# Gigabyte HD 7970 Super OC 3 GB



## W1zzard (Jul 25, 2012)

Gigabyte's HD 7970 SOC introduces a new cooling concept. Instead of placing the fan(s) on the large surface of the heatsink like on all recent graphics cards, the company chose to position five small fans along the top edge of the card. Our review will investigate whether the card will be too noisy and too big, or if it can truly provide some benefit.

*Show full review*


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## qubit (Jul 31, 2012)

Great review, W1zz.


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## DOM (Jul 31, 2012)

LOL so that cooler is all show XD 

Still a nice review


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## Supercrit (Jul 31, 2012)

Slap 2 high speed 120mm fans maybe the temp should be much better, the cooler looks insane, heat chamber and heatpipes with such high fin density scream for big powerful fans.


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## VulkanBros (Jul 31, 2012)

Supercrit said:


> Slap 2 high speed 120mm fans maybe the temp should be much better, the cooler looks insane, heat chamber and heatpipes with such high fin density scream for big powerful fans.



Yes - but as Wiz pointed out - in CF configurations this fan configuration would be better,
especially if the PCI-E ports are tight together - or water cooling


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## DOM (Jul 31, 2012)

VulkanBros said:


> Yes - but as Wiz pointed out - in CF configurations this fan configuration would be better,
> especially if the PCI-E ports are tight together - or water cooling


I ran two ref 7970 on my gene and the top card gets in the mid 80's so I think this cooler is still a big fail 

Idk why would anyone would approve that cooler to make it to retail... Imo its ugly and looks like a getto mod


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## gopal (Jul 31, 2012)

Seems to me like a box full of sweet, but i only see one problem triple slots


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## qubit (Jul 31, 2012)

The fan noise is about where I expect it to be (loud) with five small fans and not acceptable. If I wanted a three-slot card, I'd get one of the other designs with 2 or 3 large, quiet fans on it.

On of the major points about getting such a huge cooler is to have the damned thing run quiet, while delivering excellent cooling performance and overclocking. I'm not sure what Gigabyte were thinking with this one.


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## gopal (Jul 31, 2012)

qubit said:


> The fan noise is about where I expect it to be (loud) with five small fans and not acceptable. If I wanted a three-slot card, I'd get one of the other designs with 2 or 3 large, quiet fans on it.
> 
> On of the major points about getting such a huge cooler is to have the damned thing run quiet, while delivering excellent cooling performance and overclocking. I'm not sure what Gigabyte were thinking with this one.



I have no problem with loud fans, but i do have problem with triple slots


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## qubit (Jul 31, 2012)

gopal said:


> I have no problem with loud fans, but i do have problem with triple slots



Indeed, I never buy triple slot cards myself.


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## tt_martin (Jul 31, 2012)

W1zzard, 7970 Ghz Edition has not been included in performance summary graphs, will you add its results from now on?


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## INSTG8R (Jul 31, 2012)

Wacky cooler fail?


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## Rowsol (Jul 31, 2012)

How can a 3 slot card be noisy in idle?  fail.


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## gopal (Jul 31, 2012)

tt_martin said:


> W1zzard, 7970 Ghz Edition has not been included in performance summary graphs, will you add its results from now on?



Do we have a performance summary graph page?
Can you give me a link to it?


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## W1zzard (Jul 31, 2012)

tt_martin said:


> W1zzard, 7970 Ghz Edition has not been included in performance summary graphs, will you add its results from now on?



yes, also note the awesome new games we added


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## gopal (Jul 31, 2012)

oh the reviewed GPU Performence Summary?

EDIT: Do you mean by this


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## tt_martin (Jul 31, 2012)

gopal said:


> Do we have a performance summary graph page?
> Can you give me a link to it?



http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Gigabyte/HD_7970_SOC/28.html



W1zzard said:


> yes, also note the awesome new games we added


thanks
As for new games, I can not see any racing games. Can we expect DiRT Showdown soon?


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## W1zzard (Jul 31, 2012)

i dropped dirt 3 because it kept giving inconsistent results which meant i had to rebench it all the time. wont include dirt showdown due to extreme amd bias. looking forward to f1 2012


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## gopal (Jul 31, 2012)

So did you added Witcher 2


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## W1zzard (Jul 31, 2012)

old game, also can't automate it, so no. i added diablo 3, sniper elite v2 and max payne 3


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## gopal (Jul 31, 2012)

great, but i think we should open another thread or tke it to pms because i don't think this is the place to talk about it.


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## pantherx12 (Jul 31, 2012)

Huzzah! Heatpipes + vapour chamber like I've been saying for ages, now for someone to solder the pipes INTO the chamber it's self.

Shame the rest of the cooler is awful : /

What were gigabyte thinking?  They could of at-least gone with 3 fans at either end of the card so it could exhaust the hot air correctly.


