The Sapphire HD7770 Vapor-X OC Edition Graphics Card Review

The Sapphire HD7770 Vapor-X OC Edition graphics card comes factory pre-overclocked.
The core clock of this Cape Verde GPU has been increased by 100MHz (10%) to 1100MHz and the memory clock has been increased by 175MHz (15.5%) to 1300MHz (5.2 GB/s effective).
This graphics card is based on the latest series graphics chips based on the 28 nm process manufacturing, code named 'Southern Islands' and it has 640 Stream Processors and 16 ROPS.

The Sapphire HD7770 Vapor-X OC also features vapour chamber cooler and two 80mm quiet fans. It has the following outputs: one HDMI port with 3D and 7.1 audio output, one DisplayPort 1.2, and two Dual-Link DVI ports. The HD7770 Vapor-X OC measures having dimensions of 8.86(L)x4.33(W)x16.9(H) inches.

Test System:
CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-M Pro LGA1155
Memory: G.Skill DDR3-1866 16GB Quad Channel
Disk Drive: OCZ Vertex 4 128GB Solid State Drive
Operating system: Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit w/ SP1
Graphics card drivers: AMD Catalyst 12.4

To check the overclocking potential of the HD7770 graphics card, we used the Sapphires overclocking utility, named TriXX. We managed to overclock the already factory overclocked graphics card by a good margin.
The highest stable overclock we were able to achieve without altering the voltage and fan speed was 1225MHz on the GPU core and a memory clock frequency of 1460 MHz.

Benchmark Results:

Games:

3DMark11:

The Sapphire HD7770 Vapor-X OC Edition graphics card was able to deliver excellent performance. Also, the temperature was under 69°C under heavy load, and up to 36°C when idle, which is quite impressive.

Power consumption:

Pros:
Great price/performance ratio
28 nm GPU
Quiet operation

Cons:
Consumes slightly more power than the reference HD7770 card.

Currently, the Sapphire HD7770 Vapor-X OC Edition is aboot 65% cheaper than the GeForce GTX 670 offering from NVIDIA. If you are looking for an affordable mid-range graphics card, then the Sapphire HD7770 Vapor-X OC Edition is currently the best choice available on the market today.

Sapphire Radeon HD7770 GHz Edition OC Graphics Card Review

Today we are going to take a look at the Sapphire HD 7770 GHz Edition OC graphics card with a new architecture that may have fewer stream processors, but much higher clock speeds.
The Sapphire HD 7770 GHz Edition OC is based on the 28 nanometer GCN Architecture with 10 Compute cores (640 Stream Processors), 40 Texture Units, 64 Z/Stencil ROP Units, and 16 Color ROP Units.
As with all GHz Edition AMD HD 7770 graphics cards, it is designed for at least 1 GHz core speed and 1125 MHz (4500 GHz effective) GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit bus. The Sapphire HD 7770 GHz Edition OC is the single fastest card in this category with a core speed of 1.15 GHz (1150 MHz) and 1250 MHz (5000 MHz effective) speed for the 1 GB memory onboard.
The Sapphire HD 7770 GHz Edition seems to have an advantage with DX11 games. This could very well be true as the GCN architecture was intended to be forward thinking.
The Sapphire HD 7770 GHz Edition OC is the best in its class, but still not very impressive in the grand scheme of things. Don’t get me wrong here.
At the price point of $149.99 it is a great buy for those building a new mid range system or those upgrading from any previous generation card that is a 6790 or lower. Even if a similarly priced AMD GPU matches performance, it will still be at a clear win in power consumption, noise, and cooling for this card, as illustrated by its battle with its closest sibling still on the market, the HD 6850.
Source

Sapphire 11201-02-20G Radeon HD 7770 GHZ OC 1GB DDR5 HDMI / DVI-I / Dual Mini DP PCI-Express Graphics Card Price $149.99

New Enhanced PowerColor Radeon HD7800 Series Graphics Cards

The TUL Corporation press service announced the release of new enhanced versions of PowerColor AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series graphics cards which utilize the new efficient cooling system with improved heat-pipe technology and active dual-slot cooler.
The PowerColor Radeon HD7870 in particular is a very impressive card, and for those who want great gaming performance this is a card to get. It looks fabulous, beats a GTX 580, and offers an excellent overall package.

