Final words and conclusion
Final words and conclusion
Gigabyte has a lovely product to offer you with the Radeon HD 7970 OC (WindForce edition). Admittedly it is hard to go wrong with it anyway as the default aka reference R7970 is already a product with a very high 'like' factor for sure. It performs well and within all parameters like heat and noise it's already doing a terrific job. The customization that Gigabyte applied to this R7970 OC WindForce edition raises the bar once again. Obviously the overall looks are nice, the WindForce cooler stays within the dual-slot form factor and brings in much better cooling at roughly the same noise levels as the reference design.
The overall board design works out well with their Ultra Durable VGA construction, Gigabyte chose a 2oz copper PCB (printed circuit board), Tier 1 memory, Japanese Solid Capacitors, Low RDS (on) MOSFET and Ferrite Core Chokes. Admittedly, that Ultra Durable design has become a norm there days as all manufacturers have improved the build quality over the past two years, and with a lot of success.
Quite impressive is of course the power consumption of this product. The board is rated with a 210~215 Watt TDP, that means when you completely stress it, that's the power consumption. Our measurements showed that the board TDP is actually consuming 15 Watts lower than the reference specification. But give or take roughly 200 Watt for this kind of performance is very good. Even more impressive is the boards IDLE power state, in desktop mode when not in use it can throttle down and disable huge segments of the GPU allowing it to draw 10 Watt only. Once your monitor jumps into energy saving / sleep mode then the power draw of this 7970 drops towards 2.7 Watt.
When you look at the R7970 overall, performance, the new Eyefinity updates, PCIe gen 3 compatibility and all other stuff then we can only conclude that we like the Radeon HD 7970 in the enthusiast graphics card arena. For those that embrace multi-monitor gaming, it's for you guys that AMD decided to go for that massive 3GB framebuffer / graphics memory. They could have opted for the 1.5 GB route but with extreme resolutions graphics memory starts to really matter. So it might seem a little excessive, but we are very happy that in terms of graphics memory no compromises have been made.
Overclocking then, again impressive results. The Gigabyte Radeon HD 7970 OC (WindForce edition) obviously already comes factory overclocked at a good 1000 MHz, that will instantly bring you a little sometin'-sometin extra. But there is room left, if you manually overclock without voltage tweaking 1100 MHz should be a viable. With voltage tweaking 1200 MHz can be achieved. You do need to wonder though if pushing this card to its limits it worth the risk of damaging This 525 EUR product for a tiny bit of extra performance. But obviously that's your call to make. 
It is time to wrap this review up, we liked the reference R7970, and we like the Radeon HD 7970 OC (WindForce edition) even better. All variables are right, the overall looks, the cooling, the okay noise levels, the factory overclock ... yeah it's all good. The obvious downside is the price-range the R7970 sells in but if that is not an issue for you, then we can wholeheartedly recommend the Gigabyte Radeon HD 7970 OC (WindForce edition).
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