Amd 7970 still decent

[CakeMonster]

It's very easy to pass up when you know that 14/16nm GPUs are about to hit next year.

Don't set yourself up for disappointment. The next node is going to last for several years too, and expect it to be milked for everything its worth. Performance increases will be extremely gradual.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Don't set yourself up for disappointment. The next node is going to last for several years too, and expect it to be milked for everything its worth. Performance increases will be extremely gradual.

So true. I see people on this forum expecting a 60%+ jump and that just seems nuts because then it would be 60% year one of 14/16nm GPUs, then 7% year two, 8% year three, etc. AMD and Nvidia know better than us that they will be stuck on that node for a while.

Just from a marketing standpoint it is much smarter for both AMD and Nvidia to cut it up so its 25% year one, 25% year two, 25% year three, etc. Kinda like how Intel gradually bumped the clock speeds post Sandy to cover the lack of IPC jumps generation to generation.

The only reason for either company to not do this is they expect the other to go all out the first gen of 14/16nm, but Nvidia isn't going to be the one to act desperate like that (they don't need to) and AMD probably can't afford to be desperate like that.

I would be SHOCKED if we will be able to buy something in the $300 range that beats a 980 ti in a year like so many predict.

 

[Seba]

I would be SHOCKED if we will be able to buy something in the $300 range that competes with a 980 ti in a year like so many predict.

Why not?

GTX 970 (released at $329 in September 2014) is comparable with GTX 780 Ti (released at $699 in November 2013).

GTX 980 Ti was released at $649 in June 2015 (about one year before the most probable release date of a new Pascal card).

 

[HurleyBird]

Just from a marketing standpoint it is much smarter for both AMD and Nvidia to cut it up so its 25% year one, 25% year two, 25% year three, etc. Kinda like how Intel gradually bumped the clock speeds post Sandy to cover the lack of IPC jumps generation to generation.

Sure, if AMD/Nvidia, like Intel, didn't need to worry about competition.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Riding my 7950@1100Mhz all the way to node shrink GPUs. Feels good having picked the right horse that generation.

At the time, the GTX680 and 7970GHz were pretty competitive. I am better off with the 7970 than GTX680 for sure today, but for me that was simply because AMD launched first so I grabbed it, a little luck I guess. But, remember back when the 7970 launched and the GTX580 was it's competition, AND more expensive at the time? Anyone with a GTX580 has probably had to upgrade by now.

The 7970 is a heck of a card. The GTX780 launched after it, was more expensive, and today offers essentially no more performance. AMD may have made the card too competitive, I've had no real reason to upgrade in almost four years. But, I'll join the 1440P / 4K club sooner than later, I don't think my 7970 will be up to that task.

 

[SPBHM]

At the time, the GTX680 and 7970GHz were pretty competitive. I am better off with the 7970 than GTX680 for sure today, but for me that was simply because AMD launched first so I grabbed it, a little luck I guess. But, remember back when the 7970 launched and the GTX580 was it's competition, AND more expensive at the time? Anyone with a GTX580 has probably had to upgrade by now.

The 7970 is a heck of a card. The GTX780 launched after it, was more expensive, and today offers essentially no more performance. AMD may have made the card too competitive, I've had no real reason to upgrade in almost four years. But, I'll join the 1440P / 4K club sooner than later, I don't think my 7970 will be up to that task.

the 580 was a competitor for 3 months, I bet 580 sales were really low at that point, everyone knew the 680 was coming and that the 7970 was clearly better,

the 680 initially beat the 7970 on most games (by a small margin), but I guess by the specs it was clear that the 7970 was supposed to be better, and once drivers improved and games started to suit more the 7970 strong points, well, the 7970 is simply a better card for current games (by a decent margin in some cases), but those were 500 USD high end cards, I think that if someone felt the need to upgrade from a 680 it's likely that they would also feel the need with the 7970, both can't handle games with the kind of performance they offered back in 2012 or near what a current $500 card can deliver.

but it is impressive how well it aged, it's almost 4 years old, I don't remember any other card aging so well, I guess it's the benefit of things being so stable (28nm, DX11, architecture, consoles that are at best half a 7970...) and AMD getting all right when they did,

but things can change very quickly during 2016.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Why not?

GTX 970 (released at $329 in September 2014) is comparable with GTX 780 Ti (released at $699 in November 2013).

GTX 980 Ti was released at $649 in June 2015 (about one year before the most probable release date of a new Pascal card).

Good point.

 

[Kallogan]

awesome gpu indeed still kicking

 

[Elcs]

I tried using Overdrive to push my 7950 last night and even though the sliders moved, Unigine Valley, which I used as my tester was showing 800/1250 and not budging.

So I'm guessing the next step is to try Trixx or MSI Afterburner (as RadeonPro is still dead) and try that?