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## natr0n (Jul 31, 2012)

I don't think I've ever seen such a generous heatsink come stock like that one.


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## pantherx12 (Jul 31, 2012)

natr0n said:


> I don't think I've ever seen such a generous heatsink come stock like that one.



Loads of cards came fitted with Accerelo extremes a year or 2 ago.

They're much beefier  ( and probably perform better with their 3 92mm fans and nearly having as much surface area as this cooler)


Also Colorfire heatsinks are even beefier than that lol


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## natr0n (Jul 31, 2012)

pantherx12 said:


> Loads of cards came fitted with Accerelo extremes a year or 2 ago.
> 
> They're much beefier  ( and probably perform better with their 3 92mm fans and nearly having as much surface area as this cooler)
> 
> ...


 yeah true, I was mesmerized by the copper surface area I think lol.


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## pantherx12 (Jul 31, 2012)

natr0n said:


> yeah true, I was mesmerized by the copper surface area I think lol.
> http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Gigabyte/HD_7970_SOC/images/cooler4.jpg



Yeah it's very impressive, I just don't understand the 40mm fan design.

It's like a step backwards  the MSI lightning card that had a higher end GPU clock is dual slot right? and thermal performance is similar.

What the hell were gigabyte smoking


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## Nordic (Jul 31, 2012)

My 7970 is quieter, overclocks just as high, runs cooler, and was much cheaper(used) than that. This is an utter fail card. The only good _possibility _is crossfire.


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## m1dg3t (Jul 31, 2012)

Thnx for the review W1zz! Also nice to see you added a few more games 

Nice idea, bad implementation/price. When we were shown a sneak peek at this cooler earlier i really was hoping they were just spitballin' and would never release a server fan cooled GFX card. But hey; SURPRISE!

That kind of cooler with top fans in 80mm/92mm would prolly be very effective, although very large 

Personally i think there are better cards/deals to be had


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## PopcornMachine (Jul 31, 2012)

Thanks for the review.  I remember seeing this card a few months back.  And as I thought it isn't a quiet card.  

Surprisingly it isn't very cool either.  So what's the point of a triple slot card that fails in both areas?

There are others in this price range that do both better and perform the same.


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## DarkOCean (Jul 31, 2012)

Tiny fans ...no thank you!


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## raptori (Jul 31, 2012)

Fail cooler is fail, nice review W1zz!.


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## gopal (Jul 31, 2012)

DarkOCean said:


> Tiny fans ...no thank you!





raptori said:


> Fail cooler is fail, nice review W1zz!.



I agree with you 2


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## Casecutter (Jul 31, 2012)

Wow, I wouldn’t have thought Gigabyte went this far with a design idea to miss the mark on heat dissipation and noise?  The vapor chamber/ heat pipe concept with the memory and VRM heat pads is nice, I like that part.  To me it seems to be there’s too much density in the fins and fan are not flowing or sucking at optimum to achieve proper static pressure.  I think the whole design and assembly could be optimized to target both ends, but engineering didn’t vet the objective? Or, they did and this is the best?  If it was it should have remained in the lab as a learning experience.

W1zzard would like to know do the fans all draw air from the mobo out or blow inward? I almost think two outer ones blow inward the rest suck out it might balance the static pressures.  And I didn’t see that this comes with the “GHz Boost” feature.  I’d want that and even with a little more aggressive Boost like the 1180Mhz from the first Bios, then the second profile is a straight 1100Mhz or where I can OC it at will.

I can go with the unconventional cooling if it really worked well, while now-a-days I’d want the Boost feature.  Right now the way it stands to me; it’s like any original 7970 on bad steroids


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## Hilux SSRG (Jul 31, 2012)

Good review.  I don't see how blasting hot air on to the mb would be ideal, especially if you have two doing sli.


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## SIGSEGV (Aug 1, 2012)

Hilux SSRG said:


> Good review.  I don't see how blasting hot air on to the mb would be ideal, especially if you have two doing sli.



no, the fans spreading and blasting hot air to the case instead of the motherboard..


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## THE_EGG (Aug 1, 2012)

WHY OH WHY GIGABYTE!

Why would they change from the Windforce X3  I find I get very good temperatures on my 580 (max of 72C when fully overclocked). AND the X3 is very quiet as well. I would have been happy if they just kept using the Windforce X3 instead of wasting R&D money on another cooler.

Great review as always though


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## Hilux SSRG (Aug 1, 2012)

SIGSEGV said:


> no, the fans spreading and blasting hot air to the case instead of the motherboard..



Where in the review did you read that? W1zzard didn't specify the airflow direction of the fans.  Based on the pictures, the fans are facing/blowing down through the large fin array which comes close to the pci express slot.  

