Gigabyte Radeon HD 7970 Custom-Design Graphics Card Pictured

[btarunr]

Here is the first picture of a non-reference design Radeon HD 7970 graphics card. Made by Gigabyte, the GV-R797OC-3GD is a factory-overclocked graphics card, which makes use of a custom Ultra Durable VGA+ PCB by the company, and a custom-design triple-fan WindForce cooler. Its Ultra Durable VGA+ PCB makes use of 2 oz copper layer for better electrical stability and heat distribution, ferrite-core chokes, low RDS (on) MOSFETs, hand-picked high-performance GDDR5 memory chips, etc.

The cooler makes use of a combination of heatsinks and aluminum fin arrays to which heat from the GPU, memory, and VRM is fed by copper heat-pipes, and ventilated by three fans. Gigabyte also has a reference-design graphics card, which uses a reference-design cooling assembly, and most likely also a reference design PCB, except that it's colored red. It's not likely that red color PCB will be standard among AIB-branded retail cards, because the HIS and MSI cards pictured by OCUK recently, were found to have black-colored ones. There's no word of the pricing or clock speeds.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Sir B. Fannybottom]

That is a butt ugly sticker... Also, ewwww red pcb I do like the look of the cooler it's self.

 

[djisas]

Y ruin a good design with horrible stickers??
This i will never understand...
Edit: Red pcb is one thing, but blue?? seriously, they never learn...

 

[jalex3]

I for one like blue more than red. Blue clothes, blue pcb and blue lights.

Must agree I'd rather have a card without a ugly sticker, but it comes down to quality/price when I buy things I cant really see.

 

[Aceman.au]

I think it looks nice!

This might be the brand I'll buy.

 

[SteelSix]

Damn this means custom pcb/coolers will be available at launch? I read somewhere AMD was allowing it for 7950. I've always wanted a Gigabyte with the Windforce cooler. Black pcb would be nice, but I like the blue. Must scour for PWM details. This or an MSI with a killer PWM array is what me wants..

 

[Lionheart]

Sticker looks nice to me, but I don't like red PCB, I'll take the triple fan card thanks ^_^

 

[Widjaja]

The colour scheme of the reference card could be a good match for the BIOstar enthusiast board which an article was recently released on.

 

[stefanels]

Red PCBs are ugly... i rather go with the blue one, but the winner would be a black PCB... Nice

 

[Delta6326]

Well the great thing about stickers they can come right off.

 

[GSquadron]

I like the second one
I have had a palit 7600gt with red pcb and it was so hot!
Also have a palit 9500gt red pcb ^_^

 

[Steven B]

its a sticker, you can remove it.

I like hoe GB is actually offering a color other than blue for their GPus. Nice.

The blue PCB one is not a stock 7970 its is an OC version, so it will cost more.

 

[dj-electric]

Uhm... not exactly. Sapphire for example, are making their own PCB to save costs and they sell alot of these PCB-based cards for a reference-card price-tag. So does Gigabyte

 

[qubit]

If I was in the market for one of these, I'd get the one with the quiet triple cooler, as the stock one is noisy and excessive, irritating noise is a big no-no for me.

 

[wolf]

If I was in the market for one of these, I'd get the one with the quiet triple cooler, as the stock ones is noisy and excessive, irritating noise is a big no-no for me.

these Gigabyte variants are particularly good at delivering the cool and quiet experience. I should assume 1.1-1.2ghz overclock on the 7970 would still be very quiet with this setup.

 

[tomkaten]

Prolly comes complete with coil noise as well, as most of Gigabyte's video boards do lately. Their QC seems to be fading away...

 

[djisas]

Prolly comes complete with coil noise as well, as most of Gigabyte's video boards do lately. Their QC seems to be fading away...

As with anything made in china...
Dunno where the cards are made though...

 

[Widjaja]

Uhm... not exactly. Sapphire for example, are making their own PCB to save costs and they sell alot of these PCB-based cards for a reference-card price-tag. So does Gigabyte

I have to agree with this.
Before I knew about reference card being cheaper rather than better, I went out and bought a non-reference card.
I didn't know the reasons why it was cheaper and from my untrained point of view it seemed like a great deal as it was a shorter PCB and had what appeared to be superior cooling (Zalman VF830).

Well.

It didn't have superior cooling as the fan was locked at 80%, only cooling down the card to 71degC and the chokes were making an awful whine.
Went through three of them.
The last one I accidentally dropped and ended up getting an HD4850 instead.

Also in quite a few cases the non-reference coolers have no VRAM and/or VRM cooling.