PowerColor Radeon HD7870 1GHz Edition 2GB GDDR5 (V2) Specifications:

• Model: AX7870 2GBD5-2DHV2
• Graphic Processor: AMD Radeon HD7870 based on 28-nm chip Pitcairn technology
• Bus: PCI Express 3.0 x16
• Number of stream processors: 1280
• Memory: 2GB GDDR5 256-bit
• Frequency: (core / memory): 1000/4800 MHz;
• Support API: DirectX 11.1
• Features: Improved integrated video Unified Video Decoder (UVD) to support H.264/AVCHD, VC-1/WMV profile D, MPEG-2, Multi-View Codec (MVC), MPEG-4/DivX, Video Codec Engine (VCE), AMD Steady Video 2.0 technology, AMD Eyefinity 2.0 Technology (symbiosis AMD Eyefinity Technology and AMD HD3D Technology), AMD CrossFireX Multi-GPU Technology, AMD PowerTune Technology, AMD ZeroCore Power Technology;
• Outputs: Two DVI ports, Mini DisplayPort and HDMI connector.

PowerColor Radeon HD 7850 2GB GDDR5 (V2) Specifications:

• Model: AX7850 2GBD5-DH
• Graphic Processor: AMD Radeon HD7870 based on 28-nm chip Pitcairn technology
• Bus: PCI Express 3.0 x16
• Number of stream processors: 1024
• Memory: 2GB GDDR5 256-bit
• Frequency: (core / memory): 860/4800 MHz
• Support API: DirectX 11.1
• Features: Improved integrated video Unified Video Decoder (UVD) to support H.264/AVCHD, VC-1/WMV profile D, MPEG-2, Multi-View Codec (MVC), MPEG-4/DivX, Video Codec Engine (VCE), AMD Steady Video 2.0 technology, AMD Eyefinity 2.0 Technology (symbiosis AMD Eyefinity Technology and AMD HD3D Technology), AMD CrossFireX Multi-GPU Technology, AMD PowerTune Technology, AMD ZeroCore Power Technology;
• Outputs: one DVI port, Mini DisplayPort and HDMI.

Prices have not yet been made public.

MSI Radeon HD7950 Twin Frozr III OC 3GB GDDR5 Graphics Card Review

The MSI R7950 Twin Frozr III has received a 10 percent core clock increase from 800mhz to 880mhz. GDDR5 memory speeds are identical to the reference card @ 1,250mhz (5000mhz effective). The 3GB of memory is connected via a 384 bit memory interface. The card is equipped with 32 ROPS and 1792 unified shaders, which is reduced from 2048 on the higher cost HD7970.
We managed to push the core to 1,100mhz with MSI Afterburner overclocking utility, although the slider was limited to this point. This translates to a very healthy 25% increase on the core clock. The memory could be increased to 1382mhz, translating to an almost 11% increase. At the manually overclocked speeds, the MSI R7950 Twin Frozr III managed to outperform the R7970 Lightning at the ‘out of the box’ settings. 8,702 points is only around 600 points less than the GTX590!
The MSI R7950 Twin Frozr III 3GD5/OC certainly hasn’t disappointed during the last week of testing. MSI are well known for releasing formidable video cards, and this is without question one of the finest HD7950′s on the market.

MSI Radeon HD7950 Twin Frozr III 3GB OC GDDR5 Graphics Card gaming performance:

Source

HIS Radeon HD7870 2GB DDR5 Graphics Card Review

HIS has sent us the Radeon 7870 to review today. The Radeon HD7870 supports tons of cool features such as DirectX 11, OpenCL 1.1, DirectCompute 11, Accelerated video encoding, transcoding, and upscaling,UVD 3 dedicated video playback accelerator,AMD HD3D technology,DisplayPort 1.2,HDMI 1.4a,Dual-link DVI with HDCP,VGA.
Installing the HIS Radeon HD7870 graphics card was a breeze. Since the PCI-e power connectors are at the top of the card you do not have to worry about them adding extra length. Performance is great and you can max games out without spending top dollar for a video card. Source

