OverKILL-3D ASUS HD7970 Quadfire Madness

Final thoughts

So let's get a few things out of the way beforehand to hopefully calm some of the more vocal forum members.

Yes, we know this is overkill. We know this is insanity. There is a clue in the title. We know that no right minded person would want four of these things in their PC solely for gaming. It's all about the quest for enormous benchmark results and nothing else. For proof of this, and also explaining why we had two Corsair AX1200W PSUs, under loading the bench rig was sucking a magnificent 1290W. So this is the equivalent of running a kettle all the time. It certainly gets warm enough to boil water when it's running. Finally in our brief 'heading off at the pass', it's clear from our 3D Mark P scores that even with the 4.8GHz Hexcore i7 under the hood, we're CPU limited!

So it's too expensive, too hot, too hard on the electric bill and you can't get enough CPU power to make the most of it anyway. We know this.

What it is, is hilariously powerful. Well over 50000 X Marks and 65000 P Score is frankly insanity. We all remember when Vantage was released and how we all dreamt of scoring 10000 P score. Now hardware has reached such a point that even 3D Mark 11 is providing only a slight challenge. Thanks to this monster haul of hardware and a couple of bleeding ears we have managed to go top of the UK benchers in all of the tests we ran (correct at the time of going to press) which is not to be sniffed at with some of the epic benchers that grace our shores.

If benchmarking is something that interests you then be sure to have a word with the boys on the OC3D Benchmark Team who will be more than happy to walk you through do and dont's of eeking every last drop of performance from your system for benching.

Therefore if you have won the lottery, live in a fridge, own a windfarm and are solely interested in having the very biggest scores currently available, this is absolutely the setup for you..... If you dont plan on gaming at all!

For the rest of us, it's like when you watch Top Gear and they show the latest Veyron. It's a dream machine, but one that will have to remain exactly that.

Thanks to ASUSfor supplying the HD7970s for our Quadfire review. Let us know what you think in our forums.