GIGABYTE GV-R797SO-3GD Pro Reviews

All told, the card's weakest points are also its strongest if you intend to overclock heavily, which is precisely what the SOC is designed for. Although we arrived at a maximum overclock of 1.26GHz, this should only be used as a rough guide as seasoned overclockers may fare better. Gigabyte expects the Radeon HD 7970 SOC to become available in early August and we believe it will retail for around $530. If this estimate is accurate, the 7970 SOC will be a bargain hunter's nightmare, costing 20% more than the standard Gigabyte 7970 OC. But for those who appreciate the excessive side of computing, the HD 7970 SOC certainly delivers.

Gigabyte's HD 7970 Super OC comes with a new approach to cooling. Instead of placing the fan(s) on the large surface of the heatsink like on all recent graphics cards, the company chose to position five small fans along the top edge of the card. This results in a more uniform airflow across all components, but could also result in more fan noise. The card does definitely look menacing with its triple slot design and the small fans, which might scare some potential buyers away. In our review we see reasonable noise levels under load that are actually slightly quieter than the AMD reference HD 7970 and GHz Edition. In idle the card is too noisy though, which seems to be caused by fan settings in the BIOS instead of the cooler design. Temperatures are decent but I fail to see big improvements which would warrant the new approach to cooling. Having the fans on the side does provide a clear benefit to CrossFire configurations though. In such a scenario the inlet of a typical fan would be blocked by an adjacent graphics card. Small fast-running fans usually have a shorter lifetime than larger fans, which might become a problem for the HD 7970 SOC further down the road, but we have no data on that. Thanks to a large overclock out of the box the HD 7970 SOC is one of the fastest HD 7970 cards you can buy at the moment, 9% faster than the HD 7970 and even 1% faster than AMD's HD 7970 GHz Edition. Compared to NVIDIA's GTX 680, the SOC has a clear advantage at high resolutions of 2560x1600 and beyond. At lower resolution both cards are roughly equal.

We cannot give this card our recommendation or any sort of award. We don't know when it'll be available or how much it will cost. And we do know that customers in the U.S. won't be able to get it. We are fans of Gigabyte's cooling solution, though, which does prove to be innovative. It's not just some third-party heat sink re-branded for this one card. So, we congratulate Gigabyte for daring to create something new. The only changes we'd suggest would be a less aggressive fan speed profile and a few minor adjustments to the hardware finish. Otherwise, the card could be a great enthusiast's collector's piece.

If it wasn’t for the less expensive and more readily available GHz Edition breathing down its neck, the Gigabyte Super Overclock would be considered an extremely capable HD 7970. Indeed, should you be able to overlook the inefficient heatsink design and an extremely high price, it’s incredible overclocking abilities could make it one of the most rewarding cards out there. But for users that want a simple plug and play gaming solution, there are plenty of other options which are quieter, less expensive and offer better out of box performance.