HIS Radeon HD 7950 IceQ Turbo 3GB Graphics Card Review

The HIS HD7950 IceQ Turbo is packed in a relatively large package, accessories wise there is only a DVI to VGA adapter included and a single crossfire bridge. The HIS HD7950 IceQ Turbo heat sink and fan assembly features an 57mm single blower fan that cools the 28nm Tahiti HD7950 GPU really well while remaining virtually silent (on auto).
The HIS HD7950 IceQ Turbo uses 3GB of Hynix H5GQ2H24MFR-TC2 memory divided between twelve modules, rated at 2.5GHz (5GHz effective) at 1.5V.
Raising the vCore (VDDC) to 1.135V and the memory voltage (MVDDC) to 1.680V, I was able to push the GPU to 1065MHz (+165MHz) and the memory to 1500MHz (+250MHz - 6GHz effective) which required very little effort at all. I am impressed by the capabilities of the HIS HD7950 IceQ Turbo 3GB graphics card. Running FurMark while the GPU was running at these speeds produced a lot of heat so I decided to call it a day, with better cooling (Water/DICE/LN2) I imagine this card will overclock like a beast, there were no signs of artifacts.
Armed with a 165MHz GPU core overclock and a 250MHz memory overclock, we saw an average 13.20% increase in all game benchmark scores (at 1920x1080 resolution). This is very good considering the card is factory overclocked already. Source

Sapphire Radeon HD7870 OC 2GB Graphics Card Review

The Sapphire HD7870 OC Edition 2GB DDR5 graphics card comes with effective base clock speed of 1050MHz and the memory set to run at 1250MHz. This is a small factory overclock compared to the reference Radeon HD 7870 design of 1GHz core and 1200MHz memory. The overall increase of 50MHz on the GPU's operating speed and 50MHz increase on the memory should provide improved performance Out-of-Box without the user having to change anything.
To overclock the Sapphire HD7870 OC graphics card we are using Sapphire's overclocking utility TriXX. We found the highest GPU core clock without voltage tweaking at 1245MHz. Compared to its Out-of-Box settings this is an increase of 195MHz and 18.6% faster operating frequency. Next we found the highest memory clock which was 1560Mhz. Compared to the stock Sapphire HD7870 OC this is an increase of 310MHz and 24.8% faster operating speed. We increased the slider by 82mV up to 1.3V. The voltage increase allowed an additional 25MHz bringing the highest stable overclock to 1270MHz. The overall speed increase from the overclock on the GPU is 21% faster compared to the Out-of-Box operating speed.
The 7000 series AMD video cards provide better performance than its last generation competition while also being more power efficient. The extra power consumption that the overclock required was still more power efficient than the Radeon HD6970 and GeForce GTX570 with a marginal performance advantage.
Under full load the temperature of the Sapphire HD7870 OC graphics card increased by 37C up to 61 degrees Celsius with fan speeds only reaching 45%. The fans were not audible over the normal operating system at all during our Out-of-Box testing. The Overclocked Sapphire HD7870 OC graphics card had fans set to 65% which was just audible over normal operating hum. At these fan speeds under full load the Overclocked Sapphire HD7870 OC Edition's temperature increased to 65C. The graphics card with the maximum overclock was 23C cooler than the AMD Radeon HD6970 under full load and did not emit as much noise. The overclocked Sapphire HD7870 OC graphics card was also 24C cooler than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX570 that had a full load temperature of 89C and more a more audible fan. Source

