VisionTek Radeon HD 7970
VisionTek was the first company to supply us with a Radeon HD 7970 for this article, and the company’s entry doesn’t deviate from AMD's reference design. Its 2 lb 3 oz weight and 11” x 4.5” x 1.5” dimensions are the same as the sample we received when Radeon HD 7970 launched. Priced at $479.99 on Newegg, this is the most affordable board in our round-up.
Bearing such close resemblance to AMD’s standard, it comes as no surprise that VisionTek’s interpretation of the Radeon HD 7970 employs the same 925 MHz core and 1375 MHz memory clocks, nor that it requires both six- and eight-pin auxiliary power connectors.
A single 70 mm centrifugal fan stands apart from the rest of the products in this review, all of which use two or three axial-flow fans instead. As with the reference model, VisionTek’s GPU cooling block contains a copper vapor chamber with aluminum fins directly attached, and none of the heat pipes we see on the other models.
Display outputs are also standard fare, including one dual-link DVI port, HDMI, and two mini-DisplayPort connectors.
VisionTek’s Radeon HD 7970 comes with a CrossFire bridge, DVI-to-VGA, HDMI-to-DVI, and mini-DisplayPort-to-DVI adapters, a dual four-pin Molex-to-six-pin auxiliary power adapter, a dual four-pin Molex-to-eight-pin power adapter, a software install CD, and a quick-install guide. We’re impressed that this card includes all of the output adapters needed in order to achieve a three-display Eyefinity configuration using DVI connectors.
Overclocking VisionTek's Radeon HD 7970
Though VisionTek doesn't bundle any overclocking software of its own, the Catalyst Control Center’s Overdrive utility can push core and memory clocks up to 1125 and 1575 MHz, respectively. Employing MSI’s Afterburner utility increases those ceilings to 1800 MHz (for the GPU) and 1950 MHz (on the memory) with a voltage limit of 1.3 V.
While this card's core didn't scale quite as high as some others, its memory turned out to have quite a bit of headroom available. We managed a maximum stable core overclock of 1125 MHz, with memory operating at 1900 MHz. That's the highest memory overclock in this story. We went with a 1.2 V setting, too.
