Gpu 7970: AMD Radeon HD 7970 — NotebookCheck.net Tech

AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB Review

Written by

Harry Butler

December 22, 2011 | 08:19

Tags: #28nm #best-graphics-card #directx-11 #radeon #southern-islands #zerocore

Companies: #amd

1 — AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB Review2 — AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB — The Card3 — Test Setup4 — AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB Arma II Performance5 — AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB Battlefield 3 Performance6 — AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB Dirt 3 Performance7 — AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB Skyrim Performance 8 — AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB Power and Thermals9 — AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB Overclocking10 — Performance Analysis and Conclusion

Like all of AMD’s recent high-end cards, the HD 7970 3GB is a dual-slot card, and it’s once again been finished in Adam-West-era-Batman red and black. The glossy finish and slick styling of the stock cooler certainly look a lot better than the black-box designs of the HD 6800- and HD 6900-series, though.

As far as stock clock speeds go, a GPU frequency of 925MHz and a memory frequency of 1,375 MHz (5.5GHz effective) get us started, but AMD claims there’s plenty of overclocking headroom to be had too.

Measuring 275mm long, the HD 7970 3GB is the same length as the Radeon HD 6970 2GB that it usurps at the top of AMD’s single-GPU range. Like that card it also requires one 6-pin and one 8-pin PCI-E power connector, located on the top of the card. Meanwhile, the radial fan is designed to draw air in from the side ventilation ports and then exhaust it out of the rear of your PC’s case, with the rear I/O of the card oddly spartan.

Click to enlarge

There’s a single DVI output, a pair of Mini-DisplayPorts and an HDMI output, leaving half the rear I/O for ventilation duty. All four display outputs can be used simultaneously, and AMD claims the card is able to support up to six displays via a (not yet released) DisplayPort splitter. While the loss of a second DVI port will likely worry current multi-monitor users, remember that DisplayPort to DVI adapters can be had for less than £10.

We took it apart so you don’t have to

Along with being the first 28nm GPU to market, the HD 7970 3GB is also the first PCI-E 3.0 graphics card. While the doubling of PCI-E bandwidth to 32GB/sec is certainly intriguing, no current CPUs or chipsets support PCI-E 3.0. As such, this is a feature that’s impossible to test at the moment.

Removing the card’s stock cooler reveals that the GPU is housed in a metal enclosure, although whether this is to stop it being crushed by the mounting force of the cooler (or a third-party cooler or waterblock) we can’t be sure. Five power phases supply the GPU, with an individual power phase for the memory, resulting in a total of 6+1 power phases. Intriguingly, there’s also space for an additional power phase on the PCB that AMD has chosen to leave off; could we perhaps see an even faster version of the card in the future?

Note the size of the copper vapour chamber — it’s huge!

The cooler itself utilises a vapour chamber attached directly to the stack of densely packed cooling fins, rather than an assembly of heatpipes to transfer heat away from the GPU and into the cooling fin stack. The cooler also includes a black aluminium plate, which helps to cool the card’s 12 memory modules, while the power delivery circuitry, situated directly beneath the radial fan, has no direct cooling.

PowerTune and ZeroCore

AMD’s PowerTune technology returns for the HD 7970 3GB and it’s once again handled by hardware on the card rather than in the driver software (unlike Nvidia). For those unfamiliar with PowerTune, it’s a technology to work around stress-test applications such as FurMark, limiting the default frequency of the GPU. Such applications put the GPU under maximum load conditions, but the vast majority of games don’t come close to doing the same. PowerTune dynamically adjusts the card’s clock speeds in such applications, allowing for higher clock speeds in games, but lower frequencies, temperatures and power draw in stress-test applications

In addition to PowerTune, AMD has also introduced ZeroCore with the HD 7970 3GB. This technology primarily applies when the operating system stops outputting a video signal, such as when it puts a display to sleep. When this happens, the GPU is able to enter a standby mode, only leaving the PCI-E bus switched on and dropping idle power consumption to incredibly low levels. Previously, even if your screen was off, the GPU would still be ticking over.

Intriguingly for multi-GPU users, ZeroCore also applies with CrossFire setups. When displaying a Windows desktop, AMD claims that any secondary cards will enter a ZeroCore state, reducing their power draw to a few Watts until you need them.