Sapphire Radeon Ultimate HD7750 1GB DDR5 Graphics Card Review

It is not unusual nowadays to see a graphics card with passive cooler. Sapphire release such graphics cards in their series of Ultimate edition fanless graphics cards. Despite the fact that these models do not have a great computing power, they are perfectly able to cope with their responsibilities in multimedia computers. Their main advantage it's quiet operation. A quiet operation is important for any computer, especially for an HTPC. After all, nobody wants to watch a movie with a noisy graphics card cooler fan.
Today we are going to take a look at the new graphics card from Sapphire - the Radeon HD7750 Ultimate. Sapphire HD 7750 Ultimate graphics card have 1Gb of GDDR5 memory in the form of four memory chips. Each pair of chips is covered with a special black strip specialy designed for heat removal. The GPU used Sapphire's Radeon HD7750 Ultimate in code named Cape Verde and it is produced on 28nm process. It is located in the center of the PCB. The GPU core frequency of this graphics card is 800MHz, and memory operates at 4500Mhz (4 x 1125MHz). The full specifications can be found here.
We were able to oveclock the GPU core frequency of Sapphire HD 7750 Ultimate graphics card to 879MHz, which is about 10% increase over the default GPU clock. Also, we overclocked the Memory to 1250MHz which is more than 11% increase memory frequency.
Despite the fact that the Sapphire HD7750 Ultimate graphics card has no fan, the core temperature under full load manages to retain a decent level (162°F/72°C). Thus, the HD 7750 Ultimate is quite easy to recommend to those who intend to build a multi-media class computer. If you decide to play the latest games using this graphics card, then this can be done at 1680x1050 resolution on high settings, or 1920x1080 with picture quality set to medium level.
Conclusion
Sapphire produced an excellent graphics card for anyone who wants to build a quiet multimedia PC. Also, it is a solid graphics card for someone who's looking to do some casual gaming.

HIS Radeon HD7850 2GB DDR5 Graphics Card Review

Today for review I’ve got the HIS Radeon HD7850 2GB graphics card and I have put it through it’s paces thoroughly including gaming, Eyefinity and overclocking. HIS has also just came out with a new software utility called iTurbo that can help you adjust many of your graphics card settings including the fan and overclocking.
The iTurbo utility has five tabs across the tab for Home, Info, Overclock, FanControl and Settings. The most important is the Overclock tab which lets you adjust the Core and Memort overclocks and save four profiles so you can quickly switch between them. The iTurbo software doesn’t allow for any voltage adjustments so you’re slightly limited in overclocking ability, but even without voltage adjustments I easily got the card up to a core clock of 1100mhz and the memory up to 1250mhz.
These are the main specifications of HIS Radeon HD7850 2GB DDR5 Graphics Card:

• Core Clock: 860 MHz
• Memory Clock: 4800 MHz
• Memory Size: 2048 MB
• Memory Type: GDDR5
• Memory Interface: 256 bit
• Interface    PCI Express: 3.0 x16

For the price the HIS 7850 is well worth it, it costs less than half of a high end card but yet performs very well in most every game I tested. Source

MSI Radeon HD7870 2GB DDR5 TwinFrozr OC Graphics Card Review

Today we're looking at a Radeon HD7870 graphics card from MSI and it falls into the popular Twin Frozr series which has always stood out as a strong series thanks to the excellent cooling solutions on offer.
Like most MSI cards we see this one comes overclocked out of the box and looking below you can see the 1050MHz core is 50MHz up on the default 1000MHz clock. As for the 2GB of GDDR5 that has been left alone coming in at 4800MHz QDR.
We used our favorite overclocking program MSI Afterburner and as you can see above we pushed our core up to 1250MHz and the 2GB of GDDR5 up to 5600MHz QDR. If you want to spend around that mid $300 mark the HD 7870 is a good choice and most companies are offering us some nice variations.
The MSI HD7870 2GB DDR5 TwinFrozr OC is another one of those nice variations that stand out and you can see it's another HD 7870 that is able to offer some strong performance. Source

Zotac GeForce GTX 560Ti Graphics Card Review

Zotac's GTX 560 Ti graphics card is constructed on a black PCB that is really only visible from the back of the card. With an 822MHz core and 4000MHz memory clock, it falls into the lower end of available 560s. If you want something with a bit more horsepower, the 560 Ti OC offers a 905MHz core while the AMP! edition ramps things all the way up to 950MHz. Using MSI's Afterburner overclocking software, I was able to find a stable setting of 890Hz, good for nearly 70MHz extra.
Benchmark testing revealed an average of 3-4 FPS increase in games when overclocked. It's not much, but it's free so there's really no sense in not taking advantage of it. Overall the card was able to handle everything we threw at it. The newest game in our somewhat dated list is Crysis 2 and on Ultra graphics settings at 4x AA, the game was completely playable at nearly 40 FPS.
Zotac has a really nice mainstream graphics card on their hands with the 560 Ti that we looked at here today. While it's not the fastest or latest generation card on the block, the price is reflective of that while still offering non-hardcore gamers a great product that's capable of playing some of the latest titles with lots of eye candy. Source

