ASUS Matrix Radeon HD 7970 Platinum Review

Name: ASUS Matrix Radeon HD 7970 Platinum
Brand: ASUS

by Marco Chiappetta — Friday, December 28, 2012, 10:30 AM EDT

There is a reason ASUS is so well respected amongst PC enthusiasts. The company has been making some of the best-performing, most feature-rich products in the space for years. Whether it’s a min-ITX motherboard, sleek Ultrabook, or a full-fledged, touch-enabled All-In-One system, ASUS has highly competitive products that are worthy of consideration.

It’s not just about performance and features, though. ASUS has also been a long-time innovator willing to release relatively low-volume products that cater to ultra, hardcore-enthusiasts. Such is the case with the ASUS ROG Matrix 7970 Platinum edition graphics card we’ll be showing you here today. As its name suggests, the ASUS ROG Matrix 7970 Platinum is a member of the company’s “Republic of Gamers” series of products, designed for—you guessed it--gamers. The card is powered by an AMD Radeon HD 7970 GPU, but the similarities between plain vanilla 7970s and the ASUS ROG Matrix 7970 Platinum end there. This card is about as custom as you can get and it has features you won’t find on any run-of-the-mill product.

Take a peek at the ASUS ROG Matrix 7970 Platinum’s specifications and list of features below and then we’ll dive in and take a look at what may very well be the best Radeon HD 7970-based graphics card in existence.

ASUS ROG Matrix 7970 Platinum

Specifications & Features

As you can see in the table above, ASUS has two Matrix 7970 cards in there stable. The only difference between the standard edition and the Platinum model we’ll be showing you here are the cards’ base and boost GPU clock speeds, which differ by 50MHz. The remaining features and specifications are the same on either card.

ASUS ROG Matrix 7970 Platinum Edition Bundle

Before we put the ASUS ROG Matrix 7970 Platinum under the microscope, we also should draw some attention to all of the goodies ASUS included with the card. Along with the behemoth itself, ASUS throws is a Diablo III mouse pad, a quick setup guide and user’s manual, a dual-six-pin to eight-pin power adapter, a CrossFire bridge connector, a VGA-to-DVI adapter, and a driver / utility disc which contains a copy of ASUS’ excellent GPU Tweak utility.

In addition to the aforementioned items, ASUS also throws in an aluminum heatsink for the card’s power array, should a user intend to super-cool the card with something like LN2 and a group of wire leads to compliment the card’s VGA Hotwire feature. With VGA Hotwire, when the card is installed into a compatible RoG motherboard, the leads can be used to connect the card to designated headers on the mobo for easy voltage adjustments through the UEFI or from within Windows using ASUS’ Ai Suite II software. That’s one of those features for hardcore tweakers we were talking about in the intro.

Tags: AMD, Asus, Radeon, Matrix, platinum

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com