GIGABYTE GV-R797OC-3GD Pro Reviews

The GIGABYTE GV-797OC-3GD video card has it all. It looks great and is fast. It is also extremely cool and quiet. The potential for overclocking the GIGABYTE Radeon HD 7970 is what we crave as gamers and hardware enthusiasts alike. The only area we could see that might disappoint is the $610.00 price, but you get what you pay for, and this video delivers in spades.. The competition…wait, what competition? GIGABYTE delivered an incredible video card with this version of the AMD Radeon HD 7970. The GV-797OC-3GD operates quieter and cooler than all other video cards we compared it to. The only video card close in performance was a reference AMD Radeon HD 7970. To think that GIGABYTE has even more up its sleeve with a "Super Overclock" version in the works, we can't wait.

If you're a die-hard PC gamer, start saving as the Gigabyte HD 7970 OC is a top-end card that ought to be on every enthusiast's radar. Gigabyte clearly knows how to make a finely-tuned graphics card, and by applying a custom-designed WindForce cooler to AMD's finest 28nm GPU, it has created a solution that's better than reference in just about every regard. The card's shorter and lighter than AMD's standard design, it runs comfortably cooler - to the tune of around 15 per cent - it's quieter in use, and to top it all off, it's factory overclocked to give that extra ounce of performance. It is the best HD 7970 we've seen thus far, but despite our high praise, it's worth echoing an earlier proviso; this is a card that's only really suited to die-hard PC gamers. When it arrives at retail, Gigabyte's range-topping powerhouse will likely cost more than an Xbox 360, a PlayStation 3 and a Nintendo Wii combined, and unless you're gaming at mega-high resolutions, the HD 7970 OC clearly won't represent the best value for money.

For the time being, AMD’s HD 7970 sits atop the GPU market, holding the honor of being the fastest single core graphics card on the market. While that position may be challenged in the coming months by NVIDIA’s Kepler, at this point there just aren’t any alternatives if you want the highest possible in-game framerates. Gigabyte’s HD 7970 OC offers much of the same in terms of performance but it goes far beyond reference offerings in some other key areas. Let’s start off this conclusion with something you were all watching out for: whether or not the overclock on this card made any difference. The short answer to that is an absolute “no”. Gigabyte may call this an “OC Edition” but the increase in clock speeds doesn’t improve gameplay in any way, shape or form. Bumping clocks by less than 10% is simply a quick and easy way for board partners to charge a premium on otherwise reference-based cards. On the flip side of that coin, even a small performance increase is better than nothing and like most other HD 7970 cards, this one has a ton of overclocking headroom.