AMD Radeon HD 7950 Review: Up Against GeForce GTX 580

[Gordon Freeman]

[citation][nom]dragonsqrrl[/nom]Dude, you spammed for 3 pages, and you're criticizing someone else for trolling?[/citation]
That's what you pulled from that LOL learn to read.

 

[ryan5609]

Definitely going to upgrade from my XFX 6950, to a XFX 7950 XXX edition whenever it comes out. But I am going to wait for Nvidia to release its next line up so the price can go down. I have never been a real early adopter, but I do like to upgrade my graphics card every year or so. I just buy a new one and sell the old one on Ebay, I usually get about 65-70% back from what I paid for it. XFX makes it an easy sell with their 2x lifetime warranty. But I think I may be able to keep this one a little longer than just a year. I could see this card running most games at the highest settings for the next couple of years @ 1080P. Once the 7950 dips below $400 I think I will buy it.

 

[freggo]

Why can't we have onboard graphics for low demand routing tasks and have the GPU start up only if needed. 90+W idle... it is ridiculous when you think about it. Laptops can run all tasks perfectly well for a fraction of that.
A huge waste of energy. Would not be surprised if some Saudi Prince is amongst the AMD/NVidia investors

 

[ananke]

Agree with everybody's comments on pricing. This thing should have been priced at 6950 level...at most. I am due for 5850 card replacement, but makes no sense to buy anything above $200 these days. One cannot utilize its performance anyway.
AMD should have software support for the CGN before they asked high price. On top, CPUs are fast enough today for home re-encoding, besides that modern camcorders record in digital format and don't need re-encoding anyway. BluRays are illegal or not for ordinary users to rip...the home user market for high performance calculating GPUs shrank to non-existence.

These are going to be non-competitive to NVidia's Kepler - not enough user base until April to attract software devs for HPComputing, and too expensive for games. I would say bad strategy by AMD.

 

[mrsphex]

[citation][nom]kensingtron[/nom]sosofm: I read you're post "with Russian accent"[/citation]

I read it with an Indian Accent :}

 

[jryan388]

GJ AMD on not being stingy with the RAM ^.^

 

[Tavo_Nova]

so excited where nvidia would release even more gpu which should lessen some amd/nvidia prices to a more affordable price then i can go grab new gpu ^__^

 

[salgado18]

[citation][nom]freggo[/nom]Why can't we have onboard graphics for low demand routing tasks and have the GPU start up only if needed. 90+W idle... it is ridiculous when you think about it. Laptops can run all tasks perfectly well for a fraction of that. A huge waste of energy. Would not be surprised if some Saudi Prince is amongst the AMD/NVidia investors[/citation]
I believe the number in the article is the other half of the platform - a six-core overclocked processor, 16GB of ram, and the like. The graphics themselves don't draw that much. Put those cards on an i7-2600 with power-savings active and you could reach some 40W idle, I believe, while still maxing out anything you throw at it.

 

[Zeh]

[citation][nom]ojas[/nom]Do you what AMD's done here in India? The 7970 is priced between Rs.36k to 45k, which currently converts to $727 to $910. I know, it's nuts. The best deal here at that price is still a 2x6970 or 2x560 dual GPU setup.And do you know what's worse? The 6990 and 590 go for the same price here. No wonder only a fraction of PC owners buy GPUs here.[/citation]

You think that's nuts? The Radeon 7970 costs 2.100 R$, which currently translates to 1.200 dollars.
It's hard to be brazillian.

 

[Guest]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]Funny thing--that was the plan. I still might do a follow-up. But without certain features working still, and with CrossFire data already making it into this story, I'm not sure there's much to add. Anything additional you'd like to see, personally?[/citation]

I'd like to see a quote from AMD on if they are going to offer rebates of $150 when they price cut the 7950 to $300 in a few months when Nvidia releases its next gen.

 

[stevenrix]

I personally think it's too much money to buy a high end video card and especially if we can only play a few games a year, it's flushing money down the drain. Consumers unfortunately are eager to put that much money in a product that will be oldfashioned within a few months.

 

[Rock_n_Rolla]

For those who are thinking about upgrading their old video cards to these Big Bad Rads
from AMD. Relax for a while and Time will favors us all. 7900 series Rads now are a bit
pricey, given the fact that it possesses what the latest technology has to offer but AMD
is just giving Nvidia and its Fan boys a very very AWESOME surprise, that is... Once Nvidia
got their hi end keplers out, AMD will automatically slam down their 7900 series Rads
prices in favor of us. Although it may seem bad for Nvidia but as far as performance and
competition is concerned it really favors us consumers...