ASUS Matrix HD 7970 Platinum Video Card Review

ASUS HD 7970 Matrix Platinum

When it comes to AMD Radeon HD 7970 video cards, one of the most sought after cards is the ASUS MATRIX HD 7970 Platinum graphics card that is available under the part number MATRIX-HD7970-P-3GD5 for $499.99 shipped. This card has the AMD Radeon HD 7970 ‘Tahiti’ GPU core clocked at 1100 MHz and the 3GB of Hynix GDDR5 RAM is clocked at 1650 MHz (6600 MHz effective). The stock core clock on the AMD Radeon HD 7970 is 925 MHz, so this card features a 175MHz core clock increase. This is a 18.9% improvement, so it already has a fairly hefty overclock on it from the factory. Don’t think for one second that is all that ASUS has changed on this card. ASUS basically took the factory reference design and threw it out the window. The companies engineers in Taiwan burnt the midnight oil and came up with an entirely custom card. Pretty much the only thing on this video card that is similar to the original design is the GPU itself. Is that radical enough for you? You can run out and get the lowest cost AMD Radeon HD 7970 for around $387 shipped after rebates, so hopefully all these customizations will make up for the ~$110 price premium that this card carries.

Let’s cut the chit-chat and start looking at the ASUS Matrix HD 7970 Platinum 3GB video card!

As you can see from the image above, the ASUS Matrix HD 7970 is a very nice looking video card that is primarily black with some red accent touches. The red and black color scheme is pretty much standard on ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) products, so this video card will complement an ROG motherboard for example. Once you take in the colors, you’ll see that ASUS is using the DirectCU II dual-fan GPU cooling technology to help keep the card nice and cool.

Notice that this card takes up three expansion slots, so it is a very big card. How big? Well, our measurements put the Matrix HD 7970 at 11.1875″ in length and 5″ in height! The card feels great as well with a solid build construction thanks to a metal back plate and metal fan shroud. The Matrix HD 7970 weighed in a 3lbs 2oz, so why ASUS used metal backplates and brackets to keep the PCB nice and straight.

As we mentioned earlier ASUS is using their DirectCU II technology on this card. This means that it has five 8mm copper heat pipes that are directly touching the GPU and then three of them go to one aluminum cooling fin array and two to a block directly over the GPU. Each of the independent cooling fin sections has a 100mm fan blowing directly over them. ASUS says these two fans deliver 6x more airflow and are 3x quieter than the AMD reference design, resulting in a 20% lower operating temperatures despite the overclock. These fans are also ‘dust proof’ in design, so they will stay cleaner inside the motor housing and last longer than standard fans. ASUS also offers independent control of the fans.

On the reverse side of the ASUS MATRIX HD 7970 Platinum we see that ASUS fitted this card with a full length black backplate. This is not just for
looks as it protects the components on the back of the PCB from being
damaged. It doesn’t do anything in terms of cooling though as it doesn’t
directly touch the PCB and no memory chips are located on the back of
the card. The card does have plenty of holes across it, which help for air circulation and reduce weight.

Notice that ASUS moved the SAP CAP capacitors away from the GPU. These are usually directly behind the GPU, but were moved to accommodate extreme overclockers GPU pots.

Directly above the GPU you might have noticed that there is a large black component clearly visible through the backplate. This is the iROG controller and it handles all the PLL and vMEM voltages on the card.

It also controls the VGA hotwire features. ASUS uses a 20-phase Super Alloy Power technology on this card and told use they used industrial components on it to ensure a long operating life.

Along the right edge of the card you’ll see one of the many features that make this card stand out from the crowd. This is called the VGA Hotwire corner and is where ASUS has placed the connector for monitoring the Vcore and various solder points additional tweaks that overclockers often use. VGA hotwire allows for additional voltage to be supplied to the card for the GPU Core, Memory and PLL. In addition it also provides monitoring. This is independent of the standard Probe points for referencing of voltages on the card. As you can tell, ASUS designed the Matrix HD 7970 with heavy focus on overclockers and power users.

