GIGABYTE Radeon HD 7970 OC (GV-R797OC-3GD) Video Card Review @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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GIGABYTE Radeon HD 7970 OC Video Card Review - GIGABYTE has a custom cooled and overclocked version of the Radeon HD 7970. We examine how well GIGABYTE's Windforce 3X cooling technology allows us to overclock this next generation video card. Find out how this GIGABYTE GV-R797OC-3GD monster compares to a GeForce GTX 580, a Radeon HD 6970, and reference HD 7970.
 
So this card doesn't take up 3 slots (My GTX 580 Direct CU II did)? Gotta get one of these!
 
RTFA, Page 1
The GIGABYTE Radeon HD 7970 is roughly .5 inches smaller than a reference Radeon HD 7970 in each dimension, lending to its custom PCB nature. The video cards measurements are 10.5 inches in Length, 1.5 inches Wide, and 4.5 inches in Height.
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You say it's not a loud as most card with it cranked up to 80%. Can you go a little more in depth on that please? If 80% isn't to loud I might forgo water cooling as a 1300 oc is really nice if it's not to loud.
 
Best single card to date looks like. Impressive. Sure would look nice on my Gigabyte mobo!

Too bad my wife would have me balls on aforesaid mobo if I purchased one lol.
 
spaceman said:
Best single card to date looks like. Impressive. Sure would look nice on my Gigabyte mobo!

Too bad my wife would have me balls on aforesaid mobo if I purchased one lol.
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I know how you feel. I chose a "lease to own" 7970 for $57 a month from cutting edge gamer. Leasing is not cheaper in the long run, but its a lot easier to hide $57 then $579...

In the meantime i have my 7970 hashing 590mh/sec which after the price of electric is a profit of $52 a month. Assuming bitcoin holds steady the card is almost completely paying its own bill.
 
Makeroflostsouls said:
You say it's not a loud as most card with it cranked up to 80%. Can you go a little more in depth on that please? If 80% isn't to loud I might forgo water cooling as a 1300 oc is really nice if it's not to loud.
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since its not using a blower fan its going to be much quieter, but at the same time looking at those temps 80% fan speed is definitely not needed. under 60C full load, i'd say you could probably get away with the fan at 60% maybe less..


1300 mhz overclock is damn nice, almost want to see what that card could do water cooled but i'm betting the super OC versions will be the beasts to have for water cooling.
 
Nice article guys!

Where you using the high texture pack in skyrim? There doesn't seem to be much difference from
the 1.4 patch when i compare this result to the other hd 7970 benchmarks you've done.

Still a great looking card ... i'd take that one over the xfx one ...
 
1.3Ghz, wow. Those results make it completely evident that the only thing holding Tahiti back is AMD's own policy of staying within a certain TDP and not wanting to break PCI-e specs. Your results give me more confidence that we'll actually see those Sapphire models overclocked to 1.335Ghz. Can't wait 'till you guys get your hands on one of those in the future (cue crazy scientist laugh).

Thanks again for another great review.
 
Great review. Those numbers are just...wow. In certain titles the performance gap is so large that it compares to a 6970 x-fire setup rather than single cards. Really do hope they come down in price though. Despite being worth every penny I've never spent more than $300 on a GPU but it's becoming harder to resist :p
 
buttons said:
I know how you feel. I chose a "lease to own" 7970 for $57 a month from cutting edge gamer. Leasing is not cheaper in the long run, but its a lot easier to hide $57 then $579...

In the meantime i have my 7970 hashing 590mh/sec which after the price of electric is a profit of $52 a month. Assuming bitcoin holds steady the card is almost completely paying its own bill.
Click to expand...

I understand your reasons, but I'm sorry...leasing a video card is the stupidest thing I have ever heard of. Plus their rates are raping the shit out of you, because after one year you could have owned the stupid card for what they charge!

Lets see, lease for $57 month x 12 = $684 thrown down the drain with nothing to show for it

Versus

Owning it outright for $579

Or if you upgrade every year like I do: Purchase for $579 and then sell 12 months later for $450 = $129 thrown down the drain. $129/12 = $10.75 a month.

If that company was a little more fair with their prices by factoring in used resale value like vehicle leasing companies do I could see it, but as is they are raping the shit out of you with Ursury Rates...FUCK THAT!
 
Ok Brent/Kyle, OC it a bit more if you guys can and lets see this go against the 6990.
I'm interested in a 1300MHz+ 7970 matching it.

I'm sure that CPU can reach 4.2GHz also.
 
Nice card. MSI, it's your turn to see what you can do with Twin Frozr III.
 