 

[Guest]

For the people complaining about the price. These numbers were based off suggested retails. Supply and demand. The 7970s were released at 549 first day and even that was an underestimate. They actually raised those prices to like 600 to control the flow of gpus. I'm expecting the same to happen to these cards.

 

[Zen911]

If you really ask me, this card is over priced. If this is to compete with GTX 570, then it's a card that's 20% faster, 40% more expensive, although being on a better manufacturing node. If it's to compete with the GTX580, it's more or less the same speed, runs cooler, consumes less power, and only 10% cheaper although being a year late. The point of new manufacturing nods is to produce more transistors (and hence more power) for the same die area, or same transistor count (same power) for a smaller die area. If we take into account that die area = cost, We then should expect any new generation on a newer manufactoring node to set new levels on the Price/perfomance curve. As of now, 79XX series don't.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Getting better, but y'er still 'soft-clipping' some bits.

If noise is a major focus (we're talking fractions of the past, but still relevant to those not wearing headphones), why wasn't the 2x580 vs 2x7950 noise disimilarity noted, instead the 6990 was the focus? Seems odd to not mention that reversal. Also unlike other launches there are non-reference designs as of day 1 with Gigabyte and others offering SLIGHTLY quieter solutions, this also gets little mention, and when using the SAME non-reference design in Don's review for the GTX580 the omission of like for like seems strange one month later. Not surprisingly compare the Gigabyte HD-7970 with the Gigabyte GTX580 and *cough* REMARKABLY *cough* they have similar noise characteristics, but oh my, the temperatures are still dramatically different. Why might that be, and which might be more important then?

Also, why mention fan noise in relation to power consumption instead of fan noise vis-a-vis temperatures? The former seems to have little to do with each other directly whereas the later would have more to do with significant #s. While one might think the lower power consumption would essentially mean less generated heat to dissipate, it would only matter if the temperature #s were similar which they aren't. The 70s #s vs 80s would also imply that the fans are working much harder than needed to reach the competition's level of cooling or really just temperature control (more test would be required for the former, while the existing tests show the later).

As for whether it's worth revisiting the 7970 review, look at it again and see if things haven't changed since then and if the semi-permanence of it reflects the current situation, especially in light of the pre-launch reviews of the last generation change. Doesn't seem balanced in the least, and seems overly dramatic after the launch despite launch day availability and improved launch drivers (which still leave a bit to be desired, but better than the doom & gloom implied).

Definitely when compared to other reviews out on the web now it seems out of place.

PS, in your audio section of the 7950 reviews, you should correct it or alter the statement to reflect your experiences not the product limitations; BluRays support 192/24 audio, not limited to 96/24 the 96/24 is limted to 7.1 but 192/24 is available on 5.1 and lower (like DVD-Audio available on 192/24 2-channel audio) for both LPCM and bitstream (depends on format), and the realtek hardware supports transport of of that, and even theoretically 192/24 on all 8 channels (despite lack of codec & software support). To those of us who care, the difference between 96/24 and 44/16 is noticeable (especially on a good system or good headphones), but 192 v 96 would likely better fit your view of it unlikely being a noticeable difference. Likely the reason you see 96/24 is either the limitations of the BluRays you're chosing or the decoding capabilities of the receiver. Choose concert or music BluRays/DVD-A for content and check your receiver support.

Getting better than the last review, but still some work to do boys... and it'll be interesting to see what happens with next quarter's review (the next review will probably just be the mid-range of the same st-range) so expect little to change in the approach to that.
But enough with the trite pr-stuff (as if a core-i7 2630QM let alone 2620M or LOL i7-2610-UE were anywhere near a desktop core i7 2600K any more/less than the GPUs), especially since you didn't focus on it during true paper launches (how many GF-100 'pre-views did you write?).
Seriously, if I read another mention of numbering/nomenclature in your reviews I'll take it as an admission from you 3 conceeding you don't think TOM's readers know how to use the Google search on their smartphones before plonking down $$ when making a purchase. Really? C'mon focus on something that matters a little more (like actual tests) and is reflective of an authority on TECH not an autority on PR/Maketing/ABCs&123s

 

[9_breaker]

lol i finally get the picture of this article.

 

[9_breaker]

i dont see any reason to pay more than 400 total for graphics in a computer. my 260$ 6950 2gb is just fine. 880/1300

its usually for eyefinity and 3d and it also takes longer to get out dated.

 

[jemm]

Great article!

 

[ojas]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]Funny thing--that was the plan. I still might do a follow-up. But without certain features working still, and with CrossFire data already making it into this story, I'm not sure there's much to add. Anything additional you'd like to see, personally?[/citation]
I guess you're right, no point redoing it unless they get transcoding working, wonder if the new drivers change anything? Even then, it wont be such a big review (lucky you! )...

