[H]ard|OCP recently posted a review of the GIGABYTE GV-R797OC-3GD. In the review, they were able to overclock it to a massive clock speed of 1305 MHz on the GPU and 1605 MHz on the memory (normally runs at 1000/1375 on stock) and this was done utilizing the stock Gigabyte cooler!
The resulting benchmarks show a massive performance increase in the games they tested, virtually leaving the GTX 580 way back in the dust. Of course, with the massive overclock and voltage increases, power usage went up through the roof, with the total power usage of the test system hitting 574W on load. The temperature increases weren’t as bad, as the Gigabyte GV-R797OC-3GD was able to keep the card down to 56C with 80% fan usage.
Still, it’s quite an impressive feat, considering that this was all done without physical modding and using Gigabyte’s fan/heatsink. I’m actually considering upgrading to this card myself, as I’m sitting on an aging, yet still capable, GeForce GTX 295.
Check out [H]’s review here: GIGABYTE Radeon HD 7970 OC Video Card Review