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Fan noise on XFX HD 7970 Black Edition???

Associate
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Hi all

I've been thinking about getting myself a XFX HD 7970 Black Edition with the dual fan cooler.
I'm just wondering what the fan noise is like compared with the stock cooler on all the rest of the reference HD 7970 cards???
Can anyone out there that has XFX HD 7970 Black Edition let me know what its like and what you think of XFX and the card in general.

Cheers
 
Caporegime
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weston-super-mare
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/45...issipation_3gb_video_card_review/index16.html
Noise levels are also really strong, we can see that idle and load sit a nice chunk lower than the reference card with a solid 4.7dB shaved off the load temperature.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5314/...ouble-dissipation-the-first-semicustom-7970/2
Finally taking a look at noise we can see the full impact of XFX’s replacement cooler. For XFX this is both good and bad. On the bad side, their Double Dissipation cooler can’t match the 7970 reference cooler when idling; 43.5dB isn’t particularly awful but it’s noticeable, particularly when compared to the reference 7970. Consequently the BEDD is definitely not a good candidate for a PC that needs to be near-silent at idle.

On the flip side under load we finally see XFX’s cooler choice pay off. AMD’s aggressive fan profile made the reference 7970 one of the loudest single-GPU cards in our lineup, but XFX’s Double Dissipation cooler fares significantly better here. At 48.1dB under Metro it’s not only quieter than the reference 7970 by a rather large 7dB, but it’s also quieter than every other modern high-end card in our lineup, effectively tying with the reference 6950. Even under our pathological OCCT test it only reaches 52dB, 5dB quieter than the reference 7970.

Ultimately where the BEDD was a poor candidate for noise under idle, it’s an excellent candidate for a quiet computer under load thanks to the open air nature of XFX’s Double Dissipation cooler, and certainly the launch card to get if you want a load-quiet 7970. Just don’t throw it directly up against another card in CrossFire, as these open air cards typically fare poorly without an open slot to work with.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...ack-edition-double-dissipation-review-12.html
While the Double Dissipation’s temperatures may not be up to some people’s expectations, the tradeoff is a very low acoustical profile. This card is noticeably quieter than the reference design and if need be, the fans’ rotational speed can be manually increased for lower temperatures and slightly higher noise output.
 
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Can anyone answer this please as i'm considering these cards. Is the 'standard' DD version exactly the same as the DD Black, apart from the gpu and memory factory overclock?
 
Caporegime
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Location
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Can anyone answer this please as i'm considering these cards. Is the 'standard' DD version exactly the same as the DD Black, apart from the gpu and memory factory overclock?

There are four versions - http://xfxforce.com/en-gb/Products/Graphics-Cards/AMD/-AMD-Radeon-HD-7000/AMD-Radeon-HD-7970.aspx

2X Black editions
1X DD edition
1X Core edition

----------------------

One of the Black editions has the DD cooler with higher 1000MHz core speed than the DD version with 925MHz core.
 
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Associate
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Thanks guys, its the FX-797A-TDBC and FX-797A-TDFC I was looking at. Seems the difference is just the factory OC then.

The way the 7970s OC I guess the DD (TDFC) at stock speeds is the value card, then just OC it to the Black (TDBC) speeds manually.
 
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