Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 Vapor-X OC 6GB Graphics Card Review

Lifting the card out of the anti-static bag, my first impressions are wow. What I note first of all is that even though its a very full bodied card, its got some very good styling all round and a uniform design to the top of the cooler.

Looking at the side of the cooler, we can see how the sides of the casing wrap down and around the heatsink to keep the heat moving in the right direction. To draw the heat away from the GPU core, there are four massive heatpipes ready to do their job.

Its no surprise when we see two 8-pin power connectors on the top, ready to feed this beast with the power it needs.

Moving along to the other end of the card, as always we find two CrossFireX connectors ready for upto four way configurations. What we also find here are two other little features. On the back of the PCB is a row of 6 surface mounted LEDs. These LEDs serve a simple purpose and act as a visual temperature monitor. Moving from the right to left, the LEDs light up green then orange then red to indicate how hot the PCB is currently running. The other feature we notice is the Sapphire branded EZ boost button, which raises the GPU core clock even further from the pre-overclocked level of 1050MHz upto 1100MHz.

I know we don’t normally look at the back of a card, but this one is a little different, with a huge backplate that serves two functions. First of all it helps to dissipate heat away from the card into the case, but it also helps to support the card when installed in a case. The grey and black design finishes this off perfectly.

Last of all, we have a standard array of outputs, with two DVI (one single and one dual-link), HDMI and two mini DisplayPorts.

As standard from AMD, the 7970 comes with a core clock speed of 925MHz and a memory speed of 1375MHz (5.5GHz effective). As we know by now, Sapphire have given this a boost and so we find a core clock of 1050MHz and a memory speed of 1500MHz (6GHz effective) and we’ll see how these figures stand later on when we will see if there is any more clocks inside there waiting to be squeezed out.