14 DAY TRIAL // Traditional AMD video card partner Sapphire has now decided to add two more Vapor-X Radeon HD 7970 graphics adapters to the company’s custom line of AMD “Tahiti” GHz Edition. The new cards feature more tamed characteristics when compared to Sapphire’s flagship, but they’re nonetheless impressive by themselves.
The most powerful of the two is called Sapphire HD 7970 6GB Vapor-X and comes with a huge amount of GDDR5 memory clocked at 6000 MHz. There are 6 GB of video memory on the card working on a 384-bit BUS.
The PCB has 12 layers and features a 10-phase power design that will allow for 1 GHz default GPU working frequency and a 1050 MHz GPU Boost with the standard BIOS.
The performance BIOS will up these frequencies to a high 1050 MHz “normal” setting and an 1100 MHz Boost.
The card’s high-end target can be easily observed once we notice the Black Diamond Chokes, DirectFET technology and a set of LEDs that display PCB temperature.
The second card launched today is Sapphire HD 7970 3GB Vapor-X Edition and, like the name says, it features the standard 3 GB memory quantity running at default GHz Edition speeds.
The Sapphire HD 7970 3GB Vapor-X Edition PCB is reportedly only made of 8 layers, but both cards feature the same powerful cooling system.
The cooling assembly contains two serious heatpipes with an 8-millimeter diameter and two more heatpipes featuring the “standard” 6-millimeter diameter.
We must commend Sapphire for using 8mm heatpipes, as these offer much better cooling performance when compared with the 6mm variety.
The heatsink and heatpipes are cooled by two fans with a 90-millimeter diameter.
There’s no information on pricing yet, but we’re sure many enthusiasts already anxiously await these to become available.
