Just a few short weeks ago, I had the opportunity to look at and test a reference HD 7970 from Sapphire for the official launch of AMD's latest video cards, which feature an all new architecture based on the 28 nm Tahiti core. On top of the die shrink, this new architecture from AMD includes a move to PCIe 3 support, an increase to 3 GB of high speed GDDR5 memory, DX 11.1 compliance, Power Tune and Zero Core power technologies, and Eyefinity 2.0, which brings its own upgraded feature set. AMD's GCN, or Graphics Core Next Tahiti core, is a step away from the VLIW design and towards a non-VLIW SIMD engine for higher computing performance. This new core comes with a large increase in the transistor count to 4.31 billion, an increase in the streaming processor count to 2048 with 32 raster units, 128 texture units, and finally a move to a 384-bit wide memory bus for increased memory performance. For XFX, they have decided to further improve the reference design in the form of the Black Edition Double Dissipation HD 7970 – the latest card to carry the Black Edition pedigree. While you get the new tech from AMD, XFX includes their own X-Factors such as Duratec components, Hydrocell vapor chamber cooling, dual fans for a 13 dB drop in acoustics and at least a 7°C improvement in cooling performance, and a significant boost in the base clock speeds to 1000 MHz on the core and 1425 MHz on the GDDR5 memory. Let’s see if the improvements and hardware enhancements equate to a better end user experience.