No, nothing comes to mind. I'm unfortunately not a power user (or have enough dough to spend on something like this) so i think this covered everything i can think of...

 

[tomfreak]

If only AMD price both 7950,7970 @ $50 cheaper then the price war would have started. The launch of both cards doesnt seems to affect any price drop for Nvidia cards. Screw both of u!

Besides with all due respect AMD/Nvidia/Intel should start pushing game developer to push more games require more hardware performance. It is getting harder and harder for people to continue upgrade their hardware since the PC game pretty mcuh cap by console port. Battlefield 3 didn spawn a wave of people upgrading their PCs, 1 games isnt enough we need more. Besides I still need a reason to SLI my GTX570 without going FULL AA @ mega resolution when I simply couldnt tell the diff on a small 23" LCD

 

[envymert]

I am not a fanboy of either card I simply buy what works best for my computer and needs. I had 2x580's in SLI. Since I only game at 1080p I recently sold them both and bought a 7970, with the OC room i get solid frame 50-75 in bf3 on ultra settings the fan speed never reaches over 30% which you cannot hear and it has never went over 70 C.

I will switch to what works best, runs cool and is not loud. As of now the 7970 Trumps the 580 headon in 95% of all benchmarks by a significant margin. 10-20% to me is significant. The 7950 is also a beast of a card. People complain about it being priced higher ..... that is called marketing. Of course it will be on par or more expensive than a 580 ....its an all around better card in every aspect. What would be the point of making it cheaper then the competitors card? When Keplars finally do come out which they are not until Summer at the earliest I think ATI will drop the price in cards. Until then their pricing scheme is where it should be. The 7950 at $450 is a dumb buy at the moment. .... if you want it just wait.

 

[bustapr]

[citation][nom]msgun98[/nom]Congratulations. The 7950 narrowly beats a year old card and costs the exact same. No thanks, I'll wait on Kepler and then decide what to get once AMD puts down the pipe and has to get real on their prices. And I'm a proud owner of a 4870.[/citation]
it costs the same and its better at most things as of right now. The 580 may be a year old but that doesnt change the fact that the card costs the same as the 7950. In other woeds in case you still dont understand, right now, the 7950 is the best card at its price with no nvidia competition. The 7950 isnt the best card in AMD, but its certainly got a grip on the market area where people want efficiency and power, not to mention the OC headroom.

 

[blazorthon]

To be honest I'm rather underwhelmed with 7900 performance. It's great if you compare it against 1-2 year old parts but I assume Nvidia would have made a similar performance jump so the GTX 680 will probably be faster than the GTX 590. To be honest I was hoping the 7970 would compare against the 6990 but oh well. Either way, AMD is pricing this stuff ridiculously high simply because as of right now Nvidia doesn't compete.

That will change with Kepler and hopefully so will AMD's pricing. I'm not a fan-boy of either brand but I'd like to see some fair prices. We should all know that prices will go down substantially sooner or later so I hope no one is surprised to find that their $450-600 investments in 7900 cards was a pretty expensive way to not wait a month or two. I'm expecting Kepler to arrive in February or March based on the latest reports.

My problem with the 7970 is that it has roughly identical FPS to dual 6870s which happen to be a little over half the price of the 7970... Of course there is the micro-stuttering and similar problems (6800 cards can have this very bad), but it could be worked with and there are solutions to cutting down micro-stuttering when it happens.

When you think about it, 7000 looks to be a good successor to 6000 in performance but like 6000 there will likely be a faster Nvidia GPU than 7000's best GPU.

 

[radnor]

Honestly guys, i see this cards a bit too expensive. As several people have noticed, guys liek me that are still rocking 4850/70 CFs , these cards doesn't change anything. I play at 1680x1050 and that CF will keep me running for a long time. At very high details.

Or you are rocking a multi-monitor setup, or it really doesn't matter. Even 5850 would do pretty well, considering i have seen some below 100€ mark.

 

[hannibal]

Well, you have to wait 7800 series until you get something to middle price gategory.
At this moment, if Nvidia can make something faster than 79xx series, it wil be more expensive than 79xx is now. If it cannot, we see competition only in middle range cards. (if 104 from Nvidia is the first they can release, it is upgrade to 560 series, so there will be the first battle (if there is a battle at all...) The bad scenario is that Nvidia will price according to old cards, so if 104 is near 580, it will cost near 580...
Well, we have to see, but at this moment 7950 is better alternative than 580. It is nice card and best alternative if you need your GPU upgrade at this moment. If you can wait, you can allways get something better or cheaper... but thta situatin is just normal.