Ebay Finds: ASUS' Rare, HUGE "Matrix Platinum" Graphics Card

[@SinisterPuppy]

As much as you risk having to reshoot; I love that you review the cards in your yard. I like it more than a generic studio. 7970 still holding its own!

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Thanks :) I like to keep the homely relaxed feel about the videos

[@techalex1992]

@@RandomGaminginHD You've asked about this at the end of the video, yes i have an Asus GTX580 DCU2 with the same cooler like this one.

[@astoraan6071]

@@RandomGaminginHD Agreed, much prefer this style over the bland office with a million sound pads on the wall.

[@SanHydronoid]

@@RandomGaminginHD Where is Dave now :(

[@LSK2K]

@@RandomGaminginHD which is why I always come here.

[@DrearierSpider1]

*£85* Holy crap, that's half the price of a GT 1030 in today's market. You found yourself a winner there.

[@ElectricityTaster]

Until you factor in the new case and power use.

[@ll-jq6nu]

You also have to buy a good psu 😅

[@Joseph-oq5fz]

Yeah but remember that it doesn’t support DX12 while the GT 1030 does.

[@acasualmusiclistener7919]

@@Joseph-oq5fz Yes and it utilitizes the feature so well.

[@Joseph-oq5fz]

@@acasualmusiclistener7919 ?

[@RuruFIN]

Bought a non-Platinum for 30EUR two weeks ago and flashed it to Platinum :)

[@HaHa-qz1nx]

That's a knee slapp' worthy of a deal right there!

[@RuruFIN]

@@HaHa-qz1nx nothing to complain, I also think that it was a great deal considering that it's a premium model :)

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Awesome, didn’t think about that but that’s pretty cool

[@twanheijkoop6753]

Got mine for 32.50 + pp some time ago, have you had any luck using GPU tweak? Whenever I install it my 2nd display output drops.

[@TylerDurden-oy2hm]

Sorry for asking a noob question but what are the differences between the two??

[@modernandretrogaming]

Interesting videocard, it's old but still powerful.

[@owaisunar5227]

in 2021 it's the best affordable choice

[@jmugurr994]

Amd still provided with updated drivers from amd.

[@spicy6633]

Yeah but the tdp's pretty high

[@JPX64Channel]

@@spicy6633 that shows its age.

[@ZackSNetwork]

It’s not powerful anymore. It will get you by compared to terrible APU’s though.

[@TechTested]

I love the HD 7970, and this card may be the prettiest version. Great find my friend.

[@DuneRunnerEnterprises]

Had something very similar,by ASUS. NICE huge monstrosity.

[@DuneRunnerEnterprises]

And,of course,you can burnt R9 280X firmware.

[@juanignacioaschura9437]

IMO the DirectCUII looked better, but yeah, ASUS did the prettiest 7970s.

[@TheKingArabia]

yes i too dislike the visible blue pcb on some HD models

[@effexon]

they still sell 1650 4gb, with pretty high price considering, so 7970 is still in good club.

[@chicagorc3967]

you scored that for an awesome deal! Great video man. Your almost at 450k! congrats brother! i hope you see a mili soon!

[@z1pbomb]

I'm in no market for any cards but it's always interesting to see older cards absolutely hold their own on newer titles.

[@alfredoalejandro87]

This was my graphics card for about a year. I remember getting it out of the box and being in awe at how awesome it looked. I was always a big fan of ASUS gpus but this one including the big red retail box was awesome.

[@Psychx_]

Essentially, it's an RX 470 with an older instruction set, lower clocks, higher mem bandwidth and more than double the power draw.

[@Rosiaczek]

Rx470 is much stronger

[@roilo8560]

And no dx12 support

[@rolandmoot4108]

@@roilo8560 it supports dx 12.

[@AmstradExin]

@@rolandmoot4108 No, it does not. The RX470 is Polaris with DX12, 7970 is only GCN1 and AMD scrapped DX12 support for it around launch. I regret having bought the 7970.

[@rolandmoot4108]

@@AmstradExin it does, hd 7000 and up support dx 12. Go check it on amd website.

[@tharun7290]

I cannot appreciate you enough for the tech-plus-nature vibes I love it !

[@brandonsandlin780]

your channel has quickly become one of my most favorite. I love the old school tech revists

[@NightMotorcyclist]

Ah, the first gen of the GCN architecture and a major departure from the older architecture found on the 6900 series but had pretty good staying power well into the late 2010s.

[@alfredmorency8296]

And current driver support.