Been a long time since I used anything other than the CCC, pretty much since RadeonPro was no longer being developed.

Using the 30/11/15 Crimson Beta drivers (15.11.1) on Win 10 x64 Pro.

Currently on my way to work so excuse the brevity and typographical issues that may have occurred. Apologies in advance.

 

[Brunnis]

Yep, really awesome card from a performance perspective. I have the R9 280X, which I bought more than two years ago. It's pretty amazing (and a little sad) that you still don't get significantly more performance for that kind of money, 2+ years later.

However, although I'm happy with the performance, I've had and still have some issues. The first card I got had to be replaced almost immediately due to a bad fan. No biggie, got a brand new replacement. That's when the real problems started. The new card simply wasn't stable. Certain games would hard-lock the computer with a single-colored screen filled with vertical lines.

I of course knew the card was at fault, since I've had many other cards in the same machine (including my first 280X) without issues. Sent it in for RMA and received the same card back after several weeks. No fault found. Great. Since it didn't happen in every game, I just capitulated and thought "Screw it, I don't have time or patience to try to persuade these support technicians". I've spent significant time on sporadic, hard-to-reproduce hardware issues like this in the past and it's almost always really frustrating to get a replacement.

Long story short-ish: That was a year ago. A month ago I made the Skylake upgrade and replaced everything except the 280X. Guess what? Same issue. Of course. I hadn't planned to RMA again, but I got so irritated once I started to think about it (and the $250 I spent on the card) that I just had to take another shot at it.

So, two weeks now since I sent it in. Still waiting for a reply. Given the history, it should be pretty obvious to any experienced support technician that the card is at fault, so I don't know why they won't just replace it instead of wasting time trying to reproduce it. Especially since this particular issues doesn't seem all that uncommon on these cards. The overall failure rate of the 7970 and its derivatives seems to have been significantly higher than competing Nvidia cards. That's one thing that makes me hesitate about going AMD for my next GPU.

How about you guys? Have you had any issues with your 7970s (or 7970 derivatives)?

 

[Elcs]

Brunnis,

I cannot say that I have experienced or know of anyone in my circle of gamer friends whom owned and used 79xx for any extended period of time that had any significant issues with their cards beyond the typical software issues that plague game developers and driver developers in equal measure regardless of what shirt they wear... and most of them for no appreciable reason are staunchly against ATI/AMD because they had some dodgy driver experience in 2002.

 

[Squeetard]

Bought 2 7970's about 3 years ago, after the bitcoin bubble for around $300 each. Watercooled and clocked to 1150. Have had no reason to upgrade since.

 

[railven]

Bought 2 7970's about 3 years ago, after the bitcoin bubble for around $300 each. Watercooled and clocked to 1150. Have had no reason to upgrade since.

Bubble burst end of 2014. By then 7970/280X were going for <$150 second hand market.

About when I sold my 7970s in 2013 for more than I thought I'd get because of the bitmine craze.

 

[b-mac]

I bought my Sapphire 7970 Boost for $220 around 2 years ago and it is holding strong for me still. Was tempted by some of the 970 and 290/390 deals recently but honestly 30ish % increase isn't worth for me for around $250-$300. I only have a 1200p monitor but hopefully the midrange cards for the next generation give much better performance and I may upgrade my monitor to 1440p gsync/freesync if they are that much better.

 

[Actaeon]

Why not?

GTX 970 (released at $329 in September 2014) is comparable with GTX 780 Ti (released at $699 in November 2013).

GTX 980 Ti was released at $649 in June 2015 (about one year before the most probable release date of a new Pascal card).

I wonder how much of that has to do with 3GB of vs 3.5GB/4GB of VRAM. They are similar in performance but I would think the 780 has to do more swapping hurting potential performance. The raw silicon power from GK110 helps make up for it so they kind of even out in the end. VRAM usage has gone up a bunch since the last generation due to the consoles but it has leveled out a bit so barring another console or disruption I don't think we'll see the same memory shortage going into the next generation.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that Maxwell ditched a lot of the compute hardware leaving the silicon specifically for gaming instead of being a dual purpose architecture like Kepler.

For GM200 NVIDIA’s path of choice has been to divorce graphics from high performance FP64 compute. Big Kepler was a graphics powerhouse in its own right, but it also spent quite a bit of die area on FP64 CUDA cores and some other compute-centric functionality. This allowed NVIDIA to use a single GPU across the entire spectrum – GeForce, Quadro, and Tesla – but it also meant that GK110 was a bit jack-of-all-trades. Consequently when faced with another round of 28nm chips and intent on spending their Maxwell power savings on more graphics resources (ala GM204), NVIDIA built a big graphics GPU. Big Maxwell is not the successor to Big Kepler, but rather it’s a really (really) big version of GM204.

