Introduction

AMD's HD 7970 and its more powerful brother HD 7970 GHz Edition have been on the market for a while now. MSI has also launched their HD 7970 Lightning in June. Now ASUS has released the HD 7970 Matrix - a card that will directly compete with MSI's HD 7970 Lightning.



ASUS has increased clock speeds to 1100 MHz. That is 50 MHz more than the GHz Edition and higher than any other HD 7970 card, including the MSI Lightning. Memory clock is, with 1650 MHz, also higher than any other AMD card.

The card comes with a powerful triple slot cooling solution and adds many features for hardcore overclockers like support for VGA Hotwire, voltage control, and three buttons for direct GPU voltage control. We also find voltage measuring points and a Turbo-fan button to set fan speed to 100% on the card.

Price-wise, the HD 7970 Matrix comes at $480, which is quite a price increase given AMD's recent price drops for the HD 7970.

Packaging

Contents

You will receive:

• Graphics card
• Driver CD + Documentation
• CrossFire bridge
• DVI adapter
• PCIe power cable
• LN2 MOSFET heatsink
• ROG Badge
• 3x VGA Hotwire cable
• Diablo 3 mousepad

The Card

The HD 7970 Matrix is a big card. Its massive dual-fan cooler extends quite a bit beyond the top edge of the card so make sure it fits your case.


The card requires three slots in your system.


Display connectivity options include two DVI ports and four DisplayPorts. You may use all outputs at the same time. Using the dual BIOS feature allows you to switch the output configuration between 1x dual-link DVI and 1x single-link DVI with fewer DP ports, or 2x single-Link DVI with all DP ports enabled.

The GPU also includes an HDMI sound device. It is HDMI 1.4a compatible, which includes HD audio and Blu-ray 3D movies support. The DisplayPort outputs are version 1.2, enabling the use of hubs and Multi-Stream Transport.


You may combine up to four HD 7970 cards from any vendor in a multi-GPU CrossFire configuration for higher frame rates or better image-quality settings.


Pictured above are the front and back, showing the disassembled board. High-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods, etc., please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.