Gigabyte Radeon HD 7970 OC 3GB Graphics Card Review

Currently, the Radeon 7970 is still the top banana when it comes to an AMD single core graphics card, with the GTX 680 giving some extreme competition from Nvidia. Due to this, it’s no surprise that manufacturers are keen to squeeze as much power out of these cards as possible to give even more performance over stock, especially if the rumours about the new Nvidia card are true.

The overclock on this card of 75MHz on the core clock may sound small but the difference it makes is nothing to be laughed at as it offered up a good spectrum of increases across all bar one of our benchmark tests. The results that impressed us the most weren’t specific to just one test, but across them all as we saw consistent increases across single resolutions and also Eyefinity, which showed that this card can quite easily handle larger display outputs with ease.

Due to my love for Gigabyte graphics cards, I honestly felt that this was going to be another winner, and as the results have shown, it’s exactly that. Not only is the performance great, but you also have a cooler that can keep things cool, with a low noise output at idle and load, and also not affect your electricity bill to much, which in my opinion ticks all of the right boxes with one left to spare, and that, at least for most, is one of the most vital characteristics of any purchase. We can only be talking about one thing, and one thing only; price.

Pricing on this card is still not 100% clear as not a lot of retail channels have picked up on it yet, but from what we’ve seen so far, the pricing shouldn’t be to disimilar from a reference card, with a typical reference card with stock speeds retailing at around £430, this shouldn’t set you back more than around £460 giving is a great bargain price considering the extra performance you will gain in terms of raw compute power and the great potential behind the WindForce cooler.

Some consumers will obviously be put off by the price at almost £450, but for users wanting to buy a 7970, we’d certainly usher you towards this “overclock edition” card as it simply offers so much more for your money and hardly requires much more of an outlay when looking at the difference with a stock card, and did we mention that it’s much better looking that a square looking reference design that lots of other manufacturers are sticking to. At least with this card, you get some extra sense of style and a good brand behind it, and what’s to say that you can’t push the overclock on this card even further?

Simply put, no matter what resolution you game at, this is an extreme card aimed at enthusiasts, and acts as good competition for the GTX 680. With that in mind, if AMD is your thing then this card is simply the best AMD card on the market and reigns supreme for them in our books as being one of the fastest single core graphics card we’ve ever tested.