VisionTek 900491 Radeon HD 7970 3GB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

Pros: The card worked fine and overclocked to 1125/1575MHz on stock voltage with Afterburner. It ran cool and quiet enough with a custom fan profile. Temps and noise are no better or worse than other card with a reference design fan and shroud.

Cons: The card I recieved is not the card pictured on line. My card had a blue PCB instead of the black one in the photo. Also, it wasn't a reference design card because the mounting bracket for the GPU cooler is different than what is shown in the photos. I returned the card and purchased a Diamond 7970 instead as I will be water cooling and need a reference design card.

Other Thoughts: Newegg really needs to update the photos and description of this card. That said, they made the return process very easy and even paid for my return shipping. Thanks Newegg for the great customer service.

Pros: I'm here to speak the truth, and only the truth. For almost 3 years I have been running (2) Spphire HD 5850 in crossfire mode. I figured it was time to upgrade, and since AMD pushed their 8000 series from Q2 to Q4, i went ahead and got a 7970, this one in particular. Even with this the other 2 in crossfire mode, this one doubles the performance. Heres the kicker - I am only running it in a PCI-Express 2.0 slot (CROSSHAIR V-FORMULA), which is bottle necking the performance. Note, this is without the BIOS update to make it into a GHTZ Edition and/or any overclocking. You do the math. This card is worth every penny.

Cons: Once again I am here to speak the truth, and only the truth. I purchased this card not only because of the reviews and specs, but because I was going to set up my first eyefinity. When opened the package, to my surprise there was only (1) HDMI to DVI adapter, (1) VGA to DVI adapter, (1) Molex to 6-pin connector, and (1) Molex to 8-pin connector. NO ACTIVE MINI-DP TO DVI ADAPTER?! NO ACTIVE MINI-DP TO DVI ADAPTER!! I Googled, and Googled some more...and this card IS suppose to come with an Active Mini-DP to DVI adapter, did not get one. I am only hoping I can speak with someone to resolve this matter, because paying $500 (after tax and over night shipping) and not receiving everything is not good business...especially after being a loyal customer for over 8 years. Other than that, there are no problems, which is why I still rated this cards performance "5 EGGS".

Other Thoughts: I would be very grateful if anyone has any tips on who and/or how I may be able to contact someone regarding this issue. Thank you.

Pros: - blistering fast card
- Eyefinity 4 monitor capable
- single card can run Crysis 2 on Very High at 5970x1080
- very stable and runs basically everything I throw at it

Cons: - price
- GHz edition came out 1 month after I bought
- product arrived tampered with (looked like it had been opened previously and resealed...card was fine though)

Other Thoughts: For my needs, this card has delivered, top of the line performance for top of the line money. It's no slouch. And I am tempted to throw in another one of these for Crossfire + Eyefinity. I was warned that one card for Tri-monitor Eyefinity was insufficient...which is totally not true. This card will capably power most current games in Eyefinity Tri-monitor

Pros: Awesome card, it runs every game I have on highest settings on a 28.5 monitor (1920x1200 res.) BF3 I get 60 fps solid with everything maxed (although AA is turned down) w/ vsync enabled, when I turn vsync off it goes beyond 100fps in some areas and never dips below 50fps minimum in intense firefights.
This card is also able to overclock to GHZ edition clock speeds and still runs cool (although I would not recommend it unless you have a full tower, with a lot of fans like I do (8 case fans rangeing in size from 230mm-120mm with Corsair cpu cooling so no extra heat from cpu blasting the back of the card my temps after gaming a few hours are 50c, and at idle are around 25-30c, max I have seen it is 58c. So it runs really cool for a reference cooler, BUT i keep the fans at 60% all the time to keep the heat down, I can stand the extra noise to protect my $400 investment. With the fans on auto its at around 32c solid under load about 60c max temp. 65c, with the overclocking. All in all for the money its a good card.

Cons: Now for the bad, Newegg listed this card as having a lifetime warranty. Upon receiving the card it does not have a lifetime warranty, only a 3 year warranty. I have purchased at least 3 other cards from Visiontek (3000series, 4000series, 5000series etc.) all of which have had the lifetime warranty.I contacted newegg they said, to contact Visiontek regaurding warranties. I felt like I had been lied to and got in touch with Visiontek the representitive got smart with me and said, "it says 3 year warranty on the box" so i shot back with, "well if I would have had the box when I ordered the card I would not have ordered it in the first place" because I would have known it wasn't lifetime warranty. Half the reason I bought the card was for the lifetime warranty, and in the past Visiontek has treated me ok but after this experience, I will not purchase another product EVER from Visiontek and WILL NOT recommend them to my friends or people I build systems for. Whats worse Newegg lied on their posting saying it was lifetime warranty when it was not and still has not changed it, but what really got to me was how I was treated by Visionteks' customer support thats really foul and uncalled for. It may not mean a lot to some people about warranties, but it determines what card I buy everytime, because I keep cards for a long time and will rely on the warranty later.

Other Thoughts: I think in the future I will be going with XFX for my card purchases I have bought 5 cards from them 2 for myself and 3 for others and have had 0 issues with warranties and have RMA'd 2 cards and got the new ones within a week, and they both still work flawless! This is what type of company Visiontek should work to become.

