The efforts of Gigabyte engineers culminated in the release of the Radeon HD 7970 Super Overclock, also known as GV-R797SO-3GD. This is a monstrous construction with height of 64 mm (3.5 expansion slots) and a cooling system WindForce 5X. As well as preparing to be released GeForce GTX 680 SOC, the new adapter uses a five high-speed (> 4000 rev / min) fan size of 40 mm, copper evaporation chamber, and five copper heat pipes.

WindForce 5X – is one of the most expensive VGA-coolers, except for models with water blocks and liquid cooling system. It will allow to overclock Gigabyte GV-R797SO-3GD up to frequencies of 1155/7620 MHz. However, neither the temperature nor the noise performance of video card can be considered satisfactory: 85 degrees under load and 91 ° C for overclocking with increased voltage, and 8000 rpm in a heavy-duty (1185 MHz, 1.375 V) explains the situation.

Printed circuit board Radeon HD 7970 SOC is reinforced with five polymer capacitors NEC / Tokin Proadlizer, a double layer of copper, chokes with a ferrite core and field-effect transistors with ultra-low series resistance. The graphic processor Tahiti XT (2048 shaders) is combined with 12 memory chips GDDR5 totaling 3 GB though 384-bit bus. The nominal frequencies are 1080/5500 MHz for core and memory chips, respectively. For extreme overclockers there is an alternative firmware VGA-BIOS, «sharpened» under liquid nitrogen.

The recommended price for Gigabyte HD 7970 SOC is $ 500 — very reasonable sum for such an original product. The card requires two cables to connect additional power. There are eight power phases for the GPU.