I think Gigabyte might have lowered idle temps if they had mounted the fans under the heatsink array to blow air away from the mb.


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## THE_EGG (Aug 1, 2012)

Hilux SSRG said:


> Where in the review did you read that? W1zzard didn't specify the airflow direction of the fans.  Based on the pictures, the fans are facing/blowing down through the large fin array which comes close to the pci express slot.
> 
> I think Gigabyte might have lowered idle temps if they had mounted the fans under the heatsink array to blow air away from the mb.



Actually they were correct, if you look closely, the fins on each fan has its 'concave' side facing outwards away from the MB. 'Convex' side being closest to the MB. Also, the fan mount is facing away from the MB which is usually an indication of where air will be coming out of. 

So the air will be _pulled_ through the fin array (away from the MB) rather than being _pushed_ (towards the MB).


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## Melvis (Aug 1, 2012)

james888 said:


> My 7970 is quieter, overclocks just as high, runs cooler, and was much cheaper(used) than that. This is an utter fail card. The only good _possibility _is crossfire.



I would have to agree, its one big fail of a cooler in my eyes, and triple slot just makes it even worse. :shadedshu 

Those temps are terrible for such a big ass cooler.


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## pantherx12 (Aug 1, 2012)

Hilux SSRG said:


> Where in the review did you read that? W1zzard didn't specify the airflow direction of the fans.  Based on the pictures, the fans are facing/blowing down through the large fin array which comes close to the pci express slot.
> 
> I think Gigabyte might have lowered idle temps if they had mounted the fans under the heatsink array to blow air away from the mb.





THE_EGG said:


> Actually they were correct, if you look closely, the fins on each fan has its 'concave' side facing outwards away from the MB. 'Convex' side being closest to the MB. Also, the fan mount is facing away from the MB which is usually an indication of where air will be coming out of.
> 
> So the air will be _pulled_ through the fin array (away from the MB) rather than being _pushed_ (towards the MB).




Aye air flow is generally in the direction of the fan rotor support bars.

I think it would be pulling air through the heat-sink and expelling it towards the side panel as well.


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## Hilux SSRG (Aug 1, 2012)

pantherx12 said:


> Aye air flow is generally in the direction of the fan rotor support bars.
> 
> I think it would be pulling air through the heat-sink and expelling it towards the side panel as well.



That makes more sense to me.   I could not figure out the airflow direction from the pics. 

I guess the only thing to make sure is the direction of a fan mounted on a side panel?


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## pantherx12 (Aug 1, 2012)

Hilux SSRG said:


> That makes more sense to me.   I could not figure out the airflow direction from the pics.
> 
> I guess the only thing to make sure is the direction of a fan mounted on a side panel?



Yeah side panel exhaust fans instead of intake , think this is the only card that would benefit from such a set up


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## Nordic (Aug 1, 2012)

pantherx12 said:


> Yeah side panel exhaust fans instead of intake , think this is the only card that would benefit from such a set up



The phantom cards also do.


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## neliz (Aug 2, 2012)

not to rain on anyone's parade here, but good to see my assessment from last April to be 100% correct:


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## pantherx12 (Aug 2, 2012)

neliz said:


> not to rain on anyone's parade here, but good to see my assessment from last April to be 100% correct:
> 
> http://i43.tinypic.com/2d8nhph.jpg



Took me a while


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## Nirutbs (Aug 2, 2012)

fail with niosy idle
(nice review...thx)


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## gopal (Aug 2, 2012)

It is going to be a great failure some day


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## T4C Fantasy (Aug 2, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> yes, also note the awesome new games we added



i know there is literally hundreds of factors that can determine what makes a video card good but if someone was for example making a list of video cards, what are the most "important"  stats of that card should be listed? for example core/memory clocks


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## W1zzard (Aug 2, 2012)

T4C Fantasy said:


> i know there is literally hundreds of factors that can determine what makes a video card good but if someone was for example making a list of video cards, what are the most "important"  stats of that card should be listed? for example core/memory clocks



for me (as user, not reviewer) noise, relative performance and performance per dollar


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## T4C Fantasy (Aug 2, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> for me (as user, not reviewer) noise, relative performance and performance per dollar



which are the most important performance figures that should be listed? that are not game fps


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## m1dg3t (Aug 2, 2012)

T4C Fantasy said:


> which are the most important performance figures that should be listed? that are not game fps



He just told you


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## T4C Fantasy (Aug 2, 2012)

m1dg3t said:


> He just told you



yes but he didnt define relative performance


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## m1dg3t (Aug 2, 2012)

T4C Fantasy said:


> yes but he didnt define relative performance



Do you even look at the reviews? If you make it through the first few pages you'll find the answers you're looking for, in nice colours too!


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