The first card I bought when starting my mining rig was an XFX 7970. It ran hot, and had artifacting. I returned it for a new one and sold it on eBay. I now run Sapphire and MSI 7950s and haven't looked back since. They run super cool and are amazing overclockers.
lol my first card was a xfx 7950 run hot only got 600kh sent it back now i have 80 saphire vaporx 7950 oc edition dual bios
geting 630-650kh 1050mhz core 1250 mhz ram 1.050v core siting at 60c 55% fan