Taking us into real world gaming tests is Battlefield 3 and we start with 1920x1080 at maximum detail. In that test the 7970 does reasonably well, averaging 13fps above the 6970 and peaking much higher however the minimum framerates are quite close. In the comparison with NVIDIAs fastest single GPU card we have quite a close set of results, especially surprising given the large gap in price between the two cards.
Moving to 5760x1080 the 7970 continues to outperform the 6970 by some way, also improving in the minimum fps area. The GTX 580 is unable to run at this setting as two cards are required to enable 5760x1080.
Here are examples of how the game looks at our tested settings.
