The HD 7970 may have first been introduced a few weeks ago but details about board partners’ products has been slim to none.  Gigabyte is actually the first to show us the first images and specifications of their upcoming card.  

Called the HD 7970 Windforce 3x OC, this card uses a custom heatsink and has its core clocked to 1GHz which should result in some reasonable performance increases.  Unfortunately, while the memory was billed by AMD as being highly overclockable, frequencies here have remained in line with the reference specifications.  Other than those two bullet points, it seems like a custom blue PCB is also being used but we’re guessing that any changes to the power distribution will have to wait until Gigabyte officially unveils their upcoming Super Overclock edition.   There is also a substantial reduction in both temperatures and noise due to the use of the Windforce heatsink design.

At this point, pricing is still TBD but availability of this particular card is due in mid to late January.  We’ll have a full review for you in the coming weeks but until then, we’ve posted the Gigabyte slide deck below, it includes a ton of additional info so enjoy!