Radeon HD 7970: specs and benchmarks
Aggregate performance score
Radeon HD 7970 provides acceptable gaming and benchmark performance at 13.60% of a leader's which is GeForce RTX 4090.
Summary
AMD started Radeon HD 7970 sales 22 December 2011 at a recommended price of $549 . This is a desktop graphics card based on a GCN 1.0 architecture and made with 28 nm manufacturing process. It is primarily aimed at gamer market. 6 GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1.38 GHz are supplied, and together with 384 Bit memory interface this creates a bandwidth of 264 GB/s.
Compatibility-wise, this is a dual-slot graphics card attached via PCIe 3.0 x16 interface. Its manufacturer default version has a length of 274 mm. One 6-pin and one 8-pin connectors are required, and power consumption is at 300 Watt.
Primary details
Some basic facts about Radeon HD 7970: architecture, market segment, release date etc.
| Place in the ranking | 378 | |
| Place by popularity | not in top-100 | |
| Cost-effectiveness evaluation | 2.38 | |
| Power efficiency | 3.78 | of 100.00 (Radeon 890M) |
| Architecture | GCN 1.0 (2011−2020) | |
| GPU code name | Tahiti | |
| Market segment | Desktop | |
| Design | reference | |
| Release date | 22 December 2011 (12 years ago) | |
| Launch price (MSRP) | $549 | of 14,999 (Quadro Plex 7000) |
Cost-effectiveness evaluation
Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.
Detailed specifications
Radeon HD 7970's specs such as number of shaders, GPU base clock, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. These parameters indirectly speak of Radeon HD 7970's performance, but for precise assessment you have to consider its benchmark and gaming test results.
| Pipelines / CUDA cores | 2048 | of 21760 (GeForce RTX 5090) |
| Boost clock speed | 925 MHz | of 3599 MHz (Radeon RX 7990 XTX) |
| Number of transistors | 4,313 million | of 208,000 million (B200 SXM 192 GB) |
| Manufacturing process technology | 28 nm | of 3 nm (Arc Graphics 140V) |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 300 Watt | of 2400 Watt (Data Center GPU Max Subsystem) |
| Texture fill rate | 118.4 | of 2,554 (Radeon Instinct MI300X) |
| Floating-point processing power | 3.789 TFLOPS | of 109.7 (GeForce RTX 5090) |
| ROPs | 32 | of 192 (Radeon RX 7900 XTX) |
| TMUs | 128 | of 1280 (Data Center GPU Max NEXT) |
Form factor & compatibility
This section provides details about the physical dimensions of Radeon HD 7970 and its compatibility with other computer components. This information is useful when selecting a computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards, it includes details about the interface and bus (for motherboard compatibility) and additional power connectors (for power supply compatibility).
| Bus support | PCIe 2.1 x16 | |
| Interface | PCIe 3.0 x16 | |
| Length | 274 mm | |
| Width | 2-slot | |
| Supplementary power connectors | 1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin |
VRAM capacity and type
Parameters of memory installed on Radeon HD 7970: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Note that GPUs integrated into processors have no dedicated memory and use a shared part of system RAM instead.
| Memory type | GDDR5 | |
| Maximum RAM amount | 6 GB | of 294912 (Radeon Instinct MI325X) |
| Memory bus width | 384 Bit | of 8192 Bit (Radeon Instinct MI250X) |
| Memory clock speed | 1375 MHz | of 20000 (RTX 5000 Ada Generation Mobile) |
| Memory bandwidth | 264 GB/s | of 5,171 GB/s (Radeon Instinct MI300X) |
| Shared memory | - |
Connectivity and outputs
Types and number of video connectors present on Radeon HD 7970. As a rule, this section is relevant only for desktop reference graphics cards, since for notebook ones the availability of certain video outputs depends on the laptop model, while non-reference desktop models can (though not necessarily will) bear a different set of video ports.
| Display Connectors | 1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort | |
| Eyefinity | + | |
| HDMI | + |
Supported technologies
Technological solutions and APIs supported by Radeon HD 7970. You'll probably need this information if you need some particular technology for your purposes.
| CrossFire | + | |
| FreeSync | + |
API compatibility
APIs supported by Radeon HD 7970, sometimes including their particular versions.
| DirectX | DirectX® 11 | |
| Shader Model | 5.1 | |
| OpenGL | 4.6 | |
| OpenCL | 1.2 |
Benchmark performance
Synthetic benchmark performance of Radeon HD 7970. The combined score is measured on a 0-100 point scale.
Combined synthetic benchmark score
This is our combined benchmark score. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.
Passmark
This is the most ubiquitous GPU benchmark. It gives the graphics card a thorough evaluation under various types of load, providing four separate benchmarks for Direct3D versions 9, 10, 11 and 12 (the last being done in 4K resolution if possible), and few more tests engaging DirectCompute capabilities.
3DMark 11 Performance GPU
3DMark 11 is an obsolete DirectX 11 benchmark by Futuremark. It used four tests based on two scenes, one being few submarines exploring the submerged wreck of a sunken ship, the other is an abandoned temple deep in the jungle. All the tests are heavy with volumetric lighting and tessellation, and despite being done in 1280x720 resolution, are relatively taxing. Discontinued in January 2020, 3DMark 11 is now superseded by Time Spy.
3DMark Vantage Performance
3DMark Vantage is an outdated DirectX 10 benchmark using 1280x1024 screen resolution. It taxes the graphics card with two scenes, one depicting a girl escaping some militarized base located within a sea cave, the other displaying a space fleet attack on a defenseless planet. It was discontinued in April 2017, and Time Spy benchmark is now recommended to be used instead.
