XFX’s Radeon HD 7970 Black Edition Double Dissipation: The First Semi-Custom 7970
by Ryan Smith on January 9, 2012 6:00 AM ESTFinal Words
Being the first mover in any market has its advantages, and this is especially true for XFX’s Radeon HD 7970 Black Edition Double Dissipation. While there’s nothing here we haven’t seen in the past on other video cards – a custom cooler and a moderate factory overclock – for the time being XFX is the only vendor offering either of those. Not surprisingly the Black Edition Double Dissipation appears to have sold out over at Newegg before our NDA even expired.
At this point in time XFX’s biggest advantage is that they’re the only vendor offering an open air cooler. There are obvious tradeoffs in these designs and it’s definitely not suited for everyone, but for cases that can handle the heat load of an open air cooler, XFX’s Double Dissipation cooler makes the resulting card significantly quieter than the reference design under load, offering the performance of a 7970 with less noise than any current high-end card. The only thorn in XFX’s side here is that their idle noise is a bit high, something I suspect they’ll fix on their first fully custom card when they can program in a more fitting fan profile.
Meanwhile XFX’s factory overclock gives the Black Edition Double Dissipation a distinct edge over the reference 7970 and any cards at similar clockspeeds, but I don’t believe this is as a significant advantage for the Black Edition Double Dissipation as its cooler. There’s plenty of evidence that most if not all 7970s can reach XFX’s factory overclock, so you’re effectively paying for the privilege of having those speeds pre-burnt into the BIOS. Not that there isn’t a place for a factory overclock, but unless you’re absolutely sheepish about doing it yourself, there’s probably nothing here you can’t do on your own. At best an argument can be made that by grabbing a pre-binned card you can expect a better aftermarket overclock – and you’ll absolutely want to do some overclocking of your own as we were able to get another 125MHz out of our sample.
Of course XFX isn’t giving this away for free – the Black Edition Double Dissipation comes at a $50 premium making it a $599 card, and the notable absence of the active miniDP to SL-DVI adaptor means you’d need to shell out another $25 to build a kit at parity to most other vendors' 7970 kits. Nevertheless XFX has generally earned their price premium. If you were satisfied with the reference 7970’s performance for its price, then the Black Edition Double Dissipation is not far off that curve, though at the end of the day it’s a factory overclocked card and you are definitely paying a premium for that.
With that said, if you’re looking to save a buck we’d suggest keeping your eyes open for the non-Black Edition version of the Double Dissipation card in the future. Without the factory overclock it should be a bit cheaper than the Black Edition, conferring the same advantages of the open air cooler without quite the price premium.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
93 Comments
View All Comments
FaaR - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
It's a lot more than 6% faster, don't be such a ridiculous fanboy.It also draws a lot less power than a 580, saving back (some) of the price difference in the long run as a lower electricity bill.
wonderpookie - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
What's a "pre-binned" card?Thanks! :)
Rick83 - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
A card which has been tested to have tighter tolerances (in this case) than others and has been selected with this in mind.Technically "pre-binned" is not a very sensible word creation, as the "pre" refers to the fact that it is done by the manufacturer and not the end-user-over-clocker -- but these days more people by manufacturer over-clocked cards than there are people that actually buy a dozen cards, test them all for the highest achievable OC, and then resell/send back the less stable cards.
Morg. - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
binning : the process of separating *PU's according to their maximum operating frequency.Called like that because you would test all your GPU's and put all those between 1200-1300 mhz stable @ xyz volts in bin 1, all those between 1100-1200 in bin 2, etc. in order to present differentiated offerings.
In the past, many CPU part numbers were just different binnings of the same part (like C2D 2.33 or 2.4 ghz etc.), same goes for GPU's, and AMD even introduced a different kind of binning with their x2,x3,x4 variants based on how many cores were stable at the target speed, and locking those that weren't (x2s were quickly made from x2 parts, and then x1 (sempron) selected from failed x2s).
So in this case, it would mean XFX tested the cards and selected the better performers to sell as DDBE, leaving the others for non-overclocked cards.
This works that way because no CPU or GPU is perfect and all dies are more or less failed prints of the actual design.
The most flawed cannot be used at all and go to the trash.
The slightly flawed get some parts of the die disconnected (faulty cache, broken core, ...).
The slightly less flawed just get overvolted / underclocked in order to run.
The best parts come closer to the intended result and will thus operate at lower voltages or higher frequencies in comparison.
Usually, binning isn't perfect and some better dies can fall in lower bins, hence the unlockable cores on older phenom/sempron x2,x3, etc. -
It is also not as fine-grained as some pro OCers would like it to be, and because of that, they tend to buy a bunch of CPU's and bin them themselves in order to break WR's (look at kingpincooling.com).
Iketh - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
"However it’s interesting to note that temperatures under load end up being identical to the reference 7970. The BEDD is no cooler than the reference 7970 even with its radically different cooling apparatus. This is ultimately a result of the fact that the BEDD is a semi-custom card; not only is XFX using AMD’s PCB, but they’re using AMD’s aggressive fan profile. At any given temperature the BEDD’s fans ramp up to the same speed (as a percentage) as AMD’s fans, meaning that the BEDD’s fans won’t ramp up until the card hits the same temperatures that trigger a ramp-up on the reference design. As a result the BEDD is no cooler than the reference 7970, though with AMD’s aggressive cooling policy the reference 7970 would be tough to beat."You do realize overclocking increases temps, right? Even if voltages aren't touched.
NJoy - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
have you tried to understand what is written in the bit you copypasted?Iketh - Tuesday, January 10, 2012 - link
Sorry, but it's you that isn't understanding. My point is that I believe the cooler to be 2-4C cooler than the reference considering it's holding the same temps with an overclock. That's all.Morg. - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
Very true ...But this is Anandtech ;)
-- mainstream tech news for the masses
It's like their new config advice .. every config they advise is at least 10% pure waste of cash .. but it's still better than no advice for those who don't know better.
And furthermore, the temperature points are simply a result of what XFX wanted for this card. nothing else.
AMD's fan profile is part of that but you can rewrite it in the BIOS iirc so they just didn't bother / their fans don't run reliably below voltage xyz.
I could mod that card to make it silent, so could XFX, they just didn't want to go into such detail when they could simply slap their cooler on it, change clocks and ship it - all there is to it.
B3an - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
WTF are you on about you stupid little kid. Many of Anand's articles on here are unrivalled for technical details and insight.Morg. - Tuesday, January 10, 2012 - link
lol .And you would know ... with a fake 1337speak nick ... if you think they're so good it only goes to show your ignorance makes anandtech a perfect fit for you, a fact I was pointing to in the post you replied to.
At your level of understanding, Anandtech is a perfect fit.
Good for Anand and for you tbh . enjoy it.