Gigabyte's five-fan, Super OverClock Radeon HD 7970

<I>TechSpot will be reviewing this GPU very shortly, this time focusing on overclockability and value based on the GPU's marginal performance difference over the reference AMD HD 7970 we reviewed at the tail end of last year.</I>

Huh? So..you've already decided the outcome before the review?

It looks loud, that's for sure.

That's one of the ugliest GPUs I've ever seen.
Would be interested to see the noise results, usually you'd think using smaller fans would create more noise (because they would have to spin faster to achieve a similar CFM to a larger fan).

what's the pricing going to be like

@psycros

Given the fact that the SOC is clocked higher than stock 7970 It's very safe to assume that it will perform better.

That was my thought as well. 53dB is loud, but that's to keep the card at 57 degrees. I wonder how much quieter it is at 70 degrees.

If those little piece of junk fans last more than a year in the typical pc I'll eat my gtx 670 on toast.
EVERY piece computer equip I've EVER worked on with those 40mm fans have all the fans locked up or partially busted.

Worst design ever, why didn't they just stick to the normal shroud with the big fan in the rear?!

if the airflow is constant cool air directly from outside the box then the fans dont need to spin fast

This thing looks so thick I doubt you could squeeze a fart between the cards if you wanted to do a crossfire config.

This results in the Radeon HD 7970 SOC being totally silent below 30°C, with their Anti-Turbulence Pull Airflow System hitting 53 decibels at 57°C, which is almost 9 decibels quieter than a standard HD 7970 at a slightly toastier 64°C.

LOL. Sorry Gigabyte, but I'll wait for acoustic testing by sites like Hardware Canucks and Tom's.
Sadly, TechSpot doesn't test acoustics in their graphics card reviews.

BTW, cleaning 3rd party fans and heatsinks are bad enough... this design is going to make the process take even longer, especially when it involves having to remove and replace 20 fan screws.

What do you think you could squeeze between a couple of these?
http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/Colorful-Shows-Massive-Passively-Cooled-NVIDIA-GTX-680

LOL screw that, I'll stick to liquid cooling.

No doubt!

Looks heavy!
5LBS?

Looks like the bastard offspring of an Asus Mars and a 3dfx Voodoo 5 6000
I was kind of hoping that the concept died when the GTX 680 SOC version failed to materialize. The cards look very chassis dependant, and I'm not sold on the airflow being perpendicular to the usual chassis front-to-back (or bottom-to-top re: SilverStone) cooling tbh.

Efficiency is terrible with those tiny fans. They spin fast but don't move much air. Plus they go out faster than the biggies.

Well at least is you have two of these in xfire the top card wont be pulling air directly from the card bellow it. Now it pulls air from the motherboard side which should keep it cooler to some extent. The biggest drawback really is the size of the fans, they would have to be more than typical sleeve bearings, even double ball bearing fans would make me feel uneasy, Card has a 3 year warranty I hope, watch it not cover fan failure however...

Two Crossfire fingers means that Gigabyte are allowing for triple/quad CFX...looks a tad optimistic for most chassis designs...although it might give SilverStone some incentive to launch the TJ12

1.6 kg ( 3.5 lbs)