You need to feed tons of power to a beast of a video card like this,
so ASUS equipped the card with two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Assuming
the card can pull the proper 150W from the PCI Express 3. 0 slot and
each of the 8-pin power connectors it means that this card has 450W of
power going to it. Due to this ASUS suggests a 650W power supply with a
+12V current rating of 42A for proper operation of the entire PC. ASUS has a pair of LED lights under each PCIe power connector. These two
LED lights are a form of quick diagnostic for issues when connecting
power to the video card. Depending on the presence or lack of presence
of power connections ( or secure fitting ) the card will display an LED –
RED or Green. Green meaning power connections are correct and Red
meaning power connections are not.

To the left of the power connectors you’ll see the PLL and Vmem hotwire connectors. As you can see ASUS has made it pretty easy to volt-mod the Matrix HD 7970!

The ASUS MATRIX HD 7970 can be run in Crossfire and has a pair of Crossfire bridges located along the top edge of the card. You should be able to run four of these together in 4-way CrossFireX in theory, but with each one taking up 3 PCI expansion slots there isn’t a desktop case or motherboard that would support that.

Take note that ASUS also has a BIOS switch, but it it not a BIOS switch. It changes the vBIOS display output functionality allowing for a 6-way Eyefinity setup (2 single links) or a 5-way (single link and dual link). Differences in display resolution will occur to the DVI ports under this configuration.

At the end of the PCB you’ll see that ASUS has placed their ”TweakIt’ technology on the actual PCB, so you can adjust hardware voltage in real-time as well as turning the fan speed up to 100%. By pressing the ‘+’ or ‘-” button you adjust the GPU
core voltage up to +0.125V in 10 jumps ranging from 1.270V to 1.335V. This is great for
overclocking as you can be running a benchmark and if you start to see artifacts or issues you can just click these buttons for more or less power.

The ‘safe mode’ button is one that is seldom used when things are going right, but saves your butt when crap hits the fan. By pushing this button it resets the
graphics card back to the default clock frequencies and voltages! Think
of it like a clear CMOS button for a motherboards BIOS. This switch is a
life-saver as it keeps you from possibly bricking the card during an
extreme overclock. Enthusiasts and overclockers will certainly
appreciate this feature as it takes some of the worry out of
overclocking, so you can focus on having fun. Above those three buttons you have the 100% fan speed turbo button. This button puts the fans at 100% power with just a click of a button. There are also 10 LED lights to show you how far you’ve increased the voltage.

Since the ASUS MATRIX HD 7970 takes up three expansion slots, ASUS was able to run pretty much any video connection types that they wanted due to all the space. At the end of the day you can see that ASUS went with a pair of DVI-D outputs that are rated to support resolutions up to 2560×1600 (2048×1536 w/ D-Sub). You also have four full size Display Port connectors! It’s nice to have regular sized outputs as you don’t need any adapters. If you want to run a three panel setup with DVI cables then you will need an adapter and you’ll also need adapters if you want to run HDMI.

Lastly, we have the ‘MATRIX LED load Indicator’ located along the top edge of the video card. ASUS uses five multicolored LED indicators behind the word ‘MATRIX’ at the top of the card to give you a visual display of the current GPU load on the card. Most gamers will see it blue (at idle) and red (under load).

If you look under the fan shroud and above the PCB you’ll see the “high endurance frame” (the metal black part above the PCB) that ASUS uses to keep the card straight and it actually acts as a heatsink for some of the boards power management.

This card uses ASUS DIGI+ VRM with 20 phase Super Alloy Power, so it is very beefy. We were going to take apart the card to show you the PCB components, but you have to remove the red decals that are glued down in order to take off the fan shroud. We didn’t want to glue the card back together, so we didn’t do this. We could have removed the entire GPU cooler from the backside, but that would mean that we have to clean off the thermal compound and we wanted to leave that alone for temperature testing reasons down the road.

Here is a shot provided by ASUS of the bare PCB. You can clearly see the twelve Hynix GDDR5 memory chips that make up the cards 3GB of memory and the 20 power phases. As you can see ASUS has customized this card from top to bottom!

If you have any more questions on the Matrix HD 7970 video card we found a great video done by JJ over at ASUS. He took an in-depth look at the Matrix HD 7970 graphics card in a 30 minute long video that covers everything in great detail. You can also download the reviewers guide that ASUS gave us here. In this guide you’ll find some additional details on on the cards layout if you still have feature questions.

