HIS HD7970 Crossfire Review

1. Introduction2. The HIS HD79703. HIS HD7970 (Super High Res Gallery)4. Testing Methodology5. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark6. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage7. Synthetic: 3DMark 118. Synthetic: HQV Benchmark 2.09. Gaming: F1 201110. Gaming: Lost Planet 211. Gaming: Alien V Predator12. Gaming: Far Cry 213. Gaming: HomeFront14. Gaming: Total War: Shogun 215. Technical: Acoustics Performance16. Technical: Thermal Dynamics17. Technical: Power Consumption18. Closing Thoughts19. View All Pages

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 within the last couple of weeks which will make for an interesting market comparison. We managed to squeeze in a handful of updated GTX590 SLi and GTX 580 SLi results for this review before hitting publication today.

Test System:
Processor: Core i7 970 @ 4.6ghz
Graphics: HIS HD7970 x 2
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)

Comparison Cards:
HD6990 (880 core)
HD6970
HD6950
HD6870
HD6790
HD6770
HD6670
GTX590 SLi
GTX590
GTX580 SLi
GTX580
GTX570

Monitors: Dell U2410 x 3 / LaCie 730

Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Catalyst 11.11/11.12 press driver
ForceWare 285.62 WHQL
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark

Games:
Lost Planet 2
F1 2011
Alien V Predator
HomeFront
Total War: Shogun 2
Far Cry 2

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.

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