You're contradicting yourself. If the 7970GE stock BIOS puts it at a certain voltage, then it's shipped with that voltage stock. Fact. It doesn't matter if a 7950 or a hypothetical 7930 is shipped with a lower voltage.
Ya, it does matter. Everyone knows HD7970 GE bios + reference HD7970 blower = junk. The GE BIOS may run at 1.212V on average but it peaks at 1.256V which is completely overkill for 1050mhz GPU clocks. You can buy the original HD7970 today and overclock it to 1150mhz on stock voltage of 1.175V and come nowhere near the power consumption of that 7970 GE card. My 7970's power consumption grows 43W just going from 1.175V to 1.256V and not moving the overclock even 1mhz. What's the point of pumping 1.212-1.25V into a card for no reason?
Also, let's not cherry-pick 1 game (Shogun 2). Based on many games, we already know that HD7970 1165GPU trades blows with a GTX680 1212 (1290 GPU Boost Effective) from
Xbitlabs. Taking a step further, a 1200mhz HD7970 beats the fastest factory preoverclocked + OCed further GTX680 in the world from
KitGuru in 7 out of 11 games. What about the guys running MSI Lighting HD7970 $519 with 1.28-1.3ghz clocks?
Pretty much unless all you do is benchmark 3dMark11/UnigineHeaven or play BF3 MP, then HD7970 @ 1250mhz or faster beats any voltage locked GTX680 in most games, especially at 2560x1600. So what are you paying $660 ($740 w/ EVbot) for? It's not the fastest, nor the quietest nor the most well-built single-GPU card today.....
Sorry, but a $660 card with a blower fan and no voltage control wouldn't even be able to convincingly beat a quieter after-market HD7970+OC with a 1.15ghz overclock+ for
$440. That's a joke. With EVBot it's $740 or just $260 away from the GTX690. At least the GTX690 is quiet, very power efficient and is ready to go for next generation games. This card costs $150+ over something like a
Giga 680 for marketing. :thumbsdown:
Compared to the MSI Lightning 680 or the Sapphire Toxic HD7970 6GB, the amount of effort EVGA put into this card is laughable. They are charging $660 but it's not even the
fastest factory preoverclocked 680.