More AMD Radeon HD 7970 Details Emerge

With the launch of the Radeon HD 7970 now brought forward to December 22, more info regarding this card showed up on the Web which covers the graphics card’s overclocking and cooling performance as well as its video output options.

All the info was taken from AMD’s media presentation for the Radeon HD 7970 which was partially published by Donanim Haber just a few hours ago.

Taking a look at the reference design of the card, the first thing that one notices is that AMD has chosen to keep the black and red color scheme used for their previous Radeon cards, although this time has opted for a more curvy design.

However, the plastic shroud covering the card isn’t the only thing that was changed as a series of modifications were also brought to the video output layout and cooling assembly.

The latter has now received a next-generation vapor chamber as well as a new blower fan that is said to deliver higher airflow while also offering improved acoustics and performance.

As far as the video outputs are concerned, these have now all been arranged in the confines of a single expansion slot, a feature that was requested by many enthusiasts since this makes the HD 7970 single-slot compliant when used together with a single-slot full-coverage water block.

The outputs available were also changed as the graphics card now comes with one DVI, one HDMI, and two mini-DisplayPort connectors, while all AIB partners are required to bundle their cards with HDMI-to-DVI dongles, and active mini-DP dongles.

         

Just like it was the case with the Radeon HD 6900 series, the HD 7970 also comes with a dual-BIOS setup, one containing the card’s reference speeds and one overclocked settings, and these can be easily switched via a BIOS toggle switch.

Speaking of overclocking, AMD’s media deck also revealed that the Radeon HD 7970 can reach GPU frequencies of 1GHz and beyond using only the reference cooler.

As noted earlier, the Radeon HD 7970 is now expected to be made official on December 22 with retail availability scheduled for January 9, 2012.