AMD Radeon HD 7970: Promising Performance, Paper-Launched

[kathiki]

Everyone keeps talking about speed / fps/ blah blah blah but i think we are missing one of the most important things...... 15w when idle, GPU and fan speed turned off when monitor is also off in power saving mode..... That alone makes the card worth noticing RIGHT NOW......

I do not want to sound condescending but no site should rush to make any fps reviews until the product has been properly launched with the right drivers at hand. I am sure you understand that a new card with such rich new features and such awesome new hardware has fps issues because of bad drivers.... wish everyone merry christams

 

[intel4eva]

I'm running 6970 tri-fire, and I can tell you framerates don't tell the whole story. BF3 feels laggy at 130fps, unless i turn everything to low and AA off. My friend with dual 580s has no such problem, on ultra with AA. Other games exhibit similar behavior, but less intense.

After a year of struggling with bullshit drivers, and the overall disdain AMD shows its customers, I would buy a 580 over this card no matter how it theoretically performs. Don't think AMD disrespects its customers? I dare you to change the GPU display scaling options without dropping your desktop resolution to 1024x768. AMD has known about this problem for a while, and they don't care. What a simple fix it would be, too. In the latest Catalyst 11.12 you're supposed to finally be able to set per-application 3d profiles. I still haven't gotten that to work. And even if I did get it to work, it's several years too late.

I don't care about theoretical performance, AMD. Your cards stutter like mad, your coolers are just as loud as nvidia's, AA is almost a non-option on recent titles, and only one of the two DVI links on your high end cards is dual-link. Talk about cheap!

But hey, looking at the card in this preview, I see you've finally implemented an angled cooler, so two cards next to each other won't completely block the airflow. I guess that's SOMETHING.

 

[DjEaZy]

... imagine a HD7990?

 

[Guest]

Seems like 7770 or 7850 with a Zalman cooler might be my thing. AMD sure has best value for money..

 

[kashifme21]

@intel4eva

I completely agree with what you have to say. I was personally using AMD gpus before and no matter how powerful they always seem to have stuttering, not only in graphically demanding games but even in older games. I personally play at 5760* 1080. I used to have 5870 2gig edition in crossfire, a game like team fortress 2 @ 5760*1080 would be stuttering when i had crossfire enabled. If i disable crossfire the game runs fluid. So why am i paying for another GPU then? I replaced AMD with Nvidia GTX 580 SLI i couldnt be happier, everything just works.

I certainly aint hyped for the 7000 series. in this day and age most games we are getting are console ports which dont require too much gpu muscle however they do need good driver support. Hence today Driver support >> hardware performance. Hence i would easily favor Nvidia 5XX series over AMD 7000 Series.

 

[theuniquegamer]

I will get one of these in the end of Q2 after the launch of nvidia's kepler top end. I will jump from my current 4870 to 7970 or nvidia 680 (which ever is better performer )

 

[spentshells]

I expected a slightly better card.

 

[a4mula]

7970 Crossfire Review 5760x1080

Scaling looks to be on par or better than 6xxx, No mention of microstutter, graphs didn't exhibit the same choppiness max/min frame rate that's been associated with it.

 

[doron]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]I'll be trolling Newegg for the next couple weeks on the off-chance they pop up before the 9th. A couple in CrossFire could be pretty phenomenal, but it remains to be seen if they maintain the 6900-series scalability.[/citation]

Actually Techreport recently explored micro-stuttering (scroll down to Xfire results) and found that the 69xx series 90%+ scaling comes at a price. You also wanna check this vid, courtesy of Carsten Spille of GPU-tech.org.

I'll really appreciate if you take this into consideration in your upcoming multi-card reviews.

 

[Sailor Moon]

Really not worth an upgrade from an HD 6970. Maybe next generation!

 

[shin0bi272]

I cant wait to see how this stacks up against nvidia's 780 (yes they are skipping 600s for the most part it seems). . .

"According to the released info, Nvidia’s Next Gen flagship GK-100/GK-112 chip which will feature a total f 1024 Shaders (Cuda Cores), 128 texture units (TMUs), 64 ROP’s and a 512-bit GDDR5 Memory interface. The 28nm Next Gen beast would outperform the current Dual chip Geforce GTX590 GPU."

http://wccftech.com/nvidia-kepler-gk104-gk100-specifications-detailed-gk100-rumored-launch-q2-2012/


Also if you look at the specs for the 590 its just about identical to what the 780 will have.

 

[AMD_pitbull]

I have to say, not too many fanboys out from nvidia on this article, and, for that, i give them respect and props. It's usually a flame-fest when there's a new release. Anyways, this card looks great, but, I want to see a full review before I'm sold. For instance, including xfire, etc. As for the card overall? Looks to be something I'd love to get a pair of if I had a benchmarking rig again (currently in desktop-limbo as I'm undergoing training for the military), but, priced appropriately too since it's almost just sitting at that performance level. Good job to the AMD team boosting the performance so much over the 6970 in what we've seen, and decent review overall. I do have to say the article did seem a bit gloomy compared to others I've read though. Christmas blues got you down? Or just upset cuz Santa won't be putting one under your tree this year? I know I am lol. Happy holidays to all. Have fun, be safe, and be good or be good at it.

Cheers

 

[blubbey]

[citation][nom]a4mula[/nom]7970 Crossfire Review 5760x1080Scaling looks to be on par or better than 6xxx, No mention of microstutter, graphs didn't exhibit the same choppiness max/min frame rate that's been associated with it.[/citation]
With a performance boost from later drivers, it'll some config alright......

 

[a4mula]

I'll be honest, I was skeptical (as I still am) concerning a single 7970. It's too much for 1920x1080 and yet was unfit for Eyefinity. After reading the crossfire review however I'm much more optimistic. If micro-stuttering has been resolved than a 2x crossfire solution is viable again. I look forward to the Tom's crossfire review. It'd be great to see a x8/x8 (1155), x16/x8 (1155 nf200), x16/x16 (2011) comparison at 3x1 resolutions. While we know the x8 bottleneck is virtually non-existent at even 2560x1600 there is evidence that it exists at higher resolutions. Now that they have the monitors to test this, it'd be a great article.

 

[jmm5351]

Has anyone seen anandtech review of the 7970. I think NVIDIA paid them off or something. There's something odd that doesn't feel right about their benchmarks. I have looked around 10 benchmarks so far of a single 7970 and they all show roughly the same gains which are quite impressive considering how early the drivers are. But anandtech's benchmarks don't seem to follow all the others I have seen. Their benchmarks indicates the 7970 is on par with a GTX 580. I don't trust anandtech this time. All other benchmarks show a consistency with one another but not anandtechs.

 

[ilysaml]

And the card will get improved by third party customization and new drivers.

 

[Guest]

See top of last page. You should perhaps not abbreviate "who are" into "who're" ...

 

[freggo]

It's so ironic. In the old days we had to fight 'noise' from audio recordings. Anyone here ever played an LP 'wet' to reduce static crackling ?
Now we are all digital, Silence, no more cracks, pops and hisses from our favorite recordings. To bad we can still not enjoy it over the noise from our computers !
Noise polution is an issue that is still being underestimated by most hardware manufactureres.
I run 2 PCs for my daily work, both are in a separate room to keep the noise away.
I don't want more power from Santa, I want a 'silent' holiday instead

 

[masterofevil22]

I don't even know what to say about this.. I mean this card OC'd to get almost Double the 6970's FPS in BF3!!...Using only CCC!! What about using Afterburner on this baby!?!?!?! OMG

Does anyone know if Tom's is running the same BF3 benchmark as he was b4?? The first min of the aircraft carrier/plane flying mission in the campaign??

Want it, Need it, Gots to Gots to Have iT!!!

 

[cmartin011]

id run up and punch your mother in the face for one of these lol!

 

[masterofevil22]

Just throwing this out there...Techpowerup.com got the memory up to 1715Mhz with a total memory bandwith of 329.3Gbs...so, yeah it's kind of alright

 

[ivaroeines]

When it comes to good launches this card is in Radeon 9700( think its beats the Radeon 9700 by a good margin ) and Core 2 territory, i do not think Kepler will top this launch. That dont mean Kepler will be a bad gpu, but the power efficiency of this card is its primary advantage and i do not think Kepler will be more power efficient.

 

[zepfan_75]

XD When I looked at the first graph I was like 580 at the top? not surprising, AMD close behind not surprising............wait.....something isn't right here.......WAIT.............that is a 590 not 580......where is 580?....AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GRAPH!

I guess the Nvidia fanboys like myself have to give it to AMD for now, just until both cards are out because I doubt too many people expected this.

 

[Reynod]

Gee Don, EVEN Anand (paid NVidia shill) gave a much more positive review on the 7970 ... as did other tech sites.

I feel your putting an excessively negative spin on what is clearly a killer card compared to the Pentium 4 ... um ... I mean Fermi space heater that the 580 is.

This one is faster, cooler, overclocks better, and whips the 580 in every game that matters.

Any issues are just due to the drivers being so new.

This card gets my vote.

Once AMD roll out the rest of the line NVidia doesn't even have the compute crown anymore.

AMD is in front again in terms of graphics ... and thats what you should be saying in the headline for the article ... not bagging it.

 

[spp85]

Much need card. AMD is truly Advanced Mico Devices......