend the solution. After the review went live Club3D were not happy, however to their credit they have submitted another card for us to review - their high end HD7970 RoyalAce. The Club3D company policy is based around a 'playing card' concept and many of their discrete solutions are named after the 'royal cards'. We have the RoyalKing, The RoyalQueen and the Jokercard. While corny, it does distinguish their products from the plethora of competitor custom solutions. Product Club3D HD7970 RoyalAce AMD HD7950 AMD HD7870 AMD HD7850 Core Clock speed 1100mhz 800mhz 1000mhz 860mhz Transistors 4.31 billion 4.31 billion 2.8 billion 2.8 billion Stream Processors 2,048 1,792 1,280 1,024 Compute Performance 3.79 TFLOPS 2.87 TFLOPS 2.56 TFLOPS 1.76 TFLOPS Texture Units 128 112 80 64 Texture Fillrate 140.8 GT/s 89.6 GT/s 80 GT/s 55.0 GT/s ROPs 32 32 32 32 Pixel Fillrate 33.6 GP/s 25.6 GP/s 32.0 GP/s 27.52 GP/s Z/Stencil 128 128 128 128 Memory Type 3GB GDDR5 3GB GDDR5 2GB GDDR5 2GB GDDR5 Memory Clock 1,500mhz 1,250mhz 1,200mhz 1,200mhz Memory Data Rate 6.0 GBps 5.0 Gbps 4.8 Gbps 4.8 Gbps Memory Bandwidth 288 GB/s 240 GB/s 153.6 GB/s 153.6 GB/s The Club3D HD7970 is clocked faster than the reference card, at 1,100mhz. The 3GB of memory is clocked at 1,500mhz (6Gbps effective) and is connected via a wide 384 bit memory interface. The HD7970 has 32 ROPS, 2,048 unified shaders and is built on the 28nm manufacturing process. The Club3D HD7970 RoyalAce Graphics Card ships in a black and red box which again features the letter 'A' normally seen on playing cards. Nothing wrong with the design however, I quite like the minimalistic approach. The Club3D bundle is extensive. There are game codes for Dirt Showdown, Medal Of Honor Warfighter and Shogun 2. Club3D also supply a software disc, 'Do Not Disturb' door hanger, installation instructions and several video converter cables. Its a well rounded bundle and one of the best we have seen in recent months. The Club3D HD7970 RoyalAce Graphics Card is a dual fan model with a plastic shell covering the full length of the PCB. Unlike some other modified coolers, Club3D has designed this one to perfectly match the length of the PCB with no 'overhang'. This card is built on a sexy black PCB, in contrast to the HD7870 Royal King which was built on a red PCB. This is a dual slot cooler. Copper heatpipes are visible from both sides of the cooling solution, and we will take a closer look at this shortly when we disassemble the card. The Club3D HD7970 RoyalAce is Crossfire capable in 2,3 and 4 way configurations. It demands power from an 8 pin and a 6 pin PCI connector as shown above. The Club3D HD7970 RoyalAce features a single DVI port, a full sized HDMI port and two mini Displayports. The video converters supplied in the box allow these mini Displayports to be used with other interface connectors. The cooler is comprised of three thick copper heatpipes which run from the copper base into two racks of aluminum fins on either side. The Club3D HD7970 RoyalAce is using high grade Hynix H5GQ2H24AFR GDDR5 memory. There is an additional heatsink on the VRM's to help provide stability under these high clock speeds. A GPUz overview of the hardware. As we mentioned on the previous page, the core is overclocked to 1,100mhz which should give the card a noticeable speed boost over the reference design. The 3GB of GDDR5 memory is clocked at 6Gbps and is connected via a 384 bit memory interface. The card has dual geometry engines, eight render back ends, 2048 unified shaders, 32 color ROPs per clock and 128 Z/stencil ROPs per clock. It is a powerful card and AMD's current reference flagship. On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later. To test today we are using our long standing Core i7 970 system, which is overclocked. We have a variety of hardware benchmarked on this system this year which will make for an interesting market comparison. Main Test System: Processor: Core i7 970 @ 4.6ghz Graphics: Club3D HD7970 RoyalAce Graphics Card Cooling: Coolit Vantage Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65 Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT Power Supply: Corsair AX1200 Memory: 6GB ADATA @ 2133mhz 9-10-9-32 Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot) Monitor: Dell U3011. We also change the system later in the review to test Eyefinity across three 24 inch screens. Ultra High End System (For 3 screen testing): Processor: Core i7 3960 X Extreme Edition @ 4.6ghz Cooler: Antec 920 H20 Memory: 16GB G.Skill 2,400mhz @ 10-11-10-30 Motherboard: Asus Rampage IV Extreme Power Supply: Enermax Platimax 1200W Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive Chassis: Lian Li PC-A77FR Aluminium Red Full Tower Case Boot Drive: Patriot WildFire 120GB Secondary Drive: 1TB Samsung Monitors: Dell U2410 x 3. Comparison Cards: KFA2 GTX680 LTD OC Asus GTX680 Asus GTX670 Direct CU II TOP Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition (1200mhz core) HD7970 HIS HD7970 IceQX2 Turbo HIS HD7950 IceQ MSI R7950 Twin Frozr III 3GD5/OC HD7950 Sapphire HD7870 Overclock Edition HD7870 HD7850 HD6990 (880 core) HD6970 HD6950 HD6870 Sapphire HD7770 Vapor X Overclock Edition XFX HD7770 Black Edition S CFx HD7770 CFx HD7770 Sapphire HD7750 Ultimate Edition HD6790 GTX590 SLi GTX590 GTX580 SLi GTX580 GTX570 Software: Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit Unigine Heaven Benchmark 3DMark Vantage 3DMark 11 Fraps Professional Steam Client FurMark Games: Alien V Predator Tom Clancy HAWX 2 Resident Evil 5 Far Cry 2 Total War: Shogun 2 Battlefield 3 Dirt Showdown Max Payne 3 All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page. Some game descriptions are edited from Wikipedia. Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand. Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk. Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable: Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems Multicore CPU support Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles) Powerful C++ API Comprehensive performance profiling system Flexible XML-based data structures We use the following settings: 1920×1080 resolution. Anti Aliasing off. Anisotrophy 4, Tessellation normal. Shaders High. Stereo 3D disabled. API: Direct X 11 First performance indicators are positive, as the Club3D HD7970 RoyalAce averages 93.6 frames per second, maintaining a >30 frame rate at all times. Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings. The HD7970 RoyalAce scores over 36,000 points, putting it ahead of the dual GPU AMD HD6990 from the last generation. It slots in just behind the KFA2 GTX680 LTD OC. 3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads. If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page. The Club3D HD7970 RoyalAce scores 9,160 points which is an excellent result and in the top 10 percent of our all time single GPU results. HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection. There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we. This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis. Read our initial analysis over here Club3D HD7970 RoyalAce Dial 4 Dial with static pattern 5 Gray Bars 5 Violin 5 Stadium 2:2 5 Stadium 3:2 5 Horizontal Text Scroll 5 Vertical Text Scroll 5 Transition to 3:2 Lock 5 Transition to 2:2 Lock 0 2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video 5 2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video 5 3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed 5 5:5 FPS Animation 5 6:4 12 FPS Animation 5 8:7 8 FPS Animation 5 Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP) 5 Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE) 5 Random Noise: Sailboat 5 Random Noise: Flower 5 Random Noise: Sunrise 5 Random Noise: Harbour Night 5 Scrolling Text 5 Roller Coaster 5 Ferris Wheel 5 Bridge Traffic 5 Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text 5 Roller Coaster 5 Ferris Wheel 5 Bridge Traffic 5 Luminance Frequency Bands 5 Chrominance Frequency Bands 5 Vanishing Text 5 Resolution Enhancement 15 Theme Park 5 Driftwood 5 Ferris Wheel 5 Skin Tones 7 Total 196 A score of 196 points is class leading right now, the ideal solution for high definition media playback on a big screen. Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today. To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparable throughout reviews. A favourable engine for AMD hardware, however the results are still excellent, averaging 110 frames per second at these demanding settings. Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 is an arcade-style flight action game developed by Ubisoft Romania and published by Ubisoft. After the events of the first game, the H.A.W.X squadron is sent to Middle East, where a high level of violence is being registered, and the appearance of various insurgents leaders in various hotspots. The team also has to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Russian nuclear weapons. The player will be controlling three groups: one American (Hunter), one British (Munro) and one Russian (Sokov), each with its own pilots and supporting characters. There will also be references to other characters in the Tom Clancy universe. We are testing in full DX11 mode with all settings to maximum. Excellent results for an AMD card in this Nvidia centric title, averaging 132 frames per second. Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa. Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made. We become slightly CPU limited in this test, however no problems averaging 178 frames per second at these high settings. Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2. Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer. Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today. Settings: 1920×1200, D3D10, Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(8x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Ultra High), Vegetation(Very High), Shading(Ultra High), Terrain(Ultra High), Geometry(Ultra High), Post FX(High), Texture(Ultra High), Shadow(Ultra High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High). An average frame rate of 117 is excellent, slotting in behind the HD7970 6GB with Lethal Boost enabled. Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths. The Club3D HD7970 RoyalAce is right at the top of our chart, just behind the Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition which is clocked even higher with Lethal Boost enabled. Very strong results indeed. Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007. We enabled the game across three 24 inch screens at 5760×1080 resolution, with the settings shown above. The Club3D HD7970 RoyalAce manages to average 87 frames per second at these very high 5760x1080 settings, just ahead of the HIS 7970 X Turbo 3GB IceQ X2. According to EA, Battlefield 3 garnered 3 million pre-orders by the day of its release. It is unknown at present whether these figures are worldwide or just for the US. The pre-order total makes it “the biggest first-person shooter launch in EA history”, according to the publisher. The engine is beautiful on the PC and very demanding of the partnering hardware. We configured the game to run on three 24 inch monitors at 5760×1080. Excellent performance results, averaging 81 frames per second at these settings. Max Payne 3 is a third-person shooter in which the player assumes the role of its titular character, Max Payne. Max Payne 3 features a similar over-the-shoulder camera as its predecessors, with the addition of a cover mechanic, while also retaining much of the same run-and-gun style of gameplay. Max Payne 3 also marks the return of bullet-time in action sequences, for which the franchise is notable. In bullet-time it is possible to see every bullet strike an enemy in detail. New to the series is a “Last Stand” mechanic, which gives the player a grace period after losing all health during which time the player may kill the enemy that wounded them in order to continue playing, however this mechanic is only usable if the player has one or more bottles of painkillers in their possession. For this Max Payne 3 test we set the anti aliasing to 2x and Tessellation to High, enabling Direct X 11. At these settings, the game demanded 1813MB of memory. A great game, powered by a demanding engine. The system averaged 42 frames per second - taking second position behind the Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic, with Lethal Boost enabled. The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 24c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this. Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic. The Club3D HD7970 RoyalAce cooler is actually an extremely good design, performing at the highest level. It does deliver slightly better results than the IceQ X2 cooler when gaming, however the Club3D fan profile is slightly more aggressive under real world circumstances, with a more prominent roll off when hit with the Furmark synthetic stress test. We have changed our method of measuring noise levels. We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests. Ambient noise in the room is around 20-25dBa. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635. KitGuru noise guide 10dBA - Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves 20-25dBA – Whisper 30dBA - High Quality Computer fan 40dBA - A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator 50dBA - Normal Conversation 60dBA - Laughter 70dBA - Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer 80dBA - City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal 90dBA - Motorcycle or Lawnmower 100dBA - MP3 player at maximum output 110dBA - Orchestra 120dBA - Front row rock concert/Jet Engine 130dBA - Threshold of Pain 140dBA - Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range) 160dBA - Instant Perforation of eardrum When idle, the fans are barely audible (spinning at around 1,200rpm), like most of the other custom cooled solutions we have tested this year. When loaded, the fans spin to around 2,600 rpm which means this card is far from silent. That said, I never found the noise to be intrusive, although it is clearly audible above even chassis fans. When loaded in the synthetic stress test Furmark, the fans spin up to 3,000 rpm. Similar noise levels to the Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition with Lethal Boost enabled. To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. We measure results while gaming in Crysis Warhead and record the results. In such an energy aware climate, AMD are making a big deal out of their new ‘ZeroCore Power’ technology. Many solutions today use power gating, clock gating and memory compression to reduce idle power requirements, but ZeroCore power technology can completely power down the core GPU while the rest of the system remains active. Power consumption of the Club3D RoyalAce falls into line behind the HIS HD7970 IceQX2 Turbo graphics card, consuming around 245 watts when gaming. These are powerful graphics cards, but they do consume a lot of power under load. To overclock today we are using the latest version of Sapphire’s TriXX software tool. We managed to increase the core speed from 1,100mhz to 1,186mhz and the memory from 1,500mhz to 1,585mhz. With the manual overclock, performance increases further, from 9,160 points to 9,554 points. A healthy little increase. With so many manufacturers scrambling for sales it is difficult for a graphics card to get noticed in such an overcrowded market. Sapphire had the correct approach with their HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition. It held the highest core overclocked speeds at 1,200mhz, it had a memorable catch phrase with 'Lethal Boost' and they doubled the memory count from 3GB to 6GB. All talking points to raise awareness, and as a marketing exercise alone it was a success for the company. That said, availability was limited and the price was high. Club3D could find their HD7970 RoyalAce may struggle for attention, however it really is a very impressive graphics card that deserves more than a passing footnote in history. The cooler is not the most attractive design, but the company have intentionally designed it not to overhang the PCB. The dual slot cooler also forces hot air outside the chassis. Both may seem like minor points when contemplating a purchase, but they are actually important considerations. The proprietary two fan cooler is capable, and can hold its own against the leading solutions on the market today. Our tests show that it held an excellent thermal curve, peaking in the mid 60c zone under gaming load. It isn't the quietest cooler on the market, but it doesn't emit a noise level that is likely to annoy many gamers. Our equipment measured an output very close to the Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition. The Club3D HD7970 RoyalAce ships with additional available headroom, even if we factor in that all cards will be slightly different. Our sample had almost 90mhz available on the core before artifacting would occur, and the memory could be pushed to almost 1,600mhz. It is unlikely you will need to overclock this card further, although with a high resolution three screen Eyefinity setup, it can nudge the frame rates up a little. On a completely unrelated point, we always like to see a high end solution shipping with noteable headroom, as the core is not running close to breaking point. In the United Kingdom, you can pick this card up for around £330 inc vat. With such a high core clock speed and such a competitive price we highly recommend the Club3D HD7970 RoyalAce. It isn't the best HD7970 on the market, but it does offer a very heady combination of competitive pricing, excellent performance and stellar cooling capabilities. Pros: Good price Strong bundle. Great cooling performance. headroom for manual overclocking. cooler exhausts hot air outside the case. neat cooler design, linked tightly to the PCB size. Cons: Not the quietest HD7970 cooler we have tested. Kitguru says: An excellent HD7970, and one that should not be overlooked.