Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 custom card gets pictured

TechPowerUp came across some photos of a single-fan non-reference Radeon HD 7950 from Sapphire. Clockspeeds are likely the same as the reference board.

The single-fan HD 7950 appears to have a blue-colored PCB that is likely to be AMD's cost-effective reference design. The cooler appears to have a compact heatsink that is cooled by a single central fan. Display outputs include two mini-DisplayPort, and one each of HDMI and DVI. We're also hearing from the source that 900 MHz core with unchanged (1250/5000 MHz) memory will be the maximum factory-OC permitted by AMD to AIB partners. That is not to say that the HD 7950's OC potential beyond that will be limited in any way.

Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 custom card gets pictured - More news at DV Hardware

Aeolus Gamer Storm Dracula heatsink for Radeon HD 7970 pictured

TPU found shots of the Dracula Radeon HD 7970 GPU heatsink from Aeolus Gamer Storm. This model has a nickel-plated copper base, six 6mm heatpipes, and two aluminium fin arrays. Tests by the company reveal a Radeon HD 7970 runs up to 35�C less hot with the Dracula + two 80mm fans than one with the reference cooler.

The heatsink is designed to handle thermal loads of up to 250W, when outfitted with fans. The heatsink design consists of a nickel-plated copper base (this particular variant has a circular bump where the GPU die makes contact), with the appropriate mount-hole spacing for HD 7970. Through this base, six 6 mm-thick nickel-plated copper heat-pipes pass, the opposite ends of these heat pipes pass through two aluminum fin stacks.

Aeolus Gamer Storm Dracula heatsink for Radeon HD 7970 pictured - More news at DV Hardware

ASUS Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II gets pictured

TechPowerUp got its hands on exclusive pictures of the ASUS Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II edition, you can check it out over here.

Here are the first pictures of ASUS' premium DirectCu II graphics card designed around AMD's Radeon HD 7970 GPU. The design is based on giving the GPU a powerful cooling solution, backed by a custom-design PCB. Since its cooling solution spans across three expansion slots, one of the three expansion slot brackets is productively used to provide additional display connectivity. To begin with, the PCB uses a 10+1+1 ASUS Digi+ VRM that draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. It supports heavy overclocking, and provides several voltage tuning features.

A common metal heatsink spans along the length of the card, making contact with VRM and memory components. On top of this sits the DirectCu II heatsink. This heatsink uses a large aluminum fin-stack heatsink to which heat from the GPU is conveyed by six heat-pipes, which make direct contact with it. The heatsink itself isn't very thick, but what makes the card span across three slots are its two 100 mm fans. The GPU is clocked out of the box at 1000 MHz (vs. 925 MHz reference), and 5.60 GHz/1400 MHz actual memory (vs. 5.50 GHz/1375 MHz actual reference).

ASUS Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II gets pictured - More news at DV Hardware