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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.
The Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic is consuming more power than the reference HD7970, around 275w with the ‘Lethal Boost' enabled when gaming. Sapphire have optimised this card for overclocking and performance so power consumption has suffered. We would have expected this anyway.
wozzers,. off to read now
thats incredible. only skimmed over it, will read more later. quad crossfire anyone? 🙂
Well im not easily impressed but this has hit the spot. When will it be available in stores? might sell my laptop to try and snap one up before they sell out.
By the way What has happened to XFX this year? they seem to have completely dropped off the radar.
now thats what I call a video card. I can only dream.
I only need another 2 screens, a new computer and this card now to make my gaming life complete!
Will be interesting to see the price if this hits retail in the big UK stores. i reckon it will be closer to £600. 6GB of GDDR5 is costly and some of the lower spec 7970s are already just over £500.
What is the recommended power supply for this and a system? 850W? 750W?
engineered to the limit. Its almost like the Asus Mars and Ares, but half the price 🙂
Will Sapphire genuinely make man y of these? seems like an engineering showcase. Still, its friggin impressive to see a company putting so much effort into something so incredible.
AMD must be pleased to see this. their reference cards are pants.
I prefer nvidia cards, but I wish to god Sapphire would join the green ranks. I can only imagine what they would come up with.
Im still waiting on a modified GTX690 with three fan cooler overclocked to the hilt. Not to buy, just to read about.
I dont see anywhere in the review when it says they will only make a few of them, where is everyone saying they will make this limited edition?
Thats a good cooler on the card, wonder if they would have had more success going three fan, but 80mm each, spinning them slower but producing more airflow. It also looks like the cooler could handle 120mm fans. so x2 of them would have rocked even more.
I dont know why people r complaining about the price. GTX690 is £1,000. Two of these might only be a little more with much more performance.
Good job Sapphire @thumbs up
thought id follow up after I had a spare half hour to read this in depth.
That is one of the best video cards ive seen. Great to see this as everything in the graphics card world has been pretty boring lately.
I just messed up my keyboard reading this. time to order a new razer blackwidow.
WTF, This what im looking for….
Awesome GPU….
hmm, I wonder if the Intel have like this…
Any review about the Intel’s latest GPU’s?
This card looks fantastic and I’m glad to see such a powerful offering from AMD. It’s hard to agree that this is a good card for Eyefinity simply because Sapphire neglected to offer three of the same output. Even with adapters we will still have to deal with the notorious single/double tear due to mixed outputs being used with three monitors.
Gracias for inspiring me to go look up my own legwork.
Yours was way more detailed than mine.