Final thoughts and rating
Getting the obvious statements out of the way first, the Radeon HD 7970 3GB is the fastest single-GPU graphics card on the market. The first run of partner cards are likely to be reference models based on a solid design.
But potential purchasers need to be wary of overkill. The Radeon HD 7970 is capable of smoothly running practically any game at a 1080p resolution with extreme image-quality settings, but if you play at these settings, a lesser card may well do the trick.
The Radeon's visceral power is exposed when upping the ante by using three full-HD screens in an Eyefinity 3 configuration. This 5,760x1,080 resolution arrangement taxes every part of the GPU's silicon anatomy, and it's where the HD 7970 shines, relatively speaking.
Compared across three generations of high-end Radeons - HD 5870 through to HD 7970 - the latest card in AMD's arsenal makes more sense as the driver of three-screen gaming, where lots of innate horsepower and generous memory bandwidth generally serve up playable frame-rates with the utmost IQ.
£450-odd is a heck of a lot of money to spend on a single graphics card, so we urge you to consider just how the card fits into your gaming ecosystem. Make the most out of it by considering multi-screen gaming, for its the first single-GPU Radeon that makes a reasonable fist out of 5,760x1,080 gaming.
Bottom line: Sapphire's Radeon HD 7970 3GB is good on one screen but so much better on three.
The Good
It's a Radeon HD 7970
Consummate performer with three screens
Sapphire provides Eyefinity-enabling connectors
The Bad
It's also £450
HEXUS Rating
Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 3GB
HEXUS Awards
Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 3GB
HEXUS Where2Buy
The Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 graphics card is available to purchase from scan.co.uk*.
HEXUS Right2Reply
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