Conclusion

General		+	-
The Matrix Platinum HD 7970 is one of the best Radeon HD 7970 out there, we didn't try it yet under liquid nitrogen but we believe it will easily compete with the Lightning from MSI. As for "normal" users thanks to the factory overclocking the Matrix Platinum gives you a nice boost in performance over the reference design. Furthermore the card features an ASUS made PCB design that comes with a lot of cool features like more phases, a digital power design and so on and so forth. What we also like is ASUS' DirectCU II cooler. It is a big cooler we that's true with it's triple slot size but it is very good. It was inaudible in both 2D mode and 3D loads, after two hours of FurMark I still haven't heard the fans of the card and the GPU temperature was as cool as 69°C.		- Noiseless in both 2D and 3D - PCB Design - Factory Overclocking - Bundle	- Triple Slot
Performance		+	-
Thanks to the high factory overclocking, the HD 7970 Matrix Platinum was on average 15 % faster than the reference HD 7970, which is enough to justify the high price of the card along with the bundle and the other features. Furthermore the power consumption is not bad too, only 34 more Watts under heavy load than the reference card. In idle it's not that good, with a custom design we expected a lower or close to reference design power consumption but it's not. The power consumption in idle was 12 Watts higher.		- Performance - 15 % faster than the reference HD 7970
Recommendation		+	-
In the end this HD 7970 Matrix Platinum graphics card from ASUS is faster, better, stronger than both reference HD 7970 and GHz Edition. So we recommend it to anyone who wants to invest money one of the best custom Radeon HD 7970 out there.		- Gaming - Overclocking - Extreme Overclocking
We give the ASUS Radeon HD 7970 Matrix Platinum very good 5 out of five stars.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 12 - Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3
Page 2 - Technical Data / Specifications	Page 13 - BattleField 3
Page 3 - Preview / Delivery	Page 14 - Crysis 2
Page 4 - Test Setup	Page 15 - Dragon Age 2
Page 5 - 3DMark 11	Page 16 - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat
Page 6 - 3DMark Vantage	Page 17 - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Page 7 - Unigine Heaven	Page 18 - StarCraft II
Page 8 - TessMark	Page 19 - Power Consumption
Page 9 - Alien vs Predator	Page 20 - BenchMarks and Games Settings
Page 10 - Batman: Arkham City	Page 21 - Conclusion
Page 11 - DIRT 2

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Author: Christian Ney c.ney@ocaholic.ch