Remember the PowerColor Radeon HD 7970 Vortex II edition that we first spied at CeBIT earlier in the month?
Well, the card's still on track for an April release, but it'll be arriving with clocks that are a little tastier than anticipated. We had been told that the card would be shipping with a 1,050MHz core, but PowerColor has now confirmed that it will instead choose to clock the card at an impressive 1,100MHz right out of the box.
Has NVIDIA's release forced the manufacturer's hand? It's possible, as PowerColor has also told us that the Vortex II edition will ship with a 3GB of GDDR5 frame buffer overclocked to run at an effective 5,700MHz (200MHz above reference).
Whether or not the bump in speed will be enough to put it toe-to-toe against NVIDIA's new champion remains to be seen, but either way, this is shaping up to be an enticing variation of the Radeon HD 7970. Trouble is, the custom cooler and factory overclocks suggest a jacked-up price, and if the Vortex II edition comes in at £450 or beyond, it may struggle to stand up against the £400 GeForce GTX 680. We're still awaiting final confirmation of price, but in the meantime, we've included a couple of new snapshots below.
