Technical data / specifications

	Radeon HD 7970	ASUS HD 7970 DirectCUII Top	Radeon HD 6970	Radeon HD 6950
Chip	Tahiti	Tahiti	Cayman XT	Cayman Pro
Process	28 nm	28 nm	40 nm	40 nm
Transistors	4.31 billion	4.31 billion	2.64 billion	2.64 billion
GPU clock	925 MHz	1'000 MHz	880 MHz	800 MHz
Shader clock	925 MHz	1'000 MHz	880 MHz	80 MHz
Memory	3'072 MB GDDR5	3'072 MB GDDR5	2'048 MB GDDR5	2'048 MB GDDR5
Memory clock	2'750 MHz	2'800 MHz	1'375 MHz	1'250 MHz
Memory interface	384 Bit	384 Bit	256 Bit	256 Bit
Memory bandwidth	264'000 MB/s	268'800 MB/s	176'000 MB/s	160'000 MB/s
TMUs	128	128	96	88
TAUs	128	128	96	88
Shader Cores	2'048 (1D)	2'048 (1D)	384 (4D)	352 (4D)
ROPs	32 ROP	32 ROP	32 ROP	32 ROP
Shader model	SM 5.1	SM 5.1	SM 5	SM 5
Maximum board power	250 Watt	250 Watt	250 Watt	200 Watt

As you might expect the ASUS HD 7970 DirectCU II Top is everything but standard. First of all core clock speeds have been increased from 925 MHz to 1'000 MHz. For factory overclocked cards ASUS uses "Top" in the name. Furthermore ASUS equipped this card with its own DirectCUII cooler. This massive triple slot cooler features two 100 millimeter fans as well as five heatpipes. Each of which has a diameter of eight millimeters. In 2D mode the card is almost inaudible and under load it still is much quieter than AMDs reference design.

ASUS also changed the the power design with this DirectCUII model. In this case you get a whopping twelve phases which should guarantee some good extreme overclocking values. Furthermore there are holes at the top edge of the card to make use of ASUS hot wire feature you can with their Rampage IV Extreme board. If you decide to connect the card to the board by soldering wires to it, you can read out voltages accurately and you can also control Vcore,Vmem and PLL voltages via ASUS ROG Software.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 8 - Stone Giant
Page 2 - Technical Data / Specifications	Page 9 - World in Conflict
Page 3 - Preview / Delivery	Page 10 - Resident Evil 5
Page 4 - Testing conditions	Page 11 - Call of Juarez
Page 5 - 3D Mark 11	Page 12 - Far Cry 2
Page 6 - 3D Mark Vantage	Page 13 - Overclocking
Page 7 - Unigine Heaven	Page 14 - Conclusion

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