Product Showcase
The R7970 has a maximum power consumption of roughly 210 Watts, our measurements actually show numbers below that value. The boards overall power consumption from idle to load is excellent really.
You will need to hook the card up to your power supply with a 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe PEG connector. We recommend a 550W power supply to start with, with one card of course.
Connectivity wise the output connectors will vary per brand. But on the reference card we see four connectors supporting all high-resolution monitors. We get two display port connectors (mini), HDMI and a DVI connector. The cards will come with monitor connector dongles and adapters.
What I like about the placement of the connectors is the massive mesh on top of them, it allows the card to exhaust hot air really well. So there's won't be much residual heat going inside the chassis.
The cooler itself had a small overhaul, it has a wider fan with new designed blades, the housing is much more sturdy and the actual heatsink has gotten an update as well. AMD now uses a 6th generation vapor chamber cooler.
Overall the card remains cooled within very acceptable limits and it isn't too noisy either. But you'll learn all about that over the next few pages.