VisionTek’s HD 7970 still brings solid value to gaming

Performance summary charts & graphs

Here are two summary charts of 30 modern PC games and 4 synthetic benches. The highest settings are generally chosen and it is DX11 when there is a choice; DX10 is picked above DX9, and the settings are generally ultra or maxed unless specified on the chart. Specific settings are listed on the charts. The benches are run at 1920×1080 and 2560×1600.

In the first column, the HD 7970 results are posted at reference speeds (925/1375MHz) which is compared directly to the reference GTX 770 in the second column.  In the next column, we see our user-overclocked VisionTek HD 7970 at 1125/1500MHz compared with the GTX 780 in the 4th column.

The stock VisionTek HD 7970 only wins in about 5 games out of thirty compared to a stock GTX 770, but the results change to about 19 games, with some split, in the Radeon’s favor when it is overclocked.  In fact, we see the overclocked HD 7970 get close to GTX 780 performance in a couple of games, and it wins DiRT: Showdown at 2560×1600.  Of course, the GTX 780 is $650 and the VisionTek HD 7970 is $359.

In our second chart, we are comparing two factory overclocked GTX 770s with our user overclocked (1125MHz/1480MHz) VisionTek HD 7970.  The first column shows the Galaxy GTX 770 HOF (1200/7010MHz) results, with VisionTek results next, followed by the EVGA GTX 770 SC (1111MHz/7010MHz).

We can see the HD 7970 GHz Edition winning in approximately 13 of the games while the GTX 770s win in about 17 others, while splitting a couple depending on the resolution.  It is impressive to see a $359 video card scoring so well against the more expensive GTX 770 cards which are priced from $410 to $450!