[@TheKingArabia]

@@alfredmorency8296 AMD > NVIDIA on that front

[@KacKLaPPeN23]

Really depends on your luck, AMD's late driver support was pretty meh when we tried throwing together a cheap PC from leftover parts for a friend in 2018. My old 550Ti outperformed a HD6990 in all newer titles as the latest HD6xxx drivers were from 2016 while the latest 550Ti drivers were released like a week prior.

[@alfredmorency8296]

@@KacKLaPPeN23 There are a number of factors that affect how old hardware performs on newer games. The GTX 550 TI had DirectX 12 and a single GPU, the HD 6990 has DirectX 11.2 and duel GPUs, most newer games don't work well on dual GPUs and need DirectX 12. Even some older games, such as Borderland 2 will play well on an HD 5870 but not on an HD 5970, on newer games I have had better results with an HD 7770 2GB ( DirectX 12) than with an HD 6970 2GB (DirectX 11.2) even though the 6970 is a much stronger card. I have had three cards from the 6000 series, an HD 6750. HD 6950, and an HD 6970, two died young, and all three were disappointing. In my opinion, the 6000 series were poor cards in general.

[@KacKLaPPeN23]

​@@alfredmorency8296 We only tried DX11 titles because it was obvious that DX12 wouldn't be ideal, turning CF off and on was also tried. It was pretty clear cut that games that came out two years prior (when the at that time latest driver launched) ran acceptably well but anything that released or got a major update more than half a year later ran incredibly bad. It was quite disheartening to see two GPUs that launched in the same Month have such different driver support, the 550Ti got two more years of frequent driver updates while the 6990 was cast away much earlier with the latest driver being a whole two years older and even then already getting significantly less updates in the year prior.

[@startedtech]

I hope you'll keep an eye out for the Power color Red Devil 290X II or 390X II? I had one a while back, craziest card in existence. Completely air-cooled, more powerful version of the 295x2. It's also absurdly large and heavy....bigger than this card. It's two full fat GPUs, and the card has one more power connector than the 295x2!

[@RandomGaminginHD]

I’ll definitely keep an eye out for that!

[@AishiMTA]

I remember that card. Still looks like a BEAST Gonna need ATLEAST a 1000w psu for that

[@findRED]

The Devil 13, yeah it's crazy. I picked one up a while ago, mine's got an issue with the power delivery that needs fixing, so I havn't been able to run it at full power.

[@MrMikystylzz]

@@AishiMTA 750 is enough for that gpu :)

[@silentvoidx9267]

I love how the hardware you use/review is realistic and obtainable, so many channels dont give older hardware a second glance

[@alainmilette6460]

I get way too much enjoyment out of seeing old hardware tested. I really like your videos, thank you.

[@TristanBuckley]

I used to have 2 7970's in crossfire for several years. Spent more time tweaking games than actually playing them, but the sense of achievement was amazing when you could get it working in all its glory!

[@tobymarol7329]

Had one of those for a while, the weight of this beast is even more impressive than the triple slot design. That fully cast metal cooler is heavvy AF

[@truuble6611]

Hey man just wanted to say that i love your channel, its so much more realistic to whats actually available/affordable compared to channels like linustechtips or jayztwocents, dont get me wrong, both their channels are great, but this remains my favourite, you also do a really good job of showcasing the components and their pros aswell as cons

[@ShiraanVII]

Hello, Mate! Still got this beast running in one of my PC, still holding 1080P pretty good for some games! But it heats sometimes here (Reunion Island, it is really hot sometimes), so I'v set the fans to 100% to be sure to extend its life, this baby is ten years old, we must not forget! Love your videos!

[@aymanhassan8178]

One of the ways to bypass the dx12 error is to use dxvk or vk3d which will translate dx calles into vulkan which is still supported by the card

[@albertfondelius9764]

I have a platinum and still uses it,love that card

[@jillsandwich5088]

You're hands down one of my most fav youtuber! Keep up the awesome work mate. Lots of love from Bangladesh.

[@ragespray]

This is AMAZING

[@lemurator637]

Pretty impressive card, considering its so old!

[@adamossowicz2611]

Great find and respect for passing it on! I wouldn't be able to bring myself to let it go 😅

[@reapzzer]

I used to have two 7970 DirectCU II from ASUS back in the day. Basically a very similar design to that. What an absolute unit these cards were, and they aged really nicely thanks to the 3 gigs of VRAM, if I recall correctly they ended their service in 2017 after I swapped my brothers rig with a 1060...

[@resysysty]

I remember building my first PC with a 7770 and always wanting the 7970 for quite some time. Thanks for the review!

