Upgrade Asus 580 DCII to Sapphire Dual-X 7970 OC

[bonababy]

Greetings! Just sold my Asus 580 at around 300$. Is it a safe upgrade to go to Sapphire 7970 Dual-X OC Edition at around 270$? (Yes, kinda cheap in my area) But the caveat is the seller is only selling the video card only. Will overclocking the Sapphire 7970 OC beat the current GPU's in the market? (GTX 670, GTX 680)

 

[JackNaylorPE]

The 7970 OC splits wins with the 680 and similarly OC'd 670's as you can see starting here:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1962/4/

Overall based upon visiting numerous sites, they 670 OC, 680 stock, 7970 Dual-X OC, 7970 Ghz are all within 1 -2 % of each other in the performance summaries. In single card situations, I'd call it a toss up among any of those listed at 1920 x 1080. At higher resolutions, I'd give the edge to the 7970's and in multiple card installations, I'd go with the 6xx cards.

However, there is a problem with this particular card associated with ferrite chokes which I have seen mentioned on numerous sites.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1962/16/

The only negative thing that we have to point out about the SAPPHIRE HD 7970 OC 3GB graphics card is that during use the card has a 'buzz' or 'whine' coming from the ferrite chokes that is rather loud. We searched around and found various people complaining about this on other forums and even Newegg and Amazon customer reviews, so just a heads up. It appears that SAPPHIRE is RMA'ing cards that have loud chokes though and that is a sign of good customer support and we have to respect that.

 

[bonababy]

Thanks for the insight!! I'll take note of that.