Any reason not to buy this card?

[Gunslinger08]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...w_bottom_links

Like: High factory overclock and reported quiet cooler.

I'm not going to overclock myself, so I'm going for the factory high clocks on a 7970 vs overclocking a 7950. Also like the 3 gigs of VRAM for 2560x1440. Any reason I shouldn't buy this tomorrow? I looked at the PowerColor, but Newegg reviews implied some serious quality control problems.

 

[SickBeast]

One reason not to would be that there have been 7970s selling for $315 lately. That's a $165 difference.

 

[zaydq]

Seems legit. Newegg.ca has the card listed for $469.99 + shipping & handling

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16814125439

So amazon's price seems to be on par.

 

[zaydq]

One reason not to would be that there have been 7970s selling for $315 lately. That's a $165 difference.

Where? I know i've seen the odd one dip to that point but I haven't seen it within the past week?

 

[SickBeast]

Where? I know i've seen the odd one dip to that point but I haven't seen it within the past week?

I'm pretty sure newegg had them a few days ago. They're long gone now though. That said, they have repeatedly come up at that price.

 

[Smoblikat]

Why would you spend 480$ on a 7970 when you can get one for 380$? Newegg has them starting tt that price.

 

[zaydq]

Probably because he wants a factory overclocked card. Its factory overclocked to 1.1ghz on the core. To you and I its overpriced, to the OP, its probably peace of mind.

 

[RussianSensation]

That sounds like a reasonable card but it's $450 on Newegg. The main advantage of the Vapor-X 7970 is you get a more powerful cooler that would let you set up a more aggressive (i.e., quieter) fan curve and it has black diamond chokes which guarantees no coil whine, something that Gigabyte board cannot guarantee. Also the VRM temperatures on the Vapor-X would be much superior. Unfortunately that card keeps going out of stock.

The other advantage of the Gigabyte is their 3 year warranty vs. 2 for Sapphire.

If you are spending ~$480 for a single-GPU, a strong case can be made by spending just a bit more and going with HD7950 CF ($301 Gigabyte 7950 + $280 Sapphire 7950 = $580).

 

[wbynum]

Yea, at least buy it from newegg. It's $30 cheaper with free shipping. Of course if you have to pay tax with Newegg and not Amazon then that is a diff story.

My personal opinion is buy the cheapest 7970 you can find and OC it yourself. You are pretty much guaranteed 1.1ghz speed without much hassle.

 

[ZimZum]

Probably because he wants a factory overclocked card. Its factory overclocked to 1.1ghz on the core. To you and I its overpriced, to the OP, its probably peace of mind.

This

Since he has no intention of overclocking himself thats a perfectly fine choice. It will be faster out of the box than any single GPU card on the market.

 

[Gunslinger08]

Have to buy from Amazon because I have a lot of credit there from trade-ins. I'm kind of burnt out on tweaking computers, so I just want a high factory overclock that I don't need to spend hours adjusting and testing. I considered the MSI Lightning, but no built in dual-link DVI kills it. Also considered the Vapor-X, but it's $20 more on Amazon, supposedly kind of noisy, and clocked 100 mhz below the Gigabyte card.

I'm coming from a Sapphire Toxic 6950 (which I'll be selling as soon as this comes in), so I'm just not sure what to expect with regards to noise in comparison to my current card.

 

[tweakboy]

Don't buy from NewEgg its fact they sell used stuff when reported new happened to my cousin couple times. Or defective items or sent back items that look very new.

Buy from amazon.com without paying tax or shipping.

I wouldn't buy a cheap vendor like Power Color or Super man whatever its called.

Grab a Gigabyte or ASUS board. You dont need to overclock that card its already fast enough. You will never notice diff if you OC, cuz its soo fast already. As for fan you can control that,,,,,, put it to 30 percent in desktop and you wont hear it, and put it on auto when gaming since you dont OC. gl

 

[RussianSensation]

The Vapor-X is 1000 + 50mhz GPU boost = it's 1050mhz. You can always create a custom fan curve to lower the noise levels.

Please let us know how quiet this card is and what the temperatures are like.

 

[Gunslinger08]

Got the card this morning. Performance compared to my 6950 is about 90% better in Heaven benchmark. Setup a custom fan profile using afterburner, since it defaulted fairly high. Default profile kept it below 60 in Heaven.

 

[zaydq]

congrats! You'll be happy with that 7970! Probably one of the fastest cards out of box you can buy! Care to post a heaven score with maxed out settings at 1080p?

 

[Gunslinger08]

congrats! You'll be happy with that 7970! Probably one of the fastest cards out of box you can buy! Care to post a heaven score with maxed out settings at 1080p?

Yep. Got a 1240 @1080p maxed. That's with a stock 2500k and 8 gigs of RAM. Not sure how that compares.

 

[zaydq]

Compares very good! congratulations!

 

[SickBeast]

OP what did you buy? The card in the OP?

 

[zaydq]

OP what did you buy? The card in the OP?

Yes.