10 Aug 2021 - Graphics card reviewed

Based on current gaming requirements the Radeon HD 7970 OC Sapphire 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 OC Sapphire Edition game hardware review looks at the graphics card frame rate performance on Ultra graphics settings at 1080p, 1440p and 4K screen resolutions. Of the 1000 most demanding recommended specs found in game requirements today, this gpu is more powerful than the graphics requirement of 189 games in todays list.

Now onto the frame rates achieved at 1080p. We are seeing FIFA 22 getting 63 FPS with the Radeon HD 7970 OC Sapphire Edition, Battlefield 2042 getting 0 FPS and Resident Evil 8 getting 0 frames per second. All run on Ultra at 1920x1080 screen res.

People are turning their increasingly more powerful graphics cards to the popular 1440p screen size so we tested the Radeon HD 7970 OC Sapphire Edition to see how it performs on 1440p. First off we have looked at FIFA 22 where it was reasonable. The frame rates it scored for the game presets were - Low: 126 FPS, Medium: 99 FPS, High: 67 FPS and Ultra: 48 FPS. We added Battlefield 2042 to our tests and saw it was weak with a 0 FPS at Ultra 1440p. And then tested Resident Evil 8 which got 0 FPS at Ultra 1440p. 1440p gaming on the Radeon HD 7970 OC Sapphire Edition is not going to be able to keep stable frame rates at all times at Ultra 1440p on modern games.

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

Whats a good PC graphics upgrade for the Radeon HD 7970 OC Sapphire Edition? If you are thinking of upgrading this graphics card then we would currently suggest the RX 5000 Series Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB. This PC hardware upgrade performs 63% better and can run 716 of today’s 1000 most demanding PC games. Alternatively if you are thinking of upgrading this graphics card then we would currently suggest the RX 5000 Series Radeon RX 5300. This PC hardware upgrade performs 31% better and can run 300 of today’s 1000 most demanding PC games.