3DMark Fire Strike Graphics
Fire Strike is a DirectX 11 benchmark for gaming PCs. It features two separate tests displaying a fight between a humanoid and a fiery creature made of lava. Using 1920x1080 resolution, Fire Strike shows off some realistic graphics and is quite taxing on hardware.
3DMark Cloud Gate GPU
Cloud Gate is an outdated DirectX 11 feature level 10 benchmark that was used for home PCs and basic notebooks. It displays a few scenes of some weird space teleportation device launching spaceships into unknown, using fixed resolution of 1280x720. Just like Ice Storm benchmark, it has been discontinued in January 2020 and replaced by 3DMark Night Raid.
Unigine Heaven 3.0
This is an old DirectX 11 benchmark using Unigine, a 3D game engine by eponymous Russian company. It displays a fantasy medieval town sprawling over several flying islands. Version 3.0 was released in 2012, and in 2013 it was superseded by Heaven 4.0, which introduced several slight improvements, including a newer version of Unigine.
Unigine Heaven 4.0
This is an old DirectX 11 benchmark, a newer version of Unigine 3.0 with relatively small differences. It displays a fantasy medieval town sprawling over several flying islands. The benchmark is still sometimes used, despite its significant age, as it was released back in 2013.
Send your test results of Radeon HD 7970.
Gaming performance
Let's see how good Radeon HD 7970 is for gaming. Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in frames per second. Comparisons with game system requirements are included, but remember that sometimes official requirements may reflect reality inaccurately.
Average FPS across all PC games
Here are the average frames per second in a large set of popular modern games across different resolutions:
| 900p | 105 | |
| Full HD | 92 |
Cost per frame, $
| 1080p | 5.97 |
FPS performance in popular games
Full HD
Low Preset
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 21−24 |
Full HD
Medium Preset
| Assassin's Creed Odyssey | 30−35 | |
| Assassin's Creed Valhalla | 21−24 | |
| Battlefield 5 | 40−45 | |
| Call of Duty: Modern Warfare | 27−30 | |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 21−24 | |
| Far Cry 5 | 30−35 | |
| Far Cry New Dawn | 35−40 | |
| Forza Horizon 4 | 85−90 | |
| Hitman 3 | 24−27 | |
| Horizon Zero Dawn | 70−75 | |
| Metro Exodus | 45−50 | |
| Red Dead Redemption 2 | 35−40 | |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 40−45 | |
| Watch Dogs: Legion | 70−75 |
Full HD
High Preset
| Assassin's Creed Odyssey | 30−35 | |
| Assassin's Creed Valhalla | 21−24 | |
| Battlefield 5 | 40−45 | |
| Call of Duty: Modern Warfare | 27−30 | |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 21−24 | |
| Far Cry 5 | 30−35 | |
| Far Cry New Dawn | 35−40 | |
| Forza Horizon 4 | 85−90 | |
| Hitman 3 | 24−27 | |
| Horizon Zero Dawn | 70−75 | |
| Metro Exodus | 45−50 | |
| Red Dead Redemption 2 | 35−40 | |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 40−45 | |
| The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt | 30−35 | |
| Watch Dogs: Legion | 70−75 |
Full HD
Ultra Preset
| Assassin's Creed Odyssey | 30−35 | |
| Assassin's Creed Valhalla | 21−24 | |
| Call of Duty: Modern Warfare | 27−30 | |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 21−24 | |
| Far Cry 5 | 30−35 | |
| Forza Horizon 4 | 85−90 | |
| Hitman 3 | 24−27 | |
| Horizon Zero Dawn | 70−75 | |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 40−45 | |
| The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt | 30−35 | |
| Watch Dogs: Legion | 70−75 |
Full HD
Epic Preset
| Red Dead Redemption 2 | 35−40 |
1440p
High Preset
| Battlefield 5 | 24−27 | |
| Far Cry New Dawn | 21−24 |
1440p
Ultra Preset
| Assassin's Creed Odyssey | 14−16 | |
| Assassin's Creed Valhalla | 10−11 | |
| Call of Duty: Modern Warfare | 14−16 | |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 7−8 | |
| Far Cry 5 | 16−18 | |
| Forza Horizon 4 | 65−70 | |
| Hitman 3 | 16−18 | |
| Horizon Zero Dawn | 27−30 | |
| Metro Exodus | 21−24 | |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 21−24 | |
| The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt | 14−16 | |
| Watch Dogs: Legion | 80−85 |
1440p
Epic Preset
| Red Dead Redemption 2 | 21−24 |
4K
High Preset
| Battlefield 5 | 12−14 | |
| Far Cry New Dawn | 10−11 | |
| Hitman 3 | 9−10 | |
| Horizon Zero Dawn | 65−70 | |
| Metro Exodus | 12−14 | |
| The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt | 12−14 |
4K
Ultra Preset
| Assassin's Creed Odyssey | 8−9 | |
| Assassin's Creed Valhalla | 6−7 | |
| Call of Duty: Modern Warfare | 7−8 | |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 2−3 | |
| Far Cry 5 | 7−8 | |
| Forza Horizon 4 | 18−20 | |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 12−14 | |
| Watch Dogs: Legion | 5−6 |
4K
Epic Preset
| Red Dead Redemption 2 | 12−14 |
NVIDIA equivalent
According to our data, the closest NVIDIA alternative to Radeon HD 7970 is GeForce GTX 670, which is faster by 1% and higher by 3 positions in our ranking.
Here are some closest NVIDIA rivals to Radeon HD 7970:
Similar GPUs
Here is our recommendation of several graphics cards that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.
Recommended processors
These processors are most commonly used with Radeon HD 7970 according to our statistics.
