7970

The 7970 refers to the AMD Radeon HD 7970 graphics card, released in December 2011 as the flagship of AMD’s Radeon HD 7000 series. It was the first consumer GPU from AMD built on the Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture and manufactured on TSMC’s 28-nanometer process. The card was positioned as a high-end option for gaming and graphics workloads during its era.

In terms of specifications, the HD 7970 features 2048 stream processors arranged in 32 compute units, 128 texture units, and 32 render output units. It uses a 384-bit memory interface and ships with 3 GB of GDDR5 memory. The typical clock speeds are around 925 MHz for the core, with a boost to about 1,000 MHz, and memory clocked at approximately 1,375 MHz (5.5 Gbps effective), yielding a theoretical memory bandwidth of about 264 GB/s. The card has a power requirement near 250 watts and supports AMD technologies such as CrossFireX for multi-GPU setups, Eyefinity for multi-display configurations, and PCIe 3.0.

Variants of the model include the GHz Edition released in 2012, which offered higher boost clocks and refined cooling to improve sustained performance, enabling the GPU to reach and maintain near-1 GHz core speeds under load.

Reception and impact at the time highlighted the HD 7970 as the fastest single-GPU solution available, delivering strong DirectX 11 performance. It was noted for its high power consumption and the need for substantial cooling, influencing subsequent AMD designs and cooling solutions. The 7970 was later superseded by newer generations in the AMD lineup, continuing the evolution of high-end GPUs.