[@tonydanza6406]

Man ! this ASUS HD 7970 Matrix Platinum video card puts my AMD Radeon HD 6579 1gb ddr3 card to shame LoL LoL this is the card that my pc needs thanks for the great review !

[@adan7949]

I just got Days gone because of how much you recommend it and I must say I really liked it, thanks mate

[@Badtaste21]

There was a 6GB model of this card, too. It should be more expensive and it's probably harder to find, but it means you can turn up texture settings and other VRAM intensive settings in games.

[@chillhour6155]

thank you for not mentioning gpu prices specifically, alot of scalpers and ebay retailers raise theyre price as soon as big channels mentions any kind of worthwhile deals

[@SanderSander88]

Awesome video! My girlfriend still uses my old MSI 7950 twin frozr 3, 3gb. 960mhz. And she is super happy with it playing the Sims 4. In combination with a AMD 3600.

[@rushnerd]

The 7950-7970 never fail to impress me with the sheer amount of power they have and their ability to continue to stay relevant for a DECADE old card.

[@wojciechruszkowski2642]

My first GPU was an R9 290x Matrix Platinum and I loved it, despite the fact it was usually running at 95c! Gave it to my sister when I upgraded to a GTX 1070 a few years later but unfortunately it began artifacting soon after. I'd love to watch you do a video on it sometime, I'm curious to see how the old beast runs today.

[@lain39x]

love these type of videos mate.

[@urrrr]

Great video mate

[@H4L0GUY117]

Liked the vid, before watching as always

[@luckythewolf2856]

I have a GTX 980 Matrix Platinum and an ASUS MARS 760. Both perform really great still! I love how they look a lot.

[@inkysteve]

I have (had) one of those. I lent my brother's grandson a PC with it in and he has reported that it's stopped working. I haven't had a chance to check it out yet, I hope it's fine as it one of my favourite cards.

[@MauroFrederico]

You can always try the "oven method" if there's any kind of problem

[@Rosiaczek]

@@MauroFrederico That's shit method. Should be never recommended

[@DH22013]

I had 2 of these back in the days with ek waterblocks. Had a lot of fun with them for years, great cards!

[@michaelthompson9798]

As a previous general Gigahertz HD7970 user, and recently purchasing one as well as a HD7950 for budget gaming builds, these GPU’s are terrific for many games and decent FPS as mentioned. They’re great value still to buy even during these terrible GPU pricing times here in Australia 🇦🇺. Many people only see the shiny GPU and forget what these much older GPU’s are still capable of! Loving your content RGiHD 🥰🥰🤯🥳 keep up the great work and will definitely see you in the next episode.

[@ahmaddeloi9665]

Im still using this card until now. My colleague sold it cheap to me around 2017 as he upgraded to 1080ti. Very happy with this card! I can play a lot of games and usually the in high 1080p settings. Sad that it cant keep up with todays games. No matter. Still loving it and regularly clean and change the paste.

[@iMac9991]

truly a beast of a card. the cases that this card fits in are prob massive

[@hunterfabio]

I have an XFX HD7970 3GB Ghost which is super sick, looks very similar to the HD7850 that you reviewed a few months ago. And it's still rocking.

[@TechNoobsters]

Nice to see another Matrix Platinum, personally I had the 780 TI Matrix Platinum , still have the waay oversized box for it

[@TymRD]

Bought one of these back in 2012 and paired it with a 2500K, was my main rig for 6 years. It was a monster, chewed through everything I could throw at it. I remember I managed to run ME:Andromeda on it, in 1080p. Unfortunately, I fried one of the GPU's memory modules, and it's been waiting until I got around to replacing it. The rest of that rig is still working, albeit with a cheaper, a little more modern GPU. Still runs like a charm.

[@mobarakjama5570]

Man you're so good at COD, you could say the other players looked like they were BOTtlenecked or something xD

[@techapplied25]

Beautiful card and still going strong in for its age!

[@Vans_WW]

Dear RandomGaminginHD, I really enjoy your videos about testing old hardware with modern titles. It serves as a really good way of revisiting how driver updates had an impact over the lifespan of the card (after comparing them with old reviews). If it is not too much trouble, would it be possible for you to add the "GPU Power" metric from Afterburner to your OSD? Sorry if that's annoying to ask, but I think it would give also a really good idea about the amount of power they're using to run the modern titles. I suspect my comment will be lost in the sea of hundreds, but thank you anyway even if you don't stumble upon it :)

[@peterbates981]

Used to have a 6970 devil 13 (with the scree driver set which I still use today) and also had trouble fitting it in a bloody case so I feel your pain Love and cards from around this time but went team green shortly after

[@shawnpaulzuccarellorizzo]

That's probably one of the coolest cards I've ever seen.