Sapphire HD 7970 OC Edition 3GB DDR5 Graphics Card Review

The Sapphire HD 7970 OC Edition is the fastest, highest end video card currently available from Sapphire. This video card is outfitted with Sapphires Dual-X cooling system which includes five pure copper heat pipes extending from the GPU across the heat sink, and dual fans that are designed around quiet operation while moving a fair amount of air.
The Dual BIOS technology is designed around allowing users to choose a standard profile and a more aggressive profile with more performance. The first BIOS setting has core operating frequency set to 950MHz which is an increase of 25MHz from the reference design, and the memory's operating frequency set to 1425MHz which is an increase of 50MHz. The second BIOS profile has core operating frequency set to 1000MHz on the core which is an increase of 75MHz compared to the reference HD 7970 design, and 1450MHz on the memory which is a 75MHz increase.
The Dual-X cooling system is what we as enthusiasts expect a company to bring to the table on its high end video cards. The Sapphire HD 7970 OC Edition has two fans that have a shiny gloss on them to help fight wind resistance. This allows them to operate at faster speeds without the excess noise. These fans cool the custom heat sink that is elevated above the PCB. The five pure copper heat pipes spread heat evenly across the heatsink. The Dual-X cooling system should result in some impressively low temperatures.
The first thing we do when overclocking an AMD based video card is to turn PowerTune up to 20%. We found the maximum core clock speed without voltage tweaking was 1150MHz. This is an increase of 200MHz from the Sapphire HD 7970 OC Edition's default setting. We were also able to increase the memory up to an impressive 1860MHz. Compared to the stock settings, this is an increase of 435MHz.
We also managed an impressive 1860MHz on the memory which is an increase of 435MHz. After increasing voltages by 188mV we were able to increase the cores frequency by an additional 130MHz up to 1280MHz. The memory would not increase anymore past 1860MHz. BTW the fans were set to 70% for this overclock.
The Sapphire HD 7970 Oc graphics card out-of-the-box is more power efficient than a standard reference Radeon HD 7970. Sapphire has improved on power efficiency, even though it is running at higher clock speeds.
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EVGA GeForce GTX 680 Graphics Card Review

The GeForce GTX 680 is the latest and greatest graphics processor from NVIDIA, using a new architecture called Kepler, a new manufacturing process (28 nm), a dynamic overclocking technology, and supporting the PCI Express 3.0 specification.
The GeForce GTX 680 is a dynamic overclocking technology that increases the graphic chip’s clock from 1,006 MHz up to 1,058 MHz when more processing power is demanded. Because of the new manufacturing process, the maximum power consumed by the video card dropped from 244 W on the GeForce GTX 580 (which uses the 40 nm manufacturing process) to 195 W, while processing power increased.

The GeForce GTX 680 uses a cooler with a 63 mm radial fan, located beside the heatsink. The heatsink uses aluminum fins and a copper base.
The reviewed video card uses eight Hynix H5GQ2H24MFR-R0C GDDR5 chips, each one storing 2 Gbit of data, making the 2 GB of memory available on this video card. Each chip is connected to the GPU through a 32-bit lane, creating the 256-bit datapath that is available. These chips can run up to 6 GHz. On this video card, they are accessed at 6,008 MHz, which is already a tiny bit above their labeled clock rate. Of course, you can always try to push the memory clock above its specs.
The GeForce GTX680 is faster and cheaper than the ATI Radeon HD7970, and it is our current recommendation if you are looking for the latest and greatest video card.
In our tests, the GeForce GTX 680 was up to 29% faster than the Radeon HD 7970. The only exceptions were in Aliens vs. Predator, where the competitor from AMD was between 8% and 12% faster, and in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, where the two cards achieved the same performance at 1920x1200, with the Radeon HD 7970 slightly faster at 2560x1600. Compared to its predecessor, the GeForce GTX 580, the new model, was between 12% and 55% faster
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XFX Radeon HD7870 Black Edition 2GB DDR5 Graphics Card Review

