AMD Radeon HD 7970 Design Details Leak Out

[magicandy]

[citation][nom]metallifux[/nom]glad my new MOBO is PCIe3 capable![/citation]

I hope you realize it won't make a difference for a while yet. The 7970 doesn't even come close to the limits of PCIe 2.0. They are just rolling out PCIe 3 for the relatively distant future when PCIe 2's limits will be reached. At the moment PCIe 3 is just a bullet point to help sell motherboards. Give it a few years before it's actually required.

 

[back_by_demand]

[citation][nom]maxinexus[/nom]Finally, however what gets me is PCI-exp 3!!! and no AMD motherboard that supports it. Will see how it will work with PCe 2.1[/citation]
By all means, plug it into your Intel-CPU based board, i'm sure they have PCI-e slots as well

 

[yyk71200]

[citation][nom]ern88[/nom]I wonder what the performance lose would be if using a PCI-e 3.0 card on a PCI-e 2.0 Motherboard????[/citation]
Loss would be 0 nor near 0. Current bus is hardly saturated by current cards. Now, the dual-GPU 7990 maybe will be able to saturate it.

 

[back_by_demand]

[citation][nom]lunaticwoda[/nom]No XDR2 is very disappointing[/citation]
Are you a stockholder for Rambus?

 

[bystander]

[citation][nom]a4mula[/nom]The third slide down, at the bottom says "Maximum Displays" it's then followed by 6. Am I missing something here, the card only has 5 outputs. Does this hint that perhaps this generation will support Eyefinity outputs from multiple cards?[/citation]

Since the 5000 series, AMD has required you to use displayport adapters to go beyond 2 monitors. You can attach up to 3 monitors to a single displayport, or mini displayport.

 

[megamanx00]

Looks promising, but if this is true I don't know if widening the memory buss was the right call. It's going to make manufacturing the dual GPU version that much harder. If you look at the GTX 590 vs the 6990 they both have similar performance but the 6990 uses GPUs with a narrower memory bus and smaller die size bringing down costs. Of course, the fan noise is a big negative, while on the nVidia size the insane power and complexity needed for two GPUs with wide buses means dead cards

pop goes the 590

 

[teslafreakshow]

XDR2 is a better technology so any of you saying you're glad its not being implemented are morons. Honestly I think all ram will be replaced by a similar technology eventually. It just makes much more sense if you arent going to widen the buses. Its much like the difference from IDE and SATA.

 

[airborne11b]

I'm noticing a lot of hype over this 7970. First of all, Nvidia will probably be releasing their next generation GPUs within 1Q 2012 (That's 1, 2 or 3 months from now). Second, the Nvidia GPUs will most likely be on nearly on par, or slightly faster then this card (No noticable gaming difference).

So card choice (for non-fanboys) will boil down to other factors in choosing a card. Most importantly for myself is 3D gaming, which Nvidia 3D Vision 2 wins hands down (Love my 27" 120fps 2d mode + Bright clear 3D beast VG278H). If you're not into 3D, then you most likely will want to look at driver quality, which nvidia also does a better job of doing (AMD Drivers suck, always have to get 3rd party drivers just to get a decent AMD experience, but thats just my personal opinion and I understand other people have had better luck).

In the end, as long you're not looking to play 3D games, then both Nvidia and ATI both offer cards that will get great FPS in any game. (before any flames, I'm not saying 3D is something everyone cares about).

 

[sundragon]

love how clicking on an image makes it 5% bigger...

 

[stiehl]

[citation][nom]airborne11b[/nom]I'm noticing a lot of hype over this 7970. First of all, Nvidia will probably be releasing their next generation GPUs within 1Q 2012 (That's 1, 2 or 3 months from now).[/citation]

For someone who claims to not be a fanboy, you are spewing a lot of hate towards AMD. For someone who also seems so technologically proficient, you failed to mention how these cards will also come in at around the same time of Catalyst 12.1, which vastly improves user customization. Also, can you provide a link to Nvidia saying cards will be released Q1 2012. I'm interested to read that.

 

[airborne11b]

I'm not a fanboy. I've had both card brands. I used to love building K6 and Athlon systems for people, and have had multiple ATI GPUs in my long PC modding / gaming history. I've just found that AMD's driver support to be sub-par. (It's always fixable with fan made 3rd party drivers, but I just feel that poor official drivers for your products suggest a lack a QA in a company.)

2nd, I said both Nvidia and ATI provide powerful GPUs capable of great FPS in demanding games (Don't know how I can be any less biased then that).

But 3D Vision 2 is without a doubt the best 3D gaming experience you can get right now. Also, not even looking at the brand new 3D vision 2, original 3D Vision VS AMD's HD3D, Nvidia's technology is far superior especially in game support.

Simply put, choosing a GPU really boils down to what you wish to use it for. If you're interested in 3D applications, Nvidia is really the only good choice right now.

If you don't care about 3D, then really it's a toss up and based on personal brand preference, sales, etc.

As for product release, just google it. I've seen multiple sites with credible information. Nvidia's release road map is Q1 2012 for their next GPU series. Considering the tenative release of their rival's next series of GPUs is at the end of this month, then Q1 is not only based on credible information, it's also the most logical move for the company to compete with their rival.

 

[redeemer]

Nvidia will be late to the party as usual. First generation Keplers will be a failure just like the gtx 400 series, then Nvidia will do a GTX 500 like refresh by then the 7990 will be out and destroy all. I just cant wait until trinity apu's come out. Sure Intel has tons of money but the future is low power and powerful gpu's and fusion, so AMD is pretty safe there. I just hope that ARM and AMD merge oneday, imagine that. Btw my GTX 580 blew up and so did my Intel cpu, ha talk about quality issues!

 

[antilycus]

OPEN GL Support?! this is vital as DirectX is for kiddy programmers.

 

[antilycus]

OPEN GL Support? as direct x is for lazy and bad programmers

 

[Target3]

[citation][nom]crisan_tiberiu[/nom]srsly..i hate the design of the cooler and fan... theese "blowers" make to much noise . In the rest, keep up the good work AMD[/citation]

Am I the only one that loves loud graphics cards?

 

[yyk71200]

[citation][nom]airborne11b[/nom]I'm not a fanboy. I've had both card brands. I used to love building K6 and Athlon systems for people, and have had multiple ATI GPUs in my long PC modding / gaming history. I've just found that AMD's driver support to be sub-par. (It's always fixable with fan made 3rd party drivers, but I just feel that poor official drivers for your products suggest a lack a QA in a company.)2nd, I said both Nvidia and ATI provide powerful GPUs capable of great FPS in demanding games (Don't know how I can be any less biased then that).But 3D Vision 2 is without a doubt the best 3D gaming experience you can get right now. Also, not even looking at the brand new 3D vision 2, original 3D Vision VS AMD's HD3D, Nvidia's technology is far superior especially in game support.Simply put, choosing a GPU really boils down to what you wish to use it for. If you're interested in 3D applications, Nvidia is really the only good choice right now.If you don't care about 3D, then really it's a toss up and based on personal brand preference, sales, etc.As for product release, just google it. I've seen multiple sites with credible information. Nvidia's release road map is Q1 2012 for their next GPU series. Considering the tenative release of their rival's next series of GPUs is at the end of this month, then Q1 is not only based on credible information, it's also the most logical move for the company to compete with their rival.[/citation]
Rumor says it is Q2: http://wccftech.com/nvidia-kepler-gk104-gk100-specifications-detailed-gk100-rumored-launch-q2-2012/

 

[Uberragen21]

[citation][nom]Zingam[/nom]Now we wouldn't be paying because most of the world would not be able to afford that. At $1000 per CPU I guess many businesses will start using pen and paper again.[/citation]
The $1000 CPUs are not intended for businesses, so your comment is moot. They are called the E-class for a reason, i7-E...E for extreme edition. It's for the enthusiasts who have the money to blow on a $3000+ PC with top of the line everything.

If anything about technology and innovation has taught the world is, we are moving more towards a computer driven society to where it would be nearly impossible to take a step back to a time before computer technology.

 

[wardoc22]

Im still rocking on my 5770... Looks like its time to upgrade to the 7770.

 

[dalauder]

[citation][nom]viper666[/nom]The only thing good about it is the dual bios. How i hate when they show graphs with "x relative performance" instead of detailed numbers. Waiting for the benchmarks before i get hyped.[/citation]If you understood math a bit better, you'd get that there's no more accurate statistical performance graph than one that shows 100% and scales everything off of that baseline linearly. Just to be clear, that 1.0 = 100% for the 6970 on that chart.

 

[alextheblue]

[citation][nom]Zingam[/nom]I don't want one. I don't want that generation at all.Does anybody know what's coming after DX11/11.1? Upping up the clock speeds is not exciting anymore.[/citation]
What are you smoking? First of all, DX11 and OpenGL are still very capable APIs, the API isn't holding them back right now. Second, upping the clock speeds?? The clock speed on graphics chips hardly budges from generation to generation anymore. It inches up, but mostly they get wider and smarter. I mean shoot, GCN (in the 79xx cards pictured above) is a huge overhaul to AMD's graphics architecture. Biggest change in arch for generations. The next generation will probably be LESS exciting from an architectural point of view.

 

[eddieroolz]

Doesn't look very exciting to me. Almost everything visually is a carryover from the 6000 series, and the performance is probably just a die-shrink + some optimizations.

I hope Kepler blows this out of the water.

 

[notsleep]

...and TDP of.....7900 W!

 

[clonazepam]

[citation][nom]billcat479[/nom]This is about it, I've read more than enough gutter crap to say people that use computers are about the most stupid branch of the human race.[/citation]

Bye! I buy my products based on what works today. By the time all of these fixes come about, there will already be something else better available, or right around the corner, so what's the point?

Great looking card too btw hah

 

[darkside_gamer7]

Confused...thought 7970 was supposed to be utilizing the XDR2 memory?

 

[stiehl]

[citation][nom]eddieroolz[/nom]Doesn't look very exciting to me. Almost everything visually is a carryover from the 6000 series, and the performance is probably just a die-shrink + some optimizations.I hope Kepler blows this out of the water.[/citation]

Die shrink + optimization? Are you kidding me? Let's compare the 7970 and 6970...

4.5B transistors vs. 2.6B transistors
384 bit memory vs. 256 bit memory
3W idle power vs. 20W idle power
2048 processing cores vs. 1536 processing cores
3GB frame buffer vs. 2GB frame buffer
128 Texture Units vs. 96 Texture Units
48 ROPs vs. 32 ROPs

If you didn't get the message, these cards are vastly different. Just looking at the transistor count and width of the memory tells you that these cards are completely different. 1.75 times as many transistors is die shrink + optimization for you? Please get off your high horse.