Hello everyone.
The Sapphire HD 7870 "GHz" will launch on 19th March and it will be equipped with this new so-called Dual-X cooling system :
http://gaming.sapphiretech.com/presentation/media/?psn=0004&articleID=4197
I'm interested in silence, and I'm not happy with the cooler of my 4870 Vapor-X, I find it still quite noisy. According to many people, the 7870 performs a little better than the 6970, so this is indeed a good card.
According to the 7970 review by TweakTown, this new Dual-X system is even less noisy than the classic dual-fan cooler we could find on the 6970 dual-fan (or on the 6870 Dirt 3) :
*Sapphire 6970 Dual-Fan : 61.3 / 58.1 DB
*Sapphire 7970 Dual-X : 57.8 / 57.2 DB , which is quite amazing in load, and still ok in idle...
So LEHTV, when you say that this is a "Perfectly normal double slot dual fan cooler.", I would say there is a chance you might be wrong, maybe the "Dual-X" appellation is not only a marketing thing, and maybe people at Sapphire did improve their cooling system even further. That is to say, providing we trust this review, of course. I'm not sure, but you see, if it really performs that silent, then it might be very interesting.
However, although when you look at the 7970 card you can see on the cooler (and box) the mention "Dual-X", it is strange that on the 7870 pictures (on Sapphire's web site, link on bottom) there is no such label, and that the cooler we can see on those pictures seems to be exactly the same as the classic Dual-fan cooler. But maybe those pictures only show older design intentions. We will have to wait and see.
http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/?cid=1&gid=3&sgid=1160&pid=1473&psn=&leg=0