Gigabytes SuperClock WindForce5x HD 7970 Monster Tested

We have been waiting for news about Gigabyte’s SOC Edition of the AMD Radeon HD 7970 for a long time. The card has been finally tested and it is likely the fastest single-GPU video card in the world.

The card is officially called Gigabyte HD 7970 Super Overclock, but the naming scheme might be change once it is officially launched.

The special and most original cooling design has already been descried in detail here.

There was fear that the card would be loud, but the reality is that the WindForce5x cooling system is even quieter than other designs, and only when over-volting the card do the fans get considerably louder.

There is one clear advantage to this design, as this is the ideal way to cool the cards when working into a CrossFire setup.

The card tested by the hardware experts at techpowerup.com is not the final version, but we were actually surprised to see that the whole design was not using any of the “GHz Edition” features and improvements.

The GPU is actually clocked higher than AMD’s reference Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition and works at 1080 MHz, but the memory is only set to work at 1375 MHz, and that’s 5.5 GHz effective instead of the 6 GHz that the GHz Edition has.

Even so, the card manages to beat most of its opponents, only staying behind the dual-GPU cards like Nvidia’s GTX 690 and AMD’s own Radeon HD 6990.

Considering that AMD’s cards are able to run in 5760 x 1080 high resolution while Nvidia’s graphics adapters are incapable of such a feat, we can safely say that Gigabyte’s AMD Radeon HD 7970 SuperOverclock is the fastest single-GPU video card in the world.

We’re hoping to see a “GHz Edition” setup on the final version with 1500 Mhz memory and finer GPU frequency adjustments, but, even so, the card is impressive.

Head over to techpowerup to check out their tests.

Via: Gigabytes SuperClock WindForce5x HD 7970 Monster Tested