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Which of these two 7970s? (Also, valuebug.co.uk)

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Hello, I'm about to purchase a 7970 today and it's a choice between:

Sapphire 7970 OC with Boost11197-03-40G £308
and
Gigabyte Windforce 7970 GV-R797OC-3GD £300

The difference between these two is also that the Windforce is from Amazon while the OC Boost is from Valuebug.co.uk, a site with almost no info online. Anyone had any dealings with them? I'm using a 1080p monitor and do not want to increase my voltage, is using Valuebug.co.uk worth the risk? Is the Sapphire even any better?

More about : 7970s valuebug

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Graphics card Master

Hmm, that's a VERY difficult choice. Traditionally Sapphire have made beautiful designs for ATI/AMD cards and they have a very good reputation working with ATI/AMD. Gigabyte designs have been really good too lately though. Honestly I would go with the gigabyte mainly because it's a straight up 2 slot card, whereas the Sapphire card is 2.5 slots and would cover a 3rd PCIE slot. Other than that, the two cards would be VERY similar in performance and OC headroom, just cross your fingers and hope you get lucky on the GPU lottery :) 

vmem said:
Hmm, that's a VERY difficult choice. Traditionally Sapphire have made beautiful designs for ATI/AMD cards and they have a very good reputation working with ATI/AMD. Gigabyte designs have been really good too lately though. Honestly I would go with the gigabyte mainly because it's a straight up 2 slot card, whereas the Sapphire card is 2.5 slots and would cover a 3rd PCIE slot. Other than that, the two cards would be VERY similar in performance and OC headroom, just cross your fingers and hope you get lucky on the GPU lottery :) 


GPU size and noise mean nothing to me for one reason and another, my problem mainly lies in the choice of retailer, but yeah, I do prefer Sapph...
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stalgrim said:
GPU size and noise mean nothing to me for one reason and another, my problem mainly lies in the choice of retailer, but yeah, I do prefer Sapph...


Go with the Sapphire. You can OC that card and still runs cool and quiet. I have 2 very similar cards like the one you are looking at and mine came at 925 MHz and I got both of the all the way to 1200 MHz by 1650 and they still idles at 32 and load at 63 celsius. Noise is not even there at 70% whereas other cards will have coil whine. So, I suggest Sapphire if you want a great experience with 7970!
Graphics card Master

stalgrim said:
GPU size and noise mean nothing to me for one reason and another, my problem mainly lies in the choice of retailer, but yeah, I do prefer Sapph...


in that case go with sapphire. as you can see I run a sapphire card myself (and many more in the past). never had a problem with them (including customer service)
Graphics card Master

hero1 said:
Go with the Sapphire. You can OC that card and still runs cool and quiet. I have 2 very similar cards like the one you are looking at and mine came at 925 MHz and I got both of the all the way to 1200 MHz by 1650 and they still idles at 32 and load at 63 celsius. Noise is not even there at 70% whereas other cards will have coil whine. So, I suggest Sapphire if you want a great experience with 7970!


how are you staying below 70C with those clocks o.O Either I missed out big time upgrading when sapphire released that card back last Feb, or your have some seriously low ambient temps lol

vmem said:
how are you staying below 70C with those clocks o.O Either I missed out big time upgrading when sapphire released that card back last Feb, or your have some seriously low ambient temps lol


What if I didn't want to increase the volts, would there be any difference between these cards?
Graphics card Master

stalgrim said:
What if I didn't want to increase the volts, would there be any difference between these cards?


there will be virtually no difference. just keep your fingers crossed as every individual GPU is slightly different, maybe you'll get lucky and get the golden core that overclocks like crazy :p .

other than that, flip a coin or something. if it were up to me I'd choose sapphire again just like I did back last Feb :) 

vmem said:
there will be virtually no difference. just keep your fingers crossed as every individual GPU is slightly different, maybe you'll get lucky and get the golden core that overclocks like crazy :p .

other than that, flip a coin or something. if it were up to me I'd choose sapphire again just like I did back last Feb :) 


In that case I'm going to get a Gigabyte one, not for any other reason than it's on Amaozon and I trust them.
Graphics card Master

stalgrim said:
In that case I'm going to get a Gigabyte one, not for any other reason than it's on Amaozon and I trust them.


oh, they're from different vendors? yeah, Amazon's great :)  enjoy your 7970!
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