Now that you have read nearly 2,000 words about the ASUS HD 7970 Matrix Platinum 3GB video card and its features we can check out the bundle and get to testing!

Questions or comments?
View this thread in our forums!

GPU amd Radeon hd 7970

After detailed
getting to know the new Graphics architecture
Core Next let’s look at her first
implementation — GPU
AMD Radeon HD 7970 and video card based on it.

AMD Radeon processor
The HD 7970 is manufactured using a 28nm process and
today is the most productive
GPU in the family
AMD. This GPU is
codenamed Tahiti XT and contains
over 4 billion (4,312,711,870) transistors.

Tahiti XT Processor
has 2048 stream processors, i.e.
it has 32 CU cores, each with 64
stream processors (computing
ALU modules). Accordingly, in each
there are eight blocks (CU Array) of four CUs.
In addition, the Tahiti XT chip is endowed with 128 texture
modules (TMU) and 32 rasterization units
(ROP).

Reference
AMD Radeon HD 7970 graphics card has 3
GB GDDR5 memory with 384-bit interface,
operating at a frequency of 1375 MHz, and
graphics core frequency is
925 MHz ( cm.
table ).

Also worth noting
the presence of two BIOS chips with the ability
switching between them, which allows
register an overclocking profile in one of
BIOS.

Reference
the AMD Radeon HD 7970 graphics card has an interface
PCI Express 3.0, and for connecting monitors
DVI and HDMI connectors are provided, as well as
two Mini DisplayPort connectors.

HDMI output complies
1.4a standard, so it can transmit
dual signal to 3D TV with frequency
24 frames per channel. Especially for
games have support for 3 GHz HDMI with a frequency
60 Hz per channel. In addition, the standards
DisplayPort 1.2 HBR 2 and 3 GHz HDMI are useful for
connecting upcoming displays with
resolution 4096×2160.

Note that new
AMD Radeon HD 7970 graphics cards support
the DisplayPort 1.2 standard, and hence the technology
Multistream. It can be used to connect
to one output three displays in a chain
or through a special hub. And on
the output of the hub can be not only
DisplayPort, but also HDMI, DVI and VGA interfaces. Company
AMD promises that such hubs will appear in
sale this summer.

Also video card
on the AMD Radeon HD 7970 processor supports
new version of AMD Eyefinity 2.0 technology,
which is a combination
AMD Eyefinity Technology and AMD HD3D Technology
and allows the video card to play
large image either on five
lined up monitors with landscape
or portrait orientation of screens,
or on six monitors with landscape
orientation of screens composed according to
three in two rows. You can also output
single 3D image at once
to three 3D DisplayPort displays and
refresh rate of 120 Hz. Moreover,
for each monitor is now provided
own audio channel, which allows,
e.g. video conferencing
with several interlocutors at the same time
or play on the same group of monitors and
watch a movie at the same time
friend. Maximum Resolution
composite screen — 15×15 thousand pixels.

Besides,
undergone significant modernization
reference cooling system (in
compared to the clock on an AMD graphics card
Radeon HD 6970). In particular, the fan has become
wider and has blades of a new shape,
resulting in an increase in the generated
im airflow without significant
noise level changes. Evaporative
there was also a camera at the base of the cooler
improved.

Finally
Note that the suggested price
graphics card AMD Radeon HD 7970 is 500
USD

http://studopedia. org/8-191362.html

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLIW

VLIW ( English very
long instruction
word — «very long
machine instruction») — architecture
processors
with multiple computing
devices . Characterized
the fact that one processor instruction
contains several operations
must be executed in parallel ^[1][2] .
In fact, this is «visible to the programmer»
microprogram control when
machine code is only
slightly folded microcode
for direct control
equipment. At superscalars
processors also have several
computing modules, but the task
distribution of work between them is decided
hardware. This greatly complicates the device
processor, and may be error prone.
In VLIW processors, the distribution problem
resolved during compilation
and the instructions explicitly state which
computing device must
run what command. VLIW can be considered
logical continuation of the ideology
RISC ,
extending it to architectures with
multiple computing modules.
Just like in RISC, the instructions explicitly
specifies what should be done
each processor module. Because of this
instruction length can reach
128 or even 256 bits.