GM200 is 601mm2 of graphics, and this is what makes it remarkable. There are no special compute features here that only Tesla and Quadro users will tap into (save perhaps ECC), rather it really is GM204 with 50% more GPU. This means we’re looking at the same SMMs as on GM204, featuring 128 FP32 CUDA cores per SMM, a 512Kbit register file, and just 4 FP64 ALUs per SMM, leading to a puny native FP64 rate of just 1/32. As a result, all of that space in GK110 occupied by FP64 ALUs and other compute hardware – and NVIDIA won’t reveal quite how much space that was – has been reinvested in FP32 ALUs and other graphics-centric hardware.

It’s this graphics “purification” that has enabled NVIDIA to improve their performance over GK110 by 50% without increasing power consumption and with only a moderate 50mm2 (9%) increase in die size. In fact in putting together GM200, NVIDIA has done something they haven’t done for years. The last flagship GPU from the company to dedicate this little space to FP64 was G80 – heart of the GeForce 8800GTX – which in fact didn’t have any FP64 hardware at all. In other words this is the “purest” flagship graphics GPU in 9 years.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9059/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-titan-x-review/2

In other words, the smaller 970/980 was competitive with the big 780 Ti because they were able to focus Maxwell's hardware on gaming instead of being multi purpose like Kepler. Nvidia has already shown Pascal to have strong focus on compute (the 10x performance quote going around). So if they go back to having a dual purpose gaming/compute card like Kepler we may not see the performance increase people are hoping for. If they split out product lines between Gaming and Compute on Pascal architecture then we could be in for a treat but I haven't heard any hints that would be happening.

With all this said, I do expect the the Pascal GPUs to be very competitive with Maxwell across the entire product line including the 980 Ti. Performance we see in today's products should move down a segment.

980 Ti -> '1080'
980/970 -> '1060'
etc.

 

[AnMig]

I am in the same boat got 2 7970 (non Ghz) running on a I5 2500k @ 4.5 ghz.

Finding it very hard to upgrade both video and CPU.

If bought 1 fury or 980 my crossfire setup is still faster (when crossfire works)

I think I lucked out and was able to buy the best bang for your buck combo back then.

I game at 1440p so a single card solution is close.

Hopefully the new monitors with the new technology (async,vsyn) gets mainstreamed then I will bite the bullet and build a new system.

 

[Vesku]

I tried using Overdrive to push my 7950 last night and even though the sliders moved, Unigine Valley, which I used as my tester was showing 800/1250 and not budging.

So I'm guessing the next step is to try Trixx or MSI Afterburner (as RadeonPro is still dead) and try that?

Been a long time since I used anything other than the CCC, pretty much since RadeonPro was no longer being developed.

Using the 30/11/15 Crimson Beta drivers (15.11.1) on Win 10 x64 Pro.

Currently on my way to work so excuse the brevity and typographical issues that may have occurred. Apologies in advance.

Definitely try one of those, I'm using Afterburner with no problems.

 

[atticus14]

So true. I see people on this forum expecting a 60%+ jump and that just seems nuts because then it would be 60% year one of 14/16nm GPUs, then 7% year two, 8% year three, etc. AMD and Nvidia know better than us that they will be stuck on that node for a while.

Just from a marketing standpoint it is much smarter for both AMD and Nvidia to cut it up so its 25% year one, 25% year two, 25% year three, etc. Kinda like how Intel gradually bumped the clock speeds post Sandy to cover the lack of IPC jumps generation to generation.

The only reason for either company to not do this is they expect the other to go all out the first gen of 14/16nm, but Nvidia isn't going to be the one to act desperate like that (they don't need to) and AMD probably can't afford to be desperate like that.

I would be SHOCKED if we will be able to buy something in the $300 range that beats a 980 ti in a year like so many predict.

You have to assume with 2 node jumps the step up should be significant. Nvidia & AMD will squeak out improvements as they increase die size over time as the first round will probably be relatively small and expensive, so they'll still be moderate room to improve over time as well as priceerformance improvements.

 

[parvadomus]

These should have been 48ROPs instead of 32. That would have been insane for the time, and probably made nvidia release GK100 or GK110 earlier.
I dont know what AMD is thinking when they pair a lot of shaders with a small back-end (thaiti, tonga, fiji..).
If we only compare gpus by ROP count, they are almost perfectly aligned with their performance level.

 

[Elcs]

Definitely try one of those, I'm using Afterburner with no problems.

Both are giving me issues.... specifically where I set the clocks, apply, save and they're still stock 800/1250.

I had it cracked last night by random, they worked. Booted up my machine tonight and I'm back to 800/1250 no matter what I do and no matter what it says within Afterburner or Trixx.