XFX announced the release of the Radeon HD 7870 Black Edition Double Dissipation graphics card. The XFX HD7870 DoubleD Black Edition is endowed with the same cooling system, which is used in the products of the highest rank. Among its strengths is to provide a direct contact heat pipes with the GPU, which makes heat transfer more efficient. The use of alternative cooling system allowed XFX to safely increase the GPU clock speed by 50 MHz, i.e. GPU clock is set to 1050 MHz. Also, the the 2GB of GDDR5 memory has been bumped up from the stock 4800 MHz QDR to 5000 MHz QDR (1250 MHz x 4). Overall this is a nice bump in clock speeds and should bring with it some nice overall performance. Source

VisionTek Radeon HD 7970 3GB DDR5 Graphcs Card Review

The VisionTek Radeon HD7970 graphics card features 1792 Stream Processors, 3GB of GDDR5 memory, reference frequencies with core/memory clock of 925MHz/1375MHz(data rate of 5500MHz), and it has intelligent TDP management (AMD Power Tune Technology).
We settled in for some overclocking of the GPU and memory and achieved a final overclock of 1120MHz core and 1600MHz memory. That's a 21% increase on the core and 16% on the memory.
The VisionTek Radeon HD7970 graphics card scored 35986 3DMarks (performance) and 17625 (extreme) in 3DMark Vantage. Please note that when it comes to benchmarking top-end cards like Radeon HD 7970, 3DMark Vantage depends too much on the performance of the complete hardware configuration. The Radeon HD7970 graphics card returned a playable score of 55-65fps in Crysis 2, Battlefield 3 and Shogun 2 (at 1920X1080 resolution, AF 16x, AA4x).
At idle the system runs very low in power and temperature terms. The VisionTek Radeon HD7970 graphics card has an impressive power consumption: 24W at idle! The power consumption under full load was 265W. The GPU temperature of the VisionTek Radeon HD7970 graphics card was 102F (39°C) on idle, and when stressed went up to 173F (78 °C). The cooler is better but somewhat louder than the reference one.
If you are in the market for a graphics card that offers a high level of performance if price is not a problem then the VisionTek Radeon HD 7970 would definitely be a good fit for you.

XFX Radeon HD7770 Black Edition Graphics Card Review

Enter the XFX HD 7770 Black Edition. With an improved over stock clockspeed of 1120MHz on the core (120MHz faster than reference HD7770) and a huge boost on the memory clockspeed to 1300MHz (5200MHz effective), the Black Edition 'S' (Super Overclock) arrives pre-overclocked which should give the card a fair boost in performance. Couple this with XFX's fantastic Double Dissipation cooler complete with GHOST thermal technology and the XFX may just make the successor to the HD5770/6770 a worthwhile purchase. Being a custom cooled, pre-overclocked card, the XFX R7770 Black Edition does carry a premium over reference cards. The XFX R7770 builds on an already fast clockpeed of 1GHz so to increase that speed any further is a feat in iteself, however XFX have managed just that and added a further 12% to the core along with increasing the memory clockspeed to a quite frankly ridiculously fast 1300MHz(5200Mhz effective). Thanks to the Double Dissipation cooler, the XFX graphics card ran very cool at both idle and load. Even the blistering overclock we achieved did not phase the cooling and even better, the fan speed hardly increased past audible levels such is the performance of the GHOST technology. Source

MSI GTX560Ti-448 Twin Frozr III Power Edition Graphics Card Review

What does the MSI GTX560 Ti-448 Twin Frozr III Power Edition graphics card have to offer? Well the main attraction is of course the extra 64 shader cores. With 448 cores on the new GTX560Ti vs the 384 on the older model the performance should increase sufficiently to attract buyers. The MSI GTX 560 Ti-448 Power Edition/OC weighs in at an already overclocked speed of 750MHz on the core and 3900MHz (effective) on the 1280MB of GDDR5 so it will certainly be interesting to see how far the graphics card can be pushed. Reaching a truly amazing 1050Mhz on the core was some achievement. At this clockspeed it passed a 2 hour Furmark test without issue. Moreover temperatures were still very much in the comfort zone, never exceeding 68c which is a great achievement, especially when you consider the same cooler was used on the GPU which has less cores but had to combat much higher temperatures. Source