[@MajorTomgames]

I had two of these in crossfire, it was insane and also kept the room warm

[@atanasov8398]

This is definitely a HUGE GPU 😵

[@NuclearTopSpot]

Ol' ＧＩＲＴＨＹ

[@Alexandru1996_]

That's what she sayed

[@smeezekitty]

Because it used to be a flagship

[@247HALOMASTER]

Damn that's a monster. It scares me.

[@mahonymahonek9142]

I love how you said "to hit that target" when you talked about Call of Duty. It reminded me Captain Price in Cod Modern Warfare obstacle course.

[@uglybob7505]

Wow thats a thicc boi ! And if memory serves it was thirsty too. Pleased you featured Days Gone on your review, just getting into playing that. Thanks for the video :-)

[@victorliu9715]

I was able to get hold of a R9-280X Matrix Platinum for cheap from a local guy. He was reporting crashing issues, etc. The R9-280X variant was known to have a couple VRAM chips running hot, causing issues, because the GPU cooler doesn't make contact with them. Strap some copper heatsinks onto those VRAM chips, give the card some care, and good to go. I have it now as a display item, and a working spare GPU.

[@oussamakhlif3702]

0:10 you can clearly see his hand shaking which means the gpu is heavy as a tank

[@OsascogamingBrSP]

A great card even today. This card was a dream for me in the past.

[@IcebergTech]

I rewatched Commando the other day, so seeing the word Matrix featured prominently on a video just served to feed my paranoia that people are reading my thoughts. Or it’s a weak coincidence I’m reading too much into, w/e

[@BastardWolf28]

You're getting old John. You're getting old.

[@neavo8421]

Let off some steam, bennet.

[@AndreasMueller1977]

a beautiful graphics card just like the platinum GTX 580 back then 😍

[@nickreynolds4711]

my g you good your arms are shaking like crazy holding up this card

[@HelloFellowDinosaurs]

1:38 THERE HE IS, Arctic Freezer 7 Pro Rev2, really good cooler for the money

[@ankityadav6447]

Man your voice is really soothing

[@Danim3nto]

I love this channel, it really helps you know

[@daveseemerollin6357]

My first card was the Asus Directcuii Top edition HD 7970 for £229 in 2013! Absolute bargain of a card for the performance it offered 👏 👌

[@wavezoid5915]

You got an old card, I got a bunch of old games. Something in common there I guess. Haha

[@juanbrits3002]

Should try overclocking parts like these as that was why they were designed

[@te84o]

it was my first enthusiast gpu years ago, lot's of fun with that card

[@wylde_karrde]

I have this exact card, and I'd love to find another one to try a crossfire setup for the old PC it's in.

[@tyrkukulkan]

I've still got a fully working one of these. Had to change a fan as it was squeaky but it is otherwise ticketyboo. It works with a 550W PSU (even withan FX-8350) and runs even quite modern games very well at 1080p. It is just an early 280X. Great example to own.

[@marzbee115]

Man, the directcu ii 7970 was my first gpu I got when I was 15 when the r9 390x release. Still the most thick card I ever used. Those were the days 😁

[@amirpourghoureiyan1637]

I'm still getting by today with that card, rocks 1080p gaming and works well with After Effects and Premiere Pro. Wanted to get a 6800XT but I'll wait until the MSRP returns or RDNA3 comes out.

[@harlemshakeqcbrousseau6863]

Try the custom driver for the old card like this and you can play more recent game and activate the smart memory accesses

[@BD-xf8ym]

You can tell that it's freaking heavy by the way your hands shake while you're holding it. What a behemoth.

[@VanBourner]

1:38 wow that is some serious bow on that PCB.

[@BryanTheFury]

Beside that 7970 ROG Matrix version, there is a second version that is a ROG Matrix version labeled R9-280X (the cooler is slightly different, some millimeters bigger). I have it and it goes pretty well.