I'll be trying some this weekend but if it doesn't end up changing the speeds reliably then I'll not bother and probably sell it to add to the next GPU fund

 

[Squeetard]

If you are using afterburner then make sure you disable overdrive in CCC or advanced setting in the new radeon drivers.

 

[Makaveli]

I've been using radeons since the Radeon 64DDR card.

The 7970 has had the same staying power as the 9700Pro its been a great card.

For 1080/1200p gaming she still holds her own.

I stopped messing with Afterburner and all those application when I went water.

I just found clocks that were stable then modified my bios with those clocks don't have to worry about drivers resetting them or any extra fluff.

 

[Mem]

How about you guys? Have you had any issues with your 7970s (or 7970 derivatives)?

Nope, my Sapphire 280x OC(factory OC) still going strong, I keep saying I'm going to upgrade it but truth told nothing out there that is giving any performance issues gaming wise, so I've decided to hold off until I need to upgrade.

Mine was an upgrade from MSI 560Ti and the 280x OC(got mine for half price) was one of the best upgrades/value for money I ever purchased.

 

[RussianSensation]

At the time, the GTX680 and 7970GHz were pretty competitive. I am better off with the 7970 than GTX680 for sure today, but for me that was simply because AMD launched first so I grabbed it, a little luck I guess. But, remember back when the 7970 launched and the GTX580 was it's competition, AND more expensive at the time? Anyone with a GTX580 has probably had to upgrade by now.

The difference today between 580/680/770 2GB can be massive depending on the game. 3GB of VRAM, a lot more memory bandwidth and GCN architecture driver support have delivered, while GTX680/770 are aging very poorly against its former direct competitor.

280X is 21% faster than 770 at 1080P
280X is 29% faster than 770 at 1440P.

And it's only getting worse. While R9 280X can easily play some modern AA games, even at 1440P, 680/770 are getting destroyed.

In Rainbox 6 Siege, 280X is more than 75% faster than 680/770 at 1440P.

In Just Cause 3, 680/770 are barely in the 40 fps range.

In SW:BF, 280X completely dominates 680/770.

In Mortal Kombat X, 280X once again demolishes 680/770.

In Batman AK, you can run the highest textures on R9 280X/7970Ghz, something not possible on 680/770 2GB cards.

Same story with Formula 1 2015 or Titanfall, etc.

Older games? 280X/HD7970Ghz continues to smoke 680/770.

I think that if someone felt the need to upgrade from a 680 it's likely that they would also feel the need with the 7970, both can't handle games with the kind of performance they offered back in 2012 or near what a current $500 card can deliver..

While it's pointless to compare a modern $500-600 card to a 4-year-old 7970, a 7970Ghz / OC user can slice through a decent amount of modern titles with ease in situations where 680/770 2GB are miles behind. With the combination of PS4/XB1 being so underpowered, and most modern PC games being mere console to PC ports with minor upgrades, it's no wonder that an overclocked 7970 can play many modern AAA games at 1080P High/VHQ settings 4 years since launch.

Think about how many PC gamers purchased GTX750/750Ti/950/960/R9 380 this generation and the HD7970 OC / R9 280X beats all of those cards, while matching the 380X. Theoretically that means if a 950/960/R9 380/380X user keeps his GPU for another 2 years, HD7970/R9 280X can still be used at similar or better settings for the same period.

but things can change very quickly during 2016.

I hope so. I sure don't want 2016 to be a console ported year like most of 2015 was. Nothing diminishes the desire to get a new $600+ GPU when the underlying game is outdated on day 1 and looks like a 97% console port with sprinkles of some PC specific tech. PS5/XB2 cannot get here fast enough and it's only been 2 years into this current gen console cycle.

If some future PC games use UE4, then 7970 won't be able to handle those games well but thus far the major studios aren't embracing UE4.

The 7970 has had the same staying power as the 9700Pro its been a great card.

I think 7970 OC has the most relevant staying power compared to even 9700Pro or 8800GTX U. That's also a function of PC gaming not advancing from a technical point of view as fast as the in old days. Looking at SW:BF though and how well 7970 does in it, if a lot more PC games were as well optimized, 7970 could last another 2 years for 1080P.

 

[Makaveli]

I think 7970 OC has the most relevant staying power compared to even 9700Pro or 8800GTX U. That's also a function of PC gaming not advancing from a technical point of view as fast as the in old days. Looking at SW:BF though and how well 7970 does in it, if a lot more PC games were as well optimized, 7970 could last another 2 years for 1080P.

Great post as usual RS and yes I totally agree.

The combination of ports and under powered consoles and just a slower pace of progress due to numerous factors has allowed the longevity of the 7970 series.

I however still hold the 9700pro a step above in this regard because it was able to hold its own at a time when those other factors were not around and at a time when technology was coming out much faster.