Please guys, get a better test system. [email protected] is not enough anymore...as you can see by the low scaling numbers on the 7970, almost 40% overclock and 15% boost on average....
 
Damn it, I've had a unit preordered for a while now and it's still not in.
Had to return my XFX BEDD cause of rattling fans, so I'm borrowing a 5870 until the gigabyte arrives.
This review is making waiting even harder!
 
maboblivion said:
Nice article guys!

Where you using the high texture pack in skyrim? There doesn't seem to be much difference from
the 1.4 patch when i compare this result to the other hd 7970 benchmarks you've done.

Still a great looking card ... i'd take that one over the xfx one ...
Click to expand...

1.4 Patch was being used.

Texture Pack didn't make it into the review, texture pack was released when the review was already finished.
 
WOW ! :eek:

Good comprehensive review.

Performance = WOW ! :eek:
 
Makeroflostsouls said:
You say it's not a loud as most card with it cranked up to 80%. Can you go a little more in depth on that please? If 80% isn't to loud I might forgo water cooling as a 1300 oc is really nice if it's not to loud.
Click to expand...

I have a Gigabyte 6870 with a Windforce 3X and just ran it through various manual speeds.

50% is a sweet spot with the fan about the same as the case fans (HAF 932) which are themselves pretty quiet, any higher and the Windforce becomes noticable. But 50% would likely keep the GPU sufficiently cool.

60% is noticable but not irritatingly so and would definitely keep the GPU cool enough.

80% drowns out the case fans, pretty loud, though not shrill, Windforce has a relatively deep 'tone'. But it is too loud for anyone valuing quietness.

Don't know how this would translate on a different case, the HAF 932 with it's three 230mm fans has an exceedingly easy to live with tone and, while audible, tends to fade into backround unnoticability. Same goes for the Windforce under 50% speeds.
 
Pretty impressive with these custom PCB boards.

My reference Gigabyte 7970 only does 1275 @ 1.3v with water, the whole rig is silent though and the chip hums around at 45C
 
I ordered one of these, and was disappointed with mine.

It idled very hot, was unusually noisy, and didn't even pass stress testing at stock speeds.

My guess is that it was defective and the heatsink was not properly attached to the core.

It also has image defects over the DVI port. (Blue "snow" and flickering blue lines, eventually leading to monitors displaying "signal out of range")

Its a huge issue in person, but due to the closeness of black and blue, not as apparent in the video's.

Watch in high res.

Gigabyte Video 01

Gigabyte Video 02

Needless to say, mine is being RMA's to newegg. It's really disappointing they won't cross-ship. Now I have to wait for my refund to buy another.

I don't think I'll be buying any Gigabyte products in the future. Every one I've ever owned (video card or motherboard) has had problems.

article said:
We were immediately able to max all sliders, up to 1125MHz core and 1575MHz memory.
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That's odd. On my board, (same model name) in the latest Afterburner beta, the sliders maxed out at 1275 and 1650 (though I wasn't able to reach stability at any speed due to the boards problems)

I wonder why different boards of the same manufacturer and model, have different slider max settings. is this a bios setting? Maybe a different bios revision?
 
spigzone said:
I have a Gigabyte 6870 with a Windforce 3X and just ran it through various manual speeds.

50% is a sweet spot with the fan about the same as the case fans (HAF 932) which are themselves pretty quiet, any higher and the Windforce becomes noticable. But 50% would likely keep the GPU sufficiently cool.

60% is noticable but not irritatingly so and would definitely keep the GPU cool enough.

80% drowns out the case fans, pretty loud, though not shrill, Windforce has a relatively deep 'tone'. But it is too loud for anyone valuing quietness.

Don't know how this would translate on a different case, the HAF 932 with it's three 230mm fans has an exceedingly easy to live with tone and, while audible, tends to fade into backround unnoticability. Same goes for the Windforce under 50% speeds.
Click to expand...

In my opinion its very quiet at low fan speeds, but over 40% it is MUCH louder than my existing Asus DCII's
 
Very, very impressive overclock.

I'm a bit surprised that this 7970 measures at 10.5" in length, considering that Gigabyte lists their card's length at 285mm (~11.22") on their website. If the GV-R797OC-3GD really is 10.5", this would be nice for those with mid-tower ATX cases that can't accommodate video cards that are 11" or greater in length.
 
Thanks for the review guys, i thoroughly enjoyed it. This is what I've come to expect from GB, aftermarket heatsinks and boards that blow away the competition. I used to have a GTX 460 with the Windforce 2X fan, and it was exactly the same as you described the fan and this card, consistently quiet and allowing for insane overclocks. I haven't owned Asus or MSI hardware yet, but after all of my reading, I regard GB as highly as I regard the other two. If I was in the market for a high end GPU in this price range I would get this one.