[@matthewplehn4271]

why is it i cant ever find these kinds of deals???Great find and video bro

[@Felix-ve9hs]

I had this card 2 years ago, was pretty powerful even though it was already 8 years old

[@gorky_vk]

with these cards you can get a nice boost with just setting higher power limit in drivers, no need to even touch clocks. At least that was a case with my sapphire 7950 and 7970. And with settings always I always try to lower texture settings rather to give away AA, especially in third-person games where is harder to spot difference between ultra and high textures but jagged edges ruin experience. Also card support radeon image sharpening, I hope you enable it in drivers :)

[@vicvector7878]

I have one of these beasts, all complete including the diablo mousepad. A lot of these cards had issues. I actually had to modify mine slightly to get it running perfectly, on stock it would show occasional "glitching" during use so i put some copper heatsinks on several memory modules which asus left bare (a big oversight by them and it caused a lot of cards to be returned as faulty) and manually set voltage+clockspeed. It ran absolutely perfectly after that. Crazy card built for LN2 overclocking.

[@sampreethiitkgp7918]

I am glad I am fast. I am a fan from India who is an active sub to ur channel for 3 yrs. I have never regretted subbing u and I love ur content. I wish I could get a hearts. Thank u for this great content it makes my day.

[@rare6499]

Nice card that and a pretty damn good price in today’s market for something so rare!

[@kuyans3889]

I'm currently using a radeon r9 nano which feels like the kind of thing to end up on this channel in a year or so. Its cooling is about as good as you'd expect for being like 16 cm long, so it can hit its 85c limit and throttle, otherwise its just an oddity with HBM. hope it will play halo infinite at the end of this year

[@BillyBoy444]

7:45 RARE CARDS.... I have a 6GB 7970 Sapphire VaporX and an R9 280X Matrix Platinum in my collection and also the Matrix water cooler that I removed from it as well...... says Direct X 12 support for both in some online specs but then in brackets 11.1..... Also got a STRIX R9 380X which I believe is true DX 12 though.

[@lankeydonkey3355]

Also relatively any 7970 card will Run the majority of VR titles without issues , I had to use one of these cards due to my GPU dying at the time and having to use one of these cards as a replacement for couple of months .

[@windowstips1430]

Great find !

[@Eonymia]

Emergency 100% fan button... That's at the front of the card where you need oto have your case open to push it or have it in an open-air bench? Amazing

[@talon1706]

I had an Asus GTX 680 way back that filled three slots. 7970 was/is awesome.

[@jonathanmain9079]

I built an old x58 system with a 6 core xeon 12 thread chip.. got it oc to 3.5ghz.. and paired it with a xfx7970.. but I changed the shocking cooler on it for a after market cooler. Still a very capable card.. having higher rated memory can give card some extra life.. 1500mhz on the ddr5 is achievable with quality chips.. and 1100+ can be had on the core.. but it like to get hot under the hood if you go any higher.. Great card!!

[@snizzsnazz]

7970... Aged like a fine wine. I think it was re-released/refreshed later on as the r9-280x. Sometimes I still use these in budget rigs :)

[@caketbh]

I have a matrix platinum 980 ti, it's got a vram defroster powered by a molex on the card to prevent cold bugs on the vram for LN2 overclocks

[@Wokiis]

Nanna on motorbike is badass.

[@spider69420]

My brother is still using my old Asus HD 7970 DirectCU II for games like Battlefield 4 and Escape from Tarkov. Apparently the card runs at full load on the main menu of Tarkov. He found out after leaving the game running for hours on end and racking up a big electric bill at his girlfriend's house. I bought it new 8-9 years ago and paid $275 for it, was an amazing deal.

[@ZipplyZane]

You may want to look into the cracking scene. Not to crack the games, but because they've worked on workarounds to get games running that don't *actually* need DirectX12. They use a convertor that maps Dx12 calls to Vulcan, and it's often only needed to start the game, after which it will run in Dx11.

[@TigerChamp99]

Awesome thumbnail!

[@Максим-в2т6ш]

Cool video) Just watched this video on PC with the same card)

[@Philosophe27]

I have this same exact card that I bought in an AMD themed build where the case had was a Thermaltake themed case with a scorpion, FX 8320e, ASUS Crosshair Z, AMD themed SSD from OCZ, etc. Top notch stuff for its time. The gem was definitely the 7970.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

That sounds awesome, I’d love to build a themed high end machine from a few years ago. Those sorts of parts are so difficult to find here now though

[@djtwitchmusic]

I actually had this card! They broke down without fail every half year and needed to be RMA'd. After the second one broke I traded it in for a 290X instead. It was a BEAST when it worked though.

[@Redicat]

0:34 that's why i set a max bid not going beyond that point

[@Epic0722]

I have a 7970 that I daily drive. I heard it performed similar to a 1050ti and it was the only one I could find bc of the GPU shortage. I got it for $100 on facebook marketplace local and I wasn't disappointed