ASUS Matrix HD 7970 Platinum Video Card Review

When it comes to AMD Radeon HD 7970 video cards, one of the most sought after cards is the ASUS MATRIX HD 7970 Platinum graphics card that is available under the part number MATRIX-HD7970-P-3GD5 for $499.99 shipped. This card has the AMD Radeon HD 7970 'Tahiti' GPU core clocked at 1100 MHz and the 3GB of Hynix GDDR5 RAM is clocked at 1650 MHz (6600 MHz effective). The stock core clock on the AMD Radeon HD 7970 is 925 MHz, so this card features a 175MHz core clock increase. This is a 18.9% improvement, so it already has a fairly hefty overclock on it from the factory. Don't think for one second that is all that ASUS has changed on this card. ASUS basically took the factory reference design and threw it out the window. The companies engineers in Taiwan burnt the midnight oil and came up with an entirely custom card. Pretty much the only thing on this video card that is similar to the original design is the GPU itself. Is that radical enough for you? You can run out and get the lowest cost AMD Radeon HD 7970 for around $387 shipped after rebates, so hopefully all these customizations will make up for the ~$110 price premium that this card carries.

Let's cut the chit-chat and start looking at the ASUS Matrix HD 7970 Platinum 3GB video card!