GIGABYTE GV-R797D5-3GD-B Radeon HD 7970 3GB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

Pros: nice box

Cons: Does a hard system lockup in EVE online with motor boat sound

coil whine - loud enough to hear over fans

Other Thoughts: I was a long time ATI user before they where bought out by AMD. So, I decided to give their 'flagship' video card a try. What an expensive mistake that was. Now I have this card that has the same problems no matter what system I install it in. Never again for anything AMD.

Pros: Great card that keeps up with games. Works great on my Win7 64-bit system, with latest drivers installed.

Cons: The card isn't quiet... in fact, it's louder than my power supply. Also, the Mini DisplayPort-to-DVI connector gave me some problems. After a few weeks it conked out, so now I'm back down to two displays (one off the DVI, one of the HDMI) until I purchase a replacement.

Other Thoughts: I hope they bring it back... eventually I want to purchase a second one and hook up via Crossfire. But for now, even the one keeps up. Note that I'm not overclocking.

Pros: - kind of fast
- handles most of the games on highest settings

Cons: - bad, buggy and not optimized drivers that crashes in some games
- coil whining
- lack of new features, AMD's slogan "Gaming Evolved" does not certainly apply to the hardware itself
- flickering in games (bad drivers again?)
- overpriced by $150 on the start, price dropped in 2 months
- not powerful enough to keep it for future games
- CrossfireX problems (bad drivers once again?!)

Other Thoughts: So this is my first and the last AMD video card I will ever have. I decided to give it a try after 5 successful Nvidia VGAs I had previously, and I very disappointed in AMD. There is certainly no a single reason to go with AMD - it has no cool features like PhysX or Adaptive Sync from Nvidia, driver problems are driving me crazy, and it is not even that fast as I expected it to be. I should have waited for 680 GTX.

Pros: Great framerates in all my games and not that loud.

Cons: Had the card for only a month and it died on me so now i have to go threw the horrible rma process with gigabyte and hope i dont get a refurbished replacment that does'nt work either.

Other Thoughts: Wish i would have known about the 670 coming out for over $100 less with the same performance this will be my last AMD card.

Pros: Overclocks like a beast. I have it on water and it does 1350MHz core @1.3V and 1775MHz on the memory (YMMV of course). The speeds are insane, to say the least. I mostly leave it at 1125MHz core @ stock voltage since I don't need the speed for the majority of games. I play all games at 2560x1600 and the highest settings with ease on a single card. When I bought this card on release (January 9), this was the only single GPU product on the market that could do that. Performance is staying strong four months later, and new titles like Alan Wake still run great. The stock air cooler is the best AMD has released so far regarding low noise and high airflow.

Cons: Power consumption isn't the best, especially for a 28nm chip. I also had some issues with the Zero Core tech (the card wouldn't wake from long idles) which have since been resolved. I'm not docking an egg for either simply because the positives far outweigh these little minor grievances.

Other Thoughts: This is really a geek's card, especially if you want to get the most out of it. I was considering switching to a GTX 680, but they're such weak overclockers this 7970 still ends up being faster, which is disappointing to me three months later. If you're in to tweaking you can get a lot of performance out of it, but I think for $20 more the GTX 680 is a better buy for the average user, as it will be a faster card with lower power consumption out of the box.

Pros: I had a GTX 285 before I had an ATI 7970. I couldn't play Battlefield 3 well, no DirectX 11 support, and frames were pretty low. After buying the 7970, I'm able to play Battlefield 3 in full ultra video mode and all my other video games in high mode with no stutter. I also use my 7970 for Bitcoin mining and at stock it gets about 500 m/hash on average. I overclocked it a bit and got nearly 600 m/hash, but this card can do way more than 600 m/hash for Bitcoin mining if you're good at overclocking. I am considering buying a second one to place them in Crossfire mode, so I can mine more Bitcoins.

Definitely recommended if you're a hardcore gamer or a Bitcoin miner.

Cons: If there are any, I haven't found them yet.

Other Thoughts: Price is pretty good for the card.

Pros: After the break in process, the card could mine at a default rate of 500-550 mh/s. (makes about 1.5-2 $/day in laymans terms).


As the card is currently in my friend's possession, i don't have a chance to get any exact numbers regaurding either mining or OC potential.

The card plays games very well, but that's just plain obvious. This card won't let you down.

Cons: Card was a little unstable at first. I haven't bought a new (many used) card in a long time. After breaking it in, the card runs flawlessly.

Other Thoughts: don't know if this has the annoying thermal grease spacers like the 5970 since I haven't changed the grease yet. If it doesn't, i'm gonna put some antec diamond 7 on it which I highly recommend.

Pros: Super Powerful
Good looking
This beast can max out any game except bf3 ultra 1920 v sync on.
drops down to 50's, but it's ok thats why i'm getting another one

Cons: Deactivated on newegg maybe out of stock, hopefully they put it back for sale.

Pros: I just did a system build yesterday and this card went right in and did its thing right away. I ran an initial Unigen benchmark and on default clocking it still gave a >2300 score. Very smooth and looks sharp at 1920x1200.

Cons: It is a bit pricey but it is an outstanding performer so far.

Other Thoughts: P9X79 Pro ASUS MB
HAF X Blue Edition Case
i7-3930K CPU
32GB Corsair Vengeance Memory
H100 Cooler
Seasonic X Series 1050W Power Supply
Gigabyte GV-R797D5-3GC-B Radeon HD 7970

Pros: Easy install. (20 minutes)
Quiet as a church mouse with games on ultra.
Every game defaults to ultra. It lets me know that the devs need to kick it up a knotch now.
FPS are through the roof. I start up a game and it proceeds to laugh at my attempts to make it break a sweat.
It replaced 2 550ti's running SLI which was good but not great like this and on top of that the power usage is about the same.
Got it after the price drop too. I knew waiting a little bit on fresher drivers and better value would pay off.
This is a 3 year plan kind of card. This kind of performance will last well into the next console/PC war.

Cons: It is big but I knew what i was getting into from the get go. It's size being a con for some is actually cool for me. It's like buying a monster truck just because you can. It's a real squeeze getting it in the garage but man it's cool.
Besides having one excellent card that runs cool is better then 2 cards cooking my components and taking up space.

Other Thoughts: I have now gone to AMD all the way. Not a fanboy just a guy who wanted to venture to the other side of the tracks.
Intel and Nvidia have their fine points too and I was an Intel/Nvidia guy for almost a decade. The main reason I went AMD this time around was price/performance ratio.

I will probably buy a moderate sized SSD for gaming to keep the data from bottle necking because my hard drives are more of the power saving variety and I'm used to a much lower card bandwidth (192 bit).

Current Configuration:
AMD Phenom II 1090T with Corsair H60 cooler
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 Motherboard
Gigabyte Radeon 7970
4 x 2Gb Crucial Ballistix Smart Tracer DDR3 1600
Western Digital 500 Gb HDD
Seagate 500 Gb HDD
Samsung 1.5 Tb HDD
LG DVD RW
4 Rosewill 120mm Blue LED fans
1 Enermax Vegas Blue and Red 92mm fan
Thermaltake Soprano RS Case
Kingwin Lazer LZ-1000 PSU
NZXT Fan Controller
NZXT LED Rope Kit

All bought through Newegg and all work flawlessly!