HD 7970 overclocked to 1.26GHz on air

The HD 7970 has been out on paper now for over a week but only reviewers have had a chance to test them. Over at VR-Zone they successfully managed to overclock the HD 7970 to 1.26GHz by bumping the stock voltage up from 1.15 to 1.25v.  The huge new overclock saw peak temperatures of only 66 degrees with 100% GPU utilization.

Benchmark results were staggering and the overclocking brought massive gains:

From P8229 to P10259 (24% increase) in 3DMark11 performance preset test.

From X2764 to X3490 (26% increase) in 3DMark11 extreme preset test.

From 69.6FPS to 83.2FPS (19% increase) in Unigine Heaven benchmark test.

From 5920 to 7484 (26% increase) in Compute Mark test.

This was all made possible by a special BIOS which removed the clock limitations previously set at 1125MHz core and 1500MHz memory. Interestingly on LN2 cooling the HD 7970 made it even further to a staggering 1.7GHz core clock resulting in a P15063 score in 3DMark 11 performance preset which is a huge 83% jump in performance.

However, the star of the show is the fact a 1.26GHz stable overclock was achieved on stock air cooling with a peak temperature of 66 degrees. 28nm looks set to revolutionize the graphics card market.

Source: VR-Zone