My system:
AMD 8120FX 8 core @ 4.5ghz W/CORSAIR H60 COOLER
ASROCK EXTREME 3 990FX MOBO
8GB GSKILL ARES 2133 MHZ
1-7970 VISIONTEK VIDEO CARD
OCZ VERTEX 3 128GB SSD
750GB WD CAVIAR BLACK (BACK UP OF MAIN)
320GB WD CAVIAR BLUE (STORAGE)
AZZA SOLANO 1000 FULL TOWER
CORSAIR 850 PSU
HANNSG 28.5 LED MONITOR

Pros: This card overclocks like butter, regardless what some have said.
1125/1575 at 70% fan speed, sees temps at 55 C.
I have never had to lower any game from ultra settings yet, unless I turn on super sample AA quality and even then depends on the game.
So called Nvidia focused games, such as Borderlands 2, Witcher 2, Arkham City and Planetside 2, run like a dream.
Hydra Vision is amazing and I am able to run 3 monitors off one card.

Cons: Drivers aren't as bad as some say, but they aren't as good as Nvidia.
It seems like most of the biggest games (not all) Focus on being Optimized by Nvidia.
Only games I can think of that are AMD focused is Saints Row 2, and Battlefield 3.
Nvidia performs better than a 7970 at AMD focused games, than a 7970 does at a Nvidia optimized game. Look at a game like borderlands 2, the 7970 I have performs great but a 680 is just better.
The performance is probably 5-10% better depending on the game itself.
The power draw of the 7970's is much greater than Nvidia's so those of you with power in mind and looking for a two card set up should keep this in mind.
For instance picking up Nvidia may mean you won't have to upgrade your power supply.

Other Thoughts: Nvidia may tend to get more optimized games thrown their way but that doesn't take away from how great this 7970 is.
If your game is Shogun 2, it stomps Nvidia right into a hole.
If we are talking about Borderlands 2, Nvidia performs flawlessly, while the 7970 performs very good.
It depends which games you play the most, really.
You can't go wrong with one or two of these cards.

Pros: None

Cons: Card plugged into Sabertooth X79 with a PRO 1250 W power supply. Never rendered a single image. Fan came on, but no other signs of life. Took it to a professional installer who attempted to run in several builds without success.

Pros: Does what it should, plays games well, seems quieter than my first reference card. Flashes to a ghz edition.

I bought mine from the amzon since it was cheaper.

Cons: Mine does not have voltage control, which blows my mind because it is a reference design from what I can see.. This limits the overclock quite a bit, I cannot go over 1100 mhz core or it freezes up

Other Thoughts: I bought a accelero xtreme 7970 to fit this, but it's pretty much useless since I can't overvolt.

Pros: Overall the 7970 is a very good card if/when it works.

Cons: My card started having issues after a month (no signal to monitor, fan ramps up to high speeds and restarts) and I have not had any response beyond the standard auto-response emails from VisionTek for any tech support or warranty request. I know the card is not working because I have tested it on two different computers, and have also tested two other video cards on both those computers, and they all worked fine. Only the VisionTek 7970 is not working.

Other Thoughts: I did not buy this card from Newegg, I bought it from another retailer. I am simply sharing my experience with this card and brand. I am sure all the positive reviews on this card are accurate, but if you get a bad card like me you will be out of luck. I would recommend the 7970, just choose a different brand with better customer service.

Pros: Works just as others here described it. Flashed the GHz Bios with no problems. Did a 3 Hour stress test @ 1200/1600 no voltage change. Ran it for about an hour @ 1400/1800 again no problem. This card is working!!!

Cons: This has nothing to do with the Card but I'm adding this anyway.

Newegg is real slow on the refund side of things! So keep that in mind when doing what I did. Their customer service is OK!

Other Thoughts: I did not see the GHz version of this Card in the Video card selection. That is why I did the Flash.

Newegg needs to add a big yellow label to the Shopping Cart so people don't miss the NO SATURDAY DELIVERY when they order next day on Friday!

Pros: Across benchmarks and actual gameplay, it is near exactly 2x more FPS than my Radeon HD 6870 1GB.

3GB Vram is going to be needed in future gameplay. Using Asus GPU tweak, it showed that Battlefield 3 multiplayer on Ultra @ 1080P preset was using slightly over 1.8GB on average. Also, it was holding 40 ~ 110 FPS at stock clocks.

These reference cards have two BIOS which are selectable by a switch on the GPU itself. This can allow you to update one of them to a Ghz edition while maintaining the factory set BIOS. Do this at your own risk as it will void warranty.

PCIe 3.0 means if your running crossfire and one of your cards is inserted into a 3.0 x8 slot, it still runs at 2.0 x16 speeds.

I was able to get the core to 1100 and memory at 1500 with stock voltage. You can go higher, but you may start to get artifacts unless a voltage increase is applied. Do this at your own risk.

Cons: The stock clocks are too low for what these cards are capable of.

Registering the product for warranty can be confusing. You have to sign up for the VisionTek forums then go into edit profile.

Other Thoughts: I bought some adapters which I didn't need because newegg doesn't mention them being included and they are not pictured.

I recieved the following: crossfire bridge, double molex to 6 pin adapter, double molex to 8 pin adapter, HDMI to DVI adapter, DVI to VGA adapter, driver disk.

Always be sure to download the latest drivers from AMD website.