Sparkle GTX560 2GB OC Edition Graphics Card Review

The GTX560 has proven to be a popular card for Nvidia building upon the incredible success of the GTX460. The reference card has 7 SMs, 32 ROPS, 512kb of L2 cache, 336 SPs and 1GB of GDDR5 memory connected via a 256 bit memory bus. This Sparkle GTX560 card is equipped with double the memory (2GB GDDR5) with a higher core clock speed (822mhz). This is sure to enhance performance at higher resolutions when image quality is cranked. The card is built around the GF114 core, which features 32 ROPS, 336 CUDA cores and 2GB of GDDR5 which is connected via a 256 bit memory interface. The core clock is 823mhz, and memory is set at 1002mhz (4008mhz effective). We didn’t manage to get a great overclock from the memory, analysing some minor artifacts when pushing past 1039mhz. We managed to push the core to 886mhz, which translates to an overclock a little less than 8%. The overclock gained noticeable results from 3DMark 11, improving the score by around 300 points to 4,525. This pushed the performance past the reference clocked AMD HD6870.
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Sapphire Radeon HD 6970 2GB DDR5 Dual Fan Review

The latest HD 6970 in the Sapphire arsenal may have the same internal architecture and specifications as the reference model, but don’t let this fool you: this is no average card. This model uses a new design that includes dual 90mm fans with thin impellers that can move the same amount of air as a conventional fan at 10% lower rotation speeds, at least according to Sapphire. This effectively equals higher efficiency at a lower decibel range. Additionally, the dual fan design includes special dust repelling bearings that prevent dust from entering the fans' internal enclosure, prolonging the life of the fans.
The Dual-Fan HD 6970 also features a dual BIOS design which allows the user to switch from “Standard” and “Performance” settings. This switch allows the BIOS to be toggled between the two modes; in the “Performance” mode, the core voltage is increased to 1.2V while the fans are automatically set to a high performance profile, and the PowerTune rating is increased to 50%. This of course facilitates higher overclocking and ensures the Sapphire HD 6970 Dual-Fan will run at the top of its game.
Overclocking the GPU netted an additional 134MHz, which is just above a 15% clock frequency increase. The memory also overclocked well, as the GDDR5 memory didn't start to artifact until we tried pushing it beyond 1451MHz.
Sapphire always hit all the right marks, and continues to do so with this model . The Sapphire Radeon HD 6970 2GB DDR5 Dual Fan graphics card is extremely power efficient and is quiet to boot. Since Sapphire has kept the price point at the same level as the reference design, the Dual-Fan HD 6970 is a bargain.
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MSI GeForce 570 GTX Twin Frozr III Power Edition OC Graphics Card Review

The MSI GeForce N570GTX Twin Frozr III Power Edition OC graphics card is built for maximum performance, aided by the 6+1 phase power technology and Triple Overvoltage support which MSI claim enhances overclocking capabilities by 22 percent. This card is also supplied in a preoverclocked state, with the core clock increased to 770mhz and the 1280MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000mhz.
By increasing the core voltage by +87 we achieved a stable overclock at 863mhz. It was possible to improve this a little more, but we noticed some very minor artifacting which could lead to long term problems. We aren’t chasing impressive figures on this page, but realistic 24/7 speeds. Due to the voltage increases core temperatures rose by around 3c under load. The overclocked speeds translate in a rather healthy performance boost, rising from 6,250 points to 6,844 points in 3DMark 11. Power consumption is peaking just under 180 watts when gaming. When idling, it demands 24 watts.
Source

MSI N570GTX Twin Frozr III Power Edition OC Price $374.99

Not super clocked version:
EVGA GeForce GTX 570 HD 1280 MB GDDR5 Dual PCI Express 2.0 DVI/HDMI/DisplayPort SLI Ready Graphics Card, 012-P3-1571-KR Price $319.99