I'm sorry that you're having issues with the voltage I have 2 Gigabyte 7970 Windforce3 oc, http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/gigabyte-radeon-hd-7970-oc-windforce-review,1.html and they are voltage unlocked since the beginning that I have them... http://i.imgur.com/A3NzuNG.jpg?1 Thanks to MSI Afterburner, even Hilbert in the review had applied more voltage. Try switching the video card's BIOS switch to the other position.

Yeah I had Rev 1.0 of the videocard and I could do that too when the card first came out. But after a year I took it back to warranty and got Rev 2.0 as a result. By that time Gigabyte the ***holes had already released the GHz edition of the HD7970 and decided to voltage lock the HD7970 OC Edition. I highly doubt any of your cards are REV 2.0 or REV 2.1

I effectively got the REV 1.0 of these cards! Damn you Gigabyte for sabotaging older capable cards to make place for the newer ones !!!! GRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Is dxdiag showing proper feature levels with these drivers for you guys?

my 7950 is still not showing a 12.0 feature level for direct x

my 7950 is still not showing a 12.0 feature level for direct x

Yeah I had Rev 1.0 of the videocard and I could do that too when the card first came out. But after a year I took it back to warranty and got Rev 2.0 as a result. By that time Gigabyte the ***holes had already released the GHz edition of the HD7970 and decided to voltage lock the HD7970 OC Edition. I highly doubt any of your cards are REV 2.0 or REV 2.1 Only Rev 1.0 of the card is voltage unlocked. It's not a BIOS issue, or an MSI Afterburner issue. I am pretty sure I researched this and there was a whole thread of 200+ dedicated to testing whether or not REV 2.0 and 2.1 of the card can be voltage unlocked (even those that succeeded in unlocking via BIOS mods) after testing the voltage via hardware, noticed it wasn't actually unlocked.

"Feature levels" line and data is in dxdiag of 8.x and 10 only? Here's my 7 SP1. Just curious why it's not shown mainly, and my previous sentence is a guess.

This is the main reason I don't touch anything from Gigabyte. They do the same with motherboards too. Rev. 1.0 is fine (so that reviewers get the good stuff), then Rev. 1.xx/2.xx is silently released with worse materials etc, at the same price range. Meanwhile you still believe you get the product that has been (honestly) reviewed as good. There was even a story in Guru3d about it. People in other websites have actually tested two random Gigabyte motherboards that they had the different revisions off, and you can see the results for yourself. It is Sapphire/ASUS/MSI for me, in that order.Kingston is doing the same with SSDs. Even Anandtech had a piece on it.

I am not surprised with my past experiences with Gigabyte. I think from now on it's going to be ASUS for me. Even my current motherboard, I bought it because the ASUS I went to buy was out of stock.

This is the main reason I don't touch anything from Gigabyte. They do the same with motherboards too. Rev. 1.0 is fine (so that reviewers get the good stuff), then Rev. 1.xx/2.xx is silently released with worse materials etc, at the same price range. Meanwhile you still believe you get the product that has been (honestly) reviewed as good. There was even a story in Guru3d about it. People in other websites have actually tested two random Gigabyte motherboards that they had the different revisions off, and you can see the results for yourself. It is Sapphire/ASUS/MSI for me, in that order.Kingston is doing the same with SSDs. Even Anandtech had a piece on it.

This is the main reason I don't touch anything from Gigabyte. They do the same with motherboards too. Rev. 1.0 is fine (so that reviewers get the good stuff), then Rev. 1.xx/2.xx is silently released with worse materials etc, at the same price range. Meanwhile you still believe you get the product that has been (honestly) reviewed as good. There was even a story in Guru3d about it. People in other websites have actually tested two random Gigabyte motherboards that they had the different revisions off, and you can see the results for yourself. It is Sapphire/ASUS/MSI for me, in that order.Kingston is doing the same with SSDs. Even Anandtech had a piece on it.

People in other websites have actually tested two random Gigabyte motherboards that they had the different revisions off, and you can see the results for yourself.

That's interesting....thanks for the info! I've never owned a Gigabyte product as their products have usually lacked something I wanted. I've been using MSI for years, though, for motherboards--and recently bought an MSI R9 380...first time for the videocard. (The MSI had the backplate which appealed to me for a couple of reasons.) Even Asus seems somewhat dodgy to me these days. Caveat Emptor...;) It's all got to do with the economic problems in the world markets, I'd imagine. Has this been something consistent from Gigabyte, or has it occurred mainly in the last 4-6 years? Just wondering...

For what its worth, my gigabyte z77 board is a 1.1 revision and the only change was adding a full 8-pin 12v connector for the CPU instead of the 4-pin on the 1.0.

That whole controversy surrounded a budget board - if you're buying that and expecting a quality overclock then you've made a mistake. Cutting out a power phase is a pretty obvious deal-breaker. Yeah its sleezy to change a product around under the same name, but doing your research before buying has always been the key to getting a good build. I have no doubt gigabyte still makes some good stuff (knock on wood), just do product-specific research before you dive in.

If anything, this makes me wonder how often this has occurred and no-one noticed because the updated board was still sold under the same revision. I think the chances of only gigabyte being guilty of this is pretty slim. I get the whole "vote with your wallet" idea, but I think it just applies differently here. Rather than just reject their entire product line, I think there is still value in rewarding a well-rounded product.