14 DAY TRIAL // Looks like people who were hoping for a cheaper, albeit more roundabout, way of getting an AMD Radeon HD 7970 will be disappointed.
Until today, it was believed that the Radeon HD 7970 and Radeon HD 7950 graphics cards would share a similar PCB design.
In other words, since the GPU was basically the same, many were hoping that it would be possible to “transform” the 7950 into a 7970 by changing the BIOS.
Alas, photos of what is supposedly the reference design have surfaced online, and they are not too encouraging.
Not only is the cooler different (a top-flow fan instead of a fin-canal design), but also the PCB (printed circuit board) will be more or less unique.
On a related note, while the release won't happen until January 31, 2012, listings of the card have already appeared in the US and Europe.