The VLIW approach is strongly
simplifies the processor architecture,
shifting the problem of distribution
computing devices for compiler .
Since there are no large and complex
nodes, power consumption is greatly reduced.
At the same time, the code for VLIW has
low density. Due to the big
number of empty instructions for
idle device programs for
VLIW processors can be much
longer than similar programs for
traditional architectures.

VLIW architecture
looks pretty exotic
unusual for a programmer. Because of
complex internal code dependencies,
programming by hand, level
machine codes for VLIW architectures,
is quite complex. account for
rely on compiler optimizations.

The first VLIW processors
were developed in the late 1980s
companies Cydrome ,
MultiFlow ^[3] ,
Culler. ^[4]
processors TriMedia
Philips
and family DSP
C6000 from Texas
Instruments . Microprocessor Transmeta
Crusoe
contains a binary compatibility layer
with architecture x86 ,
which compiles instructions into
processor internal format ( code
morphing ). Core Crusoe
is a VLIW processor. ^[5] Microprocessor Intel
Itanium
has a 64-bit command system
EPIC processor
with explicit parallelism, which is
one of the VLIW variants. multiprocessor
computer complex «Elbrus-3»
and microprocessors of the Elbrus series
( Elbrus
2000″ , Elbrus
S» ) are VLIW processors. ^[6]

processors,
manufactured by Tilera ,
also have VLIW architecture. ^[7]

VLIW also received
good distribution in the market GPU ,
so, video processors AMD / ATI
Radeon
from R600
and up to modern ones have VLIW architecture. ^[8]
^[9]
From Southern
Islands (Q1 2012) company
AMD / ATI
moved away from the VLIW approach ^[10]

VLIW
—
Architecture.PPTX NSUMedia.ru/…/ VLIW — Architecture / 9004 9005 %20-0 9005 9005 9005 9004 9004 9004 9004 9005-0- 20,9005,9005 9005 9004 9004 9004 9004 pptx

Architecture,
characteristics, classification of computers …

portal.tpu.ru/SHARED/c/CHAD/Studing_work/Tab1/org_computer.doc

course
Description
cn.bstu.by/uploads/Microprocessors%20and%20Microcomputers.doc

Architecture
processors (CISC, RISC, MISC). — Babylon …

babylon.wiki-wiki.ru/…/ Architecture _processors(CISC,_RISC,_MIS…

Start
forms

End
forms

[DOC] Architectures,
characteristics, classification of computers …

portal.tpu.ru/SHARED/c/CHAD/Studing_work/Tab1/ Org _ Computer .doc

[DOC] Course
Description
cn.bstu.by/uploads/Microprocessors%20and%20Microcomputers.doc

Architecture
processors (CISC, RISC, MISC). — Babylon …

babylon.wiki-wiki.ru/…/ Architecture
page
2 — mognovse.ru
mognovse . en / qxb -1- show — development — i —
http://habrahabr.ru/company/intel/blog/147108/

… On superscalars, parallelism and
genre crisis

Probably not for
which of the habralyudey will not be news
that the underlying ideas and principles
incorporated in the current digital technology
and its components, hailing from far
to the computer standards of the past, namely
— from the middle of the previous century . … Consider
one specific and unsurprising for
this blog example — look into the mind
those who think about improvement
processor architectures. To start
give the necessary explanation — the definition
superscalar. In the simplest scalar
computational action involves two
operand; in the vector operation is performed
over two sets of numbers. There is also
intermediate (or mixed) option:
simultaneously produced various
operations on different pairs of scalars
due to the presence of an excess
processing cells — this approach and
called superscalar.
Principal
superscalar instruction execution circuit

Superscalar is quite
can be called ingenious architecture,
but it is an extremely good implementation
program that is written sequentially.
The trouble is not in the superscalar itself, but in
presentation of programs. Programs
presented in sequence, and
needs to be converted at runtime.
into parallel execution. home
the problem of the superscalar is in the unfitness
input code to his needs. Available
parallel kernel algorithm and
parallel organized hardware
Part. However, between them, in the middle,
there is some bureaucratic
organization is a consistent system
commands….

Ruler
SCALE from nano to tera???

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