Thanks again for the review, it was enlightening.

I'm just wondering, how is the power circuitry on this GPU?
 
CKTurbo128 said:
Very, very impressive overclock.

I'm a bit surprised that this 7970 measures at 10.5" in length, considering that Gigabyte lists their card's length at 285mm (~11.22") on their website. If the GV-R797OC-3GD really is 10.5", this would be nice for those with mid-tower ATX cases that can't accommodate video cards that are 11" or greater in length.
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Who you gonna trust, the guys that measured the card while we had it in our hands, for the guys copy and pasting specs all day?
 
Am I missing something? I installed the MSI Afterburner app in an attempt to OC my 7970 but the max core clock speed in the app is 1125MHZ. How did Grady get this card up to 1305MHZ??
 
Zarathustra[H];1038361215 said:
That's odd. On my board, (same model name) in the latest Afterburner beta, the sliders maxed out at 1275 and 1650 (though I wasn't able to reach stability at any speed due to the boards problems)

I wonder why different boards of the same manufacturer and model, have different slider max settings. is this a bios setting? Maybe a different bios revision?
Click to expand...

I think the reviewer is discussing the "stock" situation in Overdrive. Those limits are 1125/1575.
Once you install Afterburner and "enable unofficial overclocking" in the configuration files, you can easily up the limits you speak about.:D
 
i have a stock gigabyte 7970 running @ 1200mhz core
the stock fan ramps to about 70% (custom profile) to keep her under 75 degrees
I also use a portable aircon unit in the room to keep room temp down. (aircon gets room temp down to 27 degrees)

The graphics card fan is roughly the same noise as the aircon, thus they kind of cancel each other out.
Is a very noisy room, if you have a quiet-er aircon, 70% stock fan will be very noticable, I would not reccomend it.
 
So the [H] Testing lab has had two 7970s that overclocked well over 1200MHz and at least one that well... did not. It does seem that there is quite a large range in just how far this first batch of 7970 chips can be pushed.

I have found that the biggest problem is getting powertune to stick at +20 while using afterburner. if it resets then everything locks. if it does not then I am good at over 1200. All that aside, I set everything but the fan profile back to stock for the time being because the copy of Space Empires IV I bought during Steam's Christmas sale does not exactly push crossfired 7970's to the limits.
 
Thnx for the review, never had the patience to wait for a topline custom card, been checking this 1 out for a few weeks it's been available here, perfect timing guys;);););)
 
Why you test only on higer recolution ? why u don't test also on 1680x1050 and 1920x1080 as most ppl use this resolution. And why not OC reference gtx 580 and MSI N580GTX Lightning Extreme. And temp why not set fans on 100%,50% on all gfx
 
LukaTCE said:
Why you test only on higer recolution ? why u don't test also on 1680x1050 and 1920x1080 as most ppl use this resolution. And why not OC reference gtx 580 and MSI N580GTX Lightning Extreme. And temp why not set fans on 100%,50% on all gfx
Click to expand...

1) 1920x1080 is close enough to 1920x1200.

2) Why the fuck would you set the fans to 100%? It's noisy and unnecessary. Setting it manually is rather pointless.

On topic...good card, price is a bit high for the stock OC (which seems to be doable on just about every 7970 so far) but the cooler seems nice, and this one seemed to OC better as well.
 
I too am disappointed with the lack of 1920x1080 or 1920x1200 benchmarks. A small percentage of users use 2560x1600 or 2560x1400. I understand that you're trying to showcase the highest playable settings these cards can muster, but I hate having to go tomshardware or anandtech for 1920x1080 or 1200 benches. Would rather just stay on this site for it. :( Anywho, it's still an outstanding job with the reviews. Thanks!
 
LukaTCE said:
Why you test only on higer recolution ? why u don't test also on 1680x1050 and 1920x1080 as most ppl use this resolution. And why not OC reference gtx 580 and MSI N580GTX Lightning Extreme. And temp why not set fans on 100%,50% on all gfx
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You obviously don't understand the [H]'s testing philosophy.

Instead of setting everything fixed, and seeing how high frame rates you get (OMG I get 432fps in Q3A) they make an attempt to determine the highest playable settings for each card.

In other words, if the settings are playable at 2560x1600, you can be pretty damned sure they are playable at 1920x1080, and 15680x1050. Testing at those resolutions would be pointless, as it would likely just result in really high FPS above where it is practically useful.

If one video card gets 160fps and the other gets 250fps does it really matter? The answer here is a resounding NO. Both will be equally playable, and that's the only result that matters.
 
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