Reference Design Radeon Cards?

Good morning everybody ,

My friend has got his PC build together sort of , we've just got to get the last few things which are the graphics card and RAM. He wanted to get a reference design Radeon card , he preferably wanted a 7950/7970 . He also looked at this cooler : http://www.arctic.ac/en/p/cooling/vga/569/accelero-hybrid.html  Hence him wanting/needing the reference card.

Heres the question , I don't know what reference cards look lile or how I know which cards will fit correctly.. :S

Honestly, I would just go with a non-reference card with a good cooler like one from MSI.

Only grab a reference design if you want to stick a waterblock on it at some stage otherwise its better (and cheaper) to grab like the above post states, a card with a better cooler already installed.

Ahh he went for  GAINWARD GeForce GTX 770 4GB model. Seems ok.