Gigabyte Radeon HD 7970 OC 3GB Graphics Card Review

Noise is generally the bain of most consumers lives and in the hope of finding the quietest operation, we feel it’s necessary to show you the audio level of components. We use the same components throughout this test and use a sound level meter to record the audio level of the system with a passive graphics card installed. Once we have the level recorded with the passive card, we continue to change the graphics card for the one that we are testing. Due to us having the audio level recorded before installation, it gives us a guide to work with and shows that anything over our initial level is an audio gain.

We love the performance of Gigabyte’s WindForce coolers and this card is no exception with a low idle noise output of 47.3 dBA. As we crank things up and put some load onto the card, we find that the noise output only increases slightly to 56.5 dBA, which is still an acceptable level of noise.