When the HD 7970 GHz Edition was released by AMD it wasn’t exacted hailed as a giant leap forward for AMD. The HD 7970 GHz Edition took a stock HD 7970, ramped up the clock speeds, voltages and introduced some new dynamic power and clock speed adjustment firmware.
Now an enthusiast has managed to get his hands on the HD 7970 GHz Edition BIOS file that allows for you to flash your HD 7970 into a HD 7970 GHz Edition. The change is very much reminiscent of the HD 6950 to HD 6970 BIOS flash that a lot of enthusiasts were doing back in the HD 6000 series.
Right from the get go we want to point out that we take no responsibility for any damage this MAY cause to your graphics card should it go wrong somehow. However, if you know what you’re doing this is a simple yet effective way to get some extra fire-power from your HD 7970.
The HD 7970 GHz Edition is not 100% physically identical to the HD 7970, it features improved sensors for more accurate PowerTune adjustments but that’s the only difference. And let’s be honest, the HD 6950 successfully converted to a HD 6970 for most people and it had 288 less Radeon cores – a major hardware difference. So in the grand scheme of things, this upgrade is much less risky.
The BIOS upgrade would change the following should you decide to do it:
- A higher GPU clockspeed of 1000MHz, up from the 7970′s 925MHz.
- A higher memory clockspeed of 1500MHz, up from the 7970′s 1375MHz.
- And PowerTune’s new “Boost” feature, which allows the graphics to dynamically overclock itself up to 1050MHz if the GPU has thermal headroom.
It’s worth pointing out that there are two main reasons why this BIOS upgrade might not work on your card.
- Some of the RAM on the HD 7970 standard edition cards out there might not be up to the job of reaching 1500MHz from 1375MHz.
- ASIC reasons – your chip may not be capable of reaching those speeds because of lower ASIC values (as indicated by GPU-Z) that mean your chip isn’t capable of reaching the 1000-1050MHz levels.
However, for the vast majority of people this should work and it is as easy as installing a simple file. To see if your card should work, we would suggest overclocking your card to 1500MHz memory (6GHz effective) and to 1050MHz on the core and check for stability.
You can find the file clearly labelled at the source, we don’t want to put a direct link to the file here in case you accidentally download it, autorun it and bake your card. To install it, make sure your video card is installed and you are logged in as an administrator then run the exe file found in the zip download. One reboot later and should have yourself a HD 7970 GHz Edition.
I have an XFX double dissapation 1ghz edition 7970 – would I benefit from this at all?
Since the card is already 1ghz?
It would give you a nice bump on the memory speeds, also the core clock would dynamically overclock to 1050MHz (a 5% increase in performance) but you could easily get a better boost in performance by installing an overclocking utility like MSI Afterburner and cranking up the core speed to 1125MHz. That’s what I would do, a much safer option. Doing a BIOS flash voids your warranty.
is the only difference the increase in speeds or is there updated software? I was under the impression that the later was the case so simple overclock wouldn’t get the same results
well its like a dynamic overclock, so if you overclocked to 1050MHz it would be better than the HD 7970 GHz edition cos its a constant overclock
Any specific recommended settings?
-core voltage
-power limits
-coreclock
-memory clock
-fan speed
??
I’ve never done this before. To note this is my setup.
– i7 2700k (Not OC’d).
– GA-Z68XP-UD4 – GIGABYTE
– Artic Freezer pro 13
– 8GB Corsair vengance RAM 1600Mhz.
– AMD XFX DD Black Edition R7970.
– Corsair 650D Tower case.
– Corsair TX650M 650w Modular PSU.
Is my PSU sufficient? could i also put a 2T HDD in there with out any power consumption problems with the overclock as well?
Personally I would go for something like 1125-1150MHz on the Core and 1500MHz on the memory. That should be stable, and yes your power supply is sufficient, it could probably managed an overclock on your 2700K too. If you want to know more about overclocking the HD 7970 i’d suggest you read this guide: http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-7970-overclock-guide/2
Thanks for the fast reply and link ryan.
Awesome news.
no worries, happy overclocking!
anyway to unflash the bios?