AMD Radeon HD 7950 Review: Up Against GeForce GTX 580

[iamtheking123]

I'll bet $20 Kepler is better than Tahiti. AMD is on a downward spiral thanks to poor R&D and poor leadership. Intel + Nvidia = My Next Build. Not a fanboy either....my current desktop is AMD + ATI and I'm unimpressed.

 

[lordstormdragon]

[citation][nom]iamtheking123[/nom]I'll bet $20 Kepler is better than Tahiti. AMD is on a downward spiral thanks to poor R&D and poor leadership. Intel + Nvidia = My Next Build. Not a fanboy either....my current desktop is AMD + ATI and I'm unimpressed.[/citation]

You're unimpressed with an AMD GPU? Then get an Nvidia one. (shrugs) Try it out. Be scientific. Analyze your results, and make your next purchase on that basis. Nobody cares if you're impressed at all - you may just be playing Facebook games and watching adult films on your computer, and have no real computing to actually do. Making you pretty much a Mac user, despite your brand affiliations.

But I do agree with you on one point: brand loyalty is completely BS. It's all about money and efficiency, which is why I'd never recommend or purchase an Intel product. (smiles)

 

[crisan_tiberiu]

[citation][nom]iamtheking123[/nom]I'll bet $20 Kepler is better than Tahiti. AMD is on a downward spiral thanks to poor R&D and poor leadership. Intel + Nvidia = My Next Build. Not a fanboy either....my current desktop is AMD + ATI and I'm unimpressed.[/citation]

Not everybody posting on Tom's are Americans/english people and maybe never studied english in their life. So being a gramar police on an international site its fail. Now on topic: ill wait for Nvidia's next gen.

 

[scrumworks]

[citation][nom]lou007a[/nom]It beats the GTX580 one on one in most benchies and that's not taking into account the overclocking headroom these things have, they're also power friendlier and with XFX, cooler, quieter and expected to be cheaper so what's the problem? Me thinks me smell's NV fanboys!![/citation]

It's just the nvidia fanboy mentality here at Tom's like it has always been. And whining about loudness is pointless because pretty much all upcoming HD7950s will be using custom coolers that will be more silent and efficient.

 

[amythompson172]

The Radeon HD 7970 is the fastest single chip video card. Runs cool and very quiet even at full load, gave me 40-45% extra performance than my 6970 HIS icecool,no crashes after hours of gaming!
Best ever, pricey but you pay for performance I am very happy with my purchase.I had before sapphire 6990 and while performance was better it was little too much heat and noise from that card so I sold it and got one 6970 from his and it was very good but I missed my 6990 performance...not anymore!!!!!Get it you will not regreat your decision.

www.amazon.com/Sapphire-Radeon-PCI-Express-Graphics-21197-00-40G/dp/B006P88VO8

 

[cinergy]

[citation][nom]esrever[/nom]I'd love to have one once kepler comes and these drop in price. Im gonna start saving.[/citation]


You have a looong wait ahead. Kepler is not coming for months.

 

[brendonmc]

The biggest negative is the price. When first released the 5850 was less significantly less than $400. A year later you could pick one up under $200 and in crossfire, they're still up there with the best single cards. Its still pretty hard to justify the expense of the upgrade. This card really needs to be around the $300 mark to be attractive, giving us the potential to crossfire towards the end of its life. And for that to happen, Nvidia need to give us something pretty damn good. Fingers crossed.

 

[sosofm]

I don't understand these comments. 7950 is a verry good ,cheaper and power economic alternative to 580. Who want to buy will buy 7950 if not buy 580 what's the big deal. For years i had just Radeon video cards , not because i have something with Nvidia, just i liked Radeon cards and that's it. And some series had a better price than Nvidia.
Why compare all the time one GPU with another ? Its normal a new serie of video cards to be better than other , because this how things are. You can compare Kepler with Tahiti because Kepler is not out yet. And now Nvidia can make some little changes in their GPU's to perform a little better than Tahiti.That is normal.
Who want to have at this moment the best video card will buy AMD , because at this moment are the best. Who is a fan boy will wait Kepler. This is the market.

 

[scrumworks]

Here is a conclusion bit from techreport.com about this card.

"Any way you slice it, the Radeon HD 7950 does what it set out to do: undercut the GeForce GTX 580 in price while trumping it in performance. Since the 7950's power consumption is ridiculously, remarkably lower than the GTX 580's, there's little left to do but declare the 7950 the clear winner. That's before one even figures in the new bells and whistles built into the Tahiti GPU, including a hardware H.264 video encoding engine and support for PCI Express 3.0, neither of which the GTX 580 can match."

Might be shocking for those too much used on Tom's nvidia bias.

 

[Guest]

[citation][nom]hardcore_gamer[/nom]According to W1zzard's review, this card tops the Performance / Watt chart.[/citation]

Wizzard who?

 

[stingstang]

I can't find any 7950 cards with the reference cooler. Tigerdirect, nor newegg has them. Where do you buy your cards from, Tom's?

 

[Zeh]

I will be waiting for the 7950 1.5gb. That, along with the price reduction it will imply, and the reuction due to nvidia launching some competition, will probably bring this card closer to what I can pay!

I think 1.5gb is the sweet spot nowadays (and for a few years to come), specially considering I plan on gaming on 1080p. 1gb seems enough for today, and 2 is just overkill for 1080p. 1.5gb would give me room to breathe in Metro and a few other memory hogs.

 

[Guest]

we are buying a complete notebook today with motherboard , cpu , GPU, TFT , keyboard , wifi , harddisk , for around 500$ and those GPU companies still insist on overpricing their VGA cards...

in my opinion, the flagship card should be no more than 300-350$ , mid range 150-200$ and low end 50-100$

and they will still make tons of money and all people buying...

untill they do so , I will be a console user only... anyways I can buy 2 consoles with the price of high end card. and all games are ports anyways.

 

[Guest]

sosofm: "Who is a fan boy will wait Kepler. This is the market."

Erm, not quite. I'm an informed buyer. My last 2 cards have been ATI/AMD. I am waiting for kepler because its ONLY A MONTH OR TWO AWAY. I want to see what comes out, how they all stack up and then buy. This is a new era for cards once again. You would have to be stupid not to wait a month or two.

If you buy a card right now then in a month it's $100 cheaper or you could get the same price for better performance you would kick yourself. Especially if you cant to keep the thing for a couple of years. It's not fanboyism it's the smart thing to do. If you are waiting a YEAR, no that doesn't work. March and April are right around to corner fellas, be patient, see how it all pans out and make a decision. If the rumors are true kepler will destroy everything in price/performance. Hold onto your britches only time will tell.

I'll end this with a statement from Nvidia: “Honestly, we expected more from our competitor’s new architecture”

Source: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/graphics/display/20120125232634_Nvidia_We_Expected_More_from_AMD_Radeon_HD_7970.html

 

[Zeh]

That statement from nVidia sounds like they want to rain on the parade. I'm confident they will come up with a stronger single gpu, but at what cost?

I would NOT expect them to compete against AMD in price/performance right off the bat: their cards are usually a bit more expensive to manufacture, and they charge a premium for PhysX and their 3D support.
Altough maybe on launch they will price lower than AMD, just to drive the competitors price (and their revenues) down, a month or so after the prices stabilize, they will be priced higher.

(No fanboysm here, I hope I'm wrong and nVidia can actually have AMD make a run for its money)

 

[Gordon Freeman]

[citation][nom]Zeh[/nom]That statement from nVidia sounds like they want to rain on the parade. I'm confident they will come up with a stronger single gpu, but at what cost?I would NOT expect them to compete against AMD in price/performance right off the bat: their cards are usually a bit more expensive to manufacture, and they charge a premium for PhysX and their 3D support.Altough maybe on launch they will price lower than AMD, just to drive the competitors price (and their revenues) down, a month or so after the prices stabilize, they will be priced higher.(No fanboysm here, I hope I'm wrong and nVidia can actually have AMD make a run for its money)[/citation]
The only thing Nvidia can do is make a decently competitive performing card that is more power efficient for cheaper than the competition because as of today and for all of 2012/13 .... all these cards have ample performance as is including Nvidia GTX 580, Radeon HD 7970, 7950, 6970

 

[billybobser]

Looking at the present, nice card.

Considering the future, not good enough.

Unless nVidia are rolling up a marketing campaign based on the bulldozer expierience (entirely possible), AMD are going to be trouble at these prices. I see no 'value' at all.

 

[lradunovic77]

Both HD7970 and 7950 are jokes to me. AMD managed after three iterations to match and out perform by small margin Fermi Chip. Considering Crossfire joke support, no thanks. Waiting for Kepler. Both cards suck in most demanding game namely Crysis 2 which is not console port but only true DX11 Game using High Resolution Texture, enough said.

 

[Gordon Freeman]

[citation][nom]lradunovic77[/nom]Both HD7970 and 7950 are jokes to me. AMD managed after three iterations to match and out perform by small margin Fermi Chip. Considering Crossfire joke support, no thanks. Waiting for Kepler. Both cards suck in most demanding game namely Crysis 2 which is not console port but only true DX11 Game using High Resolution Texture, enough said.[/citation]
Crysis 2 has patched in DX11 and the witcher 2 still is more pretty and demanding on DX9. What you claim is all just based on your own personal unsubstantiated biased fanbouy rhetoric. I hope GTX 580 goes to like $350 soon cause then it will be at the price it should have been at some time ago already.

 

[g4114rd0]

- ...Looking in shades of green through shades of red."
This is nVidia chess.

 

[chesteracorgi]

Kudos to AMD on their new series, but the other shoe has yet to drop: Kepler. Will Kepler leap-frog the Southern Islands? Nvidia touts it will, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. METAPHOR ALERT. A leathery frog flavored pudding here.

 

[robwright]

Good card, good price -- although the Crysis 2 data is distressing, whatever the underlying cause(s). Would love to see that explored more down the road.

Also interested to see where this one falls in the next Best Graphics Cards iteration -- at a $450 price point, would this be a better option than dual 2 GB 6950s for around $500?

 

[Gordon Freeman]

[citation][nom]Chesteracorgi[/nom]Kudos to AMD on their new series, but the other shoe has yet to drop: Kepler. Will Kepler leap-frog the Southern Islands? Nvidia touts it will, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. METAPHOR ALERT. A leathery frog flavored pudding here.[/citation]
Sometimes less is more Less heat, Less noise, Less price, Les power consumption, Less size etc if Nvidia can check these boxes and maintain a relatively competitive performance then they will have a winner and have moved the industry is the right direction.

 

[ubercake]

Best thing about AMD releasing these new cards is it will eventually force Nvidia to lower the cost of the 580s. Some of the charts still show the 580 beating even the 7970. That's just nuts yo!

Also, it still isn't becoming apparent that more VRAM is proportional to performance at higher resolutions. Why is there still no real advantage to this?

 

[serendipiti]

Seems to me that AMD stands in bussiness just thanks to the graphics division. AMD Has lost its battle to intel in the CPU market (BD should had got better performance) and needs to battle Nvidia in graphics just to keep going on... so graphics cards are getting attention and new products from month to month...