First AMD 7970 review up: Now with AT official review

[Deleted member 4644]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review
http://nl.hardware.info/reviews/2472/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review
http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-rad...ocking-benchmarks-and-conclusion/14308-6.html



Personal view, as a 5870 owner with a 30" monitor: Not quite as bad as Bulldozer... but close. I was hoping for a silver bullet, and this is short by about 30%.



I was ready to buy TOMORROW. But now I am hesitating. Will depending on actual shipping price I guess. This is not a $500+ part.

Over at Toms, A4mula put it well: "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."

 

[ArchAngel777]

http://nl.hardware.info/reviews/2472/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review

Not quite as bad as Bulldozer... but close.




I was ready to buy TOMORROW. But now I am hesitating. Will depending on actual shipping price I guess. This is not a $500+ part.

And the 580 GTX is a $500 part? By what logic? It is a $600 part until nVidia can counter it. Then, it becomes whatever the market will dictate.

 

[AnandThenMan]

 

[arredondo]

Can we have a generic review collection thread without an editorial in the thread title? Let us be the judge if it is "disappointing" or not based on our own criteria.

 

[ghost recon88]

http://www.overclockers.com/amd-radeon-hd-7970-graphics-card-review/

 

[StinkyPinky]

Price is too high for the performance offered.

Most interested in the 7870/7950.

 

[Pacman4]

As I said, this card is only twice as fast as my 6850, but I think they'll try and charge 4x as much.
The only good news about this card is at least it's noise and temps are good, often one has to wait for AIB to improve upon that.

 

[Qianglong]

What type of troll thread title is this? When is AMD obligated to produce a brand new video card that is the fastest in the market and price it so low where the company can't make money just to satisfy people like you?

 

[Corporate Thug]

Looks like an OC beast.

 

[badb0y]

Every review I have read so far has been positive I don't know what the OP is talking about...As for my personal expectations I was disappointed a bit but I think I am still going to buy it once it comes out.

 

[arredondo]

EDIT: Never mind.... an "official" AT thread is posted here for 7970 reviews. I'll read all of the write-ups there.

 

[Kenmitch]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review
http