Product Showcase
Product Showcase
So, pictures then, below you can see the Gigabyte Radeon HD 7970 OC, this is a 3GB model graphics card. We expect the product to retail for roughly 525 EUR or 549 USD in the initial launch phase, we hope price will level in a few weeks but that will depend on availability versus volume.
Included with all cards will be a manual and a demo/driver CD, power converters and monitor connector converters to get your Eyefinity freak on. Also a crossfire bridge is included, obviously.
As you can see Gigabyte customized the card alright, a nice dark/blue looking card is what you may expect from them. The 4.3 Billion transistor encounting 28nm Tahiti based GPU core is tied to a whopping 3GB memory.
Now the reference cards are clocked at a 925 MHz core frequency but this is the OC model, and Gigabyte factory clocks the product at 1000 MHz for you. The GDDR5 memory runs at a default 5.5 Gbps (that's 1375 MHz effective data rate as GDDR5 has a quad data-rate, so effectively that quadruples that number). The memory is running on a 384-bit bus.
Here we can see the backside, the card will fit pretty much any chassis as its 27cm in length. The backside of the PCB shows a very non-complex design very close to the reference design. The Gigabyte SKU code for the product is GV-R797OC-3GD by the way.
As part of their Ultra Durable VGA construction, Gigabyte chose a 2oz copper PCB (printed circuit board), Tier 1 memory, Japanese Solid Capacitors, Low RDS (on) MOSFET and Ferrite Core Chokes.
AMD allows you to opt for the multi-GPU road with Crossfire(X) as an option. You can pair two, three or (if you are loaded) even four cards in one PC and have them do a decent workout.
If you peek to the right of the PCB on the photo above, in-between the 1 and 2 position you'll notice a Switch, it's actually a Dual BIOS toggle switch. Setting two returns the card to factory default.
The R7970 has a maximum power consumption of roughly 210 Watts, our measurements actually show numbers slightly below that value as we measured 201 Watt under peak gaming load. The boards overall power consumption from idle to load is excellent really, roughly 10 Watt in idle and when the monitor goes into sleep mode ... just 3 Watt.
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.
