10 Aug 2021 - Graphics card reviewed

Based on current gaming requirements the Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II Edition is considered one of the weakest cards and wont meet modern AAA game specs.

This card meets game requirements up to DirectX 11.

We take a look at game performance achieved on this graphics card when running 2023 popular games. This short Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II Edition game hardware review looks at the graphics card frame rate performance on Ultra graphics settings at 1080p, 1440p and 4K screen resolutions. In comparison to the game recommended requirements of the 1000 most demanding games played today this PC hardware can run 169.

The Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II Edition graphics card is returning a weak performance on Resident Evil 8 at 1080p of 0 frames per second at Ultra graphics settings. Another popular title that is good to benchmark graphics cards against is Forza Horizon 5 which we saw got weak frame rates of 12 FPS. A third game we can look at on Ultra at 1080p is the popular Grand Theft Auto VI, which is predicted to get 0 FPS under tests.

Increasing resolution to 1440p is something a number of PC gamers are doing today. We tested the Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II Edition at 1440p with Resident Evil 8, which got a weak set of FPS results. These were, Low: 0 FPS, Medium: 0 FPS, High: 0 FPS and Ultra: 0 FPS. We then checked out Forza Horizon 5 which had a set of graphics results as followed, L: 23FPS, M: 18FPS, H: 12FPS, U: 9FPS. And another popular game was Grand Theft Auto VI with predictions of L: 0FPS, M: 0FPS, H: 0FPS, U: 0FPS at 1440p. Getting popular modern games to run at 1440p on the Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II Edition is unable to perform adequately across modern games at this increased resolution.

How many years will the Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II Edition graphics card play newly released games and how long until you should consider upgrading the Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II Edition in your PC? We think this Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II Edition has around 6-12 months until an upgrade should be considered.

Whats a good PC graphics upgrade for the Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II Edition? If you want an upgrade suggestion for the Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II Edition then a good choice would be RX 5000 Series Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB as this is better than 716 of the top 1000 most demanding game requirements with 68% better performance as well. Alternatively a suitable upgrade choice for the Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II Edition is the RX 5000 Series Radeon RX 5300, which is 35% more powerful and can run 300 of the 1000 most demanding PC games beating their recommended requirements.