AMD Radeon HD 7970: Promising Performance, Paper-Launched

[cmcghee358]

Thank you so much for finally including 5760x1080!

 

[paradoxeternal]

i am definitely getting one of these. got a radeon 6870 with my first ever PC build back in august and i plan on switching to more PC gaming in the future. i want this card because i record PC gameplay, but want 40-60 fps on most games WHILE recording. this card should help, along with either a new piledriver cpu (unless AMD drops the ball) or an ivybridge cpu. pc gaming is exciting

 

[Ninja Pants]

Despite being rushed to market and the inherent problems that has created at that price point I am not convinced. Hopefully the price will drop considerably (or simply launch cheaper than what has been revealed) to make it a more competitive solution to the existing 6xxx series and 570's (pricing may be different elsewhere but here (Latvia) it looks from all accounts to be around the price of a 6990).

I would like to see some comparisons with better value setups such as 6970 CF (as it will cost about the same and is faster than the 6990) or GTX 570 / 460ti SLI (580 is about as bad as it gets in terms of bang-for-your-buck, this comparison is useless imo other than to prove the 7970 will be the fastest single GPU card). I look forward to these bench's upon the 7970 release.

 

[bystander]

[citation][nom]Ninja Pants[/nom]Despite being rushed to market and the inherent problems that has created at that price point I am not convinced. Hopefully the price will drop considerably (or simply launch cheaper than what has been revealed) to make it a more competitive solution to the existing 6xxx series and 570's (pricing may be different elsewhere but here (Latvia) it looks from all accounts to be around the price of a 6990).I would like to see some comparisons with better value setups such as 6970 CF (as it will cost about the same and is faster than the 6990) or GTX 570 / 460ti SLI (580 is about as bad as it gets in terms of bang-for-your-buck, this comparison is useless imo other than to prove the 7970 will be the fastest single GPU card). I look forward to these bench's upon the 7970 release.[/citation]

The 6990 and 590 comparisons are only a little slower than their 6970 CF and 580 SLI counterparts. You may be able to take on 10% for those setups at most.

Things will change eventually, but the 7970 is actually a good value, if you compare it to the 580, the former king of single gpu performance. However, that will change and the current king will also be expensive for performance as most king of the hill cards are. Let's also not forget we are experiencing a lot of inflation right now.

 

[de5_Roy]

loved reading the Preview article. looks like amd has set the bar high on gfx card performance with raw performance along with power efficiency.
this article was especially helpful for understanding how the new cards will perform on pcie 2.
looking forward to more thorough analysis.

 

[duk3]

Looks pretty nice.
Seems like once they fix up the drivers a bit more, and there are some aftermarket versions released with better and quieter cooling with more overclock room, this should be one of the best cards on the market.

 

[hannibal]

So I think that AMD saw the computing landscape, realized - as Nvidia and others have - that mobile is the future, and figured that adding powerful graphics and number-crunching capability to a modest-performing mobile CPU core was going to be the best way to capitalize on the "fusion" concept and beat Intel in its own market. GCN is designed for exactly that; an entry-level GCN-based design might only have a few Compute Units, but that's all it would need to wipe the floor with any Intel-based GPU technology. I expect that we will see the x64 instruction set augmented soon to directly access the vector FP capabilities of on-die GPUs, just as we have seen such extensions as SSEx, etc. That - APUs with low-end CPU and GPU power - is what the GCN redesign was done for, not for high-end gaming GPUs.

Yes, this same architecture would be nice in GPCPU, because it is more programable that those older AMD fusion solutions. How long it will take AMD to put GCN in their CPU is another matter. Some rumours say that it will be 2013... But all in all it would allow some hefty power upgrade to AMD CPU's. Is it enough to put Intel in real fighting situation would be nice to see.

 

[Combat Wombat]

Seeing that AMD has quit the CPU market, they have can now put more resources into their GPU's I think this is a start to a long lead in the GPU market for AMD.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

Averages about a 15 - 25% performance advantage over the GTX580, while consuming roughly 50W less at full load, and running cooler at the same time... that's a win-win. It's not as much of a generational performance jump as we've seen in the past, especially considering it's a new architecture and manufacturing node, but considering the focus of the GCN architecture this is still pretty impressive. It also dominates the HD6970 in practically every way.

With this release AMD has addressed many of the issues I've had with their recent GPU's. This generation is the first time in years I may seriously consider investing in a new ATI/AMD graphics card. Overall it's without question the best single GPU gaming solution you'll find on the market in Q1 2012, and it's also shaping up to be a compute performance beast.

First and foremost is compute performance. The shift to this new SIMD architecture shows that AMD's finally getting serious about GPGPU computing. GCN has been architected with compute efficiency and performance in mind. Unfortunately it's a little difficult to quantify this at the moment, as there aren't very many real world applications that run on AMD GPU's, much less take full advantage of this new architecture. But given AMD's shift in focus I'm certain this will change in the coming years. Current performance results look promising:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review/25

Next is the cooler. AMD has finally designed a tapered, angled cooling solution with full rear ventilation. This is a far cry from the flat, totally inclosed brick on the HD6900 and 6800 series. The heatsink may have been fantastic, but without decent airflow none of that really matters. And it shows in the results, while the HD7970 consumes more power than the HD6970 at load, it still manages to run at similar temps, if not cooler.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review/27

I'm sure this will become even more apparent in a CrossfireX configuration. You may finally be able to install two of these side by side without having to wedge a piece of paper in between to prevent the top card from overheating.

However, despite all these positives, unfortunately the lack of CUDA support is a major problem for me at the moment, but hopefully this will become less of an issue in the future. The fan noise level is another major concern. The fan on my GTX480 is loud enough, and I don't think I could handle something that's approaching the noise level of an HD6990. We also have to wait and see if AMD has addressed some of its driver related issues, such as inconsistent performance and micro stuttering in CrossfireX.

 

[artk2219]

[citation][nom]combat wombat[/nom]Seeing that AMD has quit the CPU market, they have can now put more resources into their GPU's I think this is a start to a long lead in the GPU market for AMD.[/citation]

They haven't quit the CPU market, they have decided to stop trying to compete with Intel and focus their efforts on their APU's and the mobile market in general. Honestly its probably a good idea, even though it kills me.

 

[artk2219]

Compete with Intel in the high performance perspective I meant.

 

[Combat Wombat]

"Quite quit" but with their newly arranged efforts in CPU production it may was well be called quiting because they wont achieve much at all. But at least there carving up one market, for now.

 

[rantoc]

Very very nice performance for a single GPU card but i don't like to keep a noise cancellation headset on my head just for gaming. Bet there will come lots of nicely modded cards with improved acoustics / cooling a few month after launch and thats when i will look at the gpu field again.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

[citation][nom]gmcizzle[/nom]Why does AMD always release their new GPUs before Nvidia lol[/citation]
Because they don't? If you look back at history, Nvidia has traditionally been the first to market with new GPU generations, the only exceptions being in recent years with the HD7000 and HD5000 series, as far as i can recall.

The GTX580 debuted a month before the HD6970. The GTX280 was again a month before the HD4870. The 8800GTX released 6 months before the HD2900XT. The 7800GTX released 5 months before the X1800XT. The 6800 Ultra released a month before the X800XT. The FX5800 Ultra released about 2 months before the 9800 pro. The Geforce 4 Ti 4600 came out 5 months before the Radeon 9700... hmm, that's basically as far back as I can remember. But I think you get the point.

 

[Combat Wombat]

Yep

 

[alchemy69]

If I win the MegaMillions lottery tomorrow I know what I'm buying a pair of. And if they're all out of blonde, Swedish twins then I'm buying a pair of these instead.

 

[_Pez_]

Shall be more performance with non beta Drivers ? O.O if that Card Destroys the GTX 590 with one GPU. Now 2 of those GPU's together.. Holy GPU God !

 

[Guest]

AMD releases a stupidly fast GPU, which absolutely stomps Nvidia's 580 single-GPU flagship, and even trades blows with the 6990 and 590. What does Tom's have to say?

"We haven’t done extensive-enough testing to feel comfortable making a recommendation one way or the other"

Yet they don't hesitate to recommend "upgrading" from Nehalem to the first gen Core i5 back to Sandy Bridge and presumably to Ivy Bridge, even though there is about 0-10% more performance in any of those upgrades. When Haswell continues to prove that they can't add any more IPC, you can bet those Nehalem holdouts will be urged to upgrade. The revolutionary Radeon 7970? You may just want to hold off...

 

[Aragorn]

I had to stop reading bcause of the ridiculous ads blocking the story at each new page.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

[citation][nom]tuckfoms[/nom]AMD releases a stupidly fast GPU, which absolutely stomps Nvidia's 580 single-GPU flagship, and even trades blows with the 6990 and 590. What does Tom's have to say?"We haven’t done extensive-enough testing to feel comfortable making a recommendation one way or the other"Yet they don't hesitate to recommend "upgrading" from Nehalem to the first gen Core i5 back to Sandy Bridge and presumably to Ivy Bridge, even though there is about 0-10% more performance in any of those upgrades. When Haswell continues to prove that they can't add any more IPC, you can bet those Nehalem holdouts will be urged to upgrade. The revolutionary Radeon 7970? You may just want to hold off...[/citation]
scrum? buddy is that you? or maybe it's reynod?

 

[gto127]

Dear Toms Hardware,
Please put a Bulldozer review with this card. All the review sites use Intel archetechure for the review. I know the Intel is faster but I was curious how BD would complement the new design. I was hoping the card/CPU might complement each other since they are both new designs. Yes I'm a penny pincher that wants to save a few buscks if possible.

 

[doron]

[citation][nom]gto127[/nom]Dear Toms Hardware,Please put a Bulldozer review with this card. All the review sites use Intel archetechure for the review. I know the Intel is faster but I was curious how BD would complement the new design. I was hoping the card/CPU might complement each other since they are both new designs. Yes I'm a penny pincher that wants to save a few buscks if possible.[/citation]

For gaming on a budget you'd be far better off with a phenom II x4 960T or a cheap core i3 / i5 (depends on the games / budget).

 

[Stealth Dzzl]

a4mula :
From a gaming standpoint I fail to see where this card finds a home. For 1920x1080 pretty much any card will work, meanwhile at Eyefinity resolutions it's obvious that a single gpu still isn't viable. Perhaps this will be something that people would consider over 2x 6950, but that isn't exactly an ideal setup either. While much of the article was over my head from a technical standpoint, I hope the 7 series addresses microstuttering in crossfire. If so than perhaps 2x 7950 (Assuming a 449$) becomes a viable alternative to 3x 6950 2GB. I was really hoping we'd see the 7970 in at 449, with the 7950 in at 349. Right now I'm failing to see the value in this card.

How do you fail to see where this has a home? I have two 470 oc to 800mhz and they consume at least 500 watts(overvolted) , this ONE 7970 outperforms them at half the power consumption ( i ran the same settings), i am running a triple monitor setup. If you noticed, they are using max settings, at lower settings the 7970 would easily run eyefinity as my 470s runs surround. Any one looking to run eyefinity would definitely benefit from this card. At 550 ya a little steeper than we are used to, but the benchmarks put this higher then a 580 (499. ) close to a 6990 (700). I would prefer a 499. price tag and they should i hope, but this a great card and amd has done very well with it. Stop being a hater and appreciate the technology. PS 7990 will obliterate !!!!

 

[airborne11b]

Some rumors say Q1 for Nvidia's next generation, some say Q2. But from benchmarks I'm seeing here, I'm not impressed. In the most important benchmarks (1920 x 1080 w/ AA) it bearly outperforms the MUCH older 580 GTX. I say most important because this single card isn't capable of handling anything more then 1080p w/ some AA on. So all I'm taking away from these benchmarks is that AMD has a card that plays about the same (or a tiny bit better) then the one YEAR old 580 GTX, and in a couple months, Nvidia is going to launch it's Kepler cards which will be better then the 7000 ATI's. So what's the big deal? All the ATI fanboys drooling over a card that gets 3-8 FPS more then a year old Nvidia card? LOL doesn't take much to impress some kids I guess lol.

 

[masterofevil22]

[citation][nom]airborne11b[/nom]Some rumors say Q1 for Nvidia's next generation, some say Q2. But from benchmarks I'm seeing here, I'm not impressed. In the most important benchmarks (1920 x 1080 w/ AA) it bearly outperforms the MUCH older 580 GTX. I say most important because this single card isn't capable of handling anything more then 1080p w/ some AA on. So all I'm taking away from these benchmarks is that AMD has a card that plays about the same (or a tiny bit better) then the one YEAR old 580 GTX, and in a couple months, Nvidia is going to launch it's Kepler cards which will be better then the 7000 ATI's. So what's the big deal? All the ATI fanboys drooling over a card that gets 3-8 FPS more then a year old Nvidia card? LOL doesn't take much to impress some kids I guess lol.[/citation]

Dude, really??

All things being considered...aka...MSRP compared to the older, slower, hotter, more power hungry, incapable of running high res 3 monitor gaming, etc. GTX 580 and the fact that this is EARLY production hardware with insanely early software "support".

...and it's already pulling these kind of numbers and OC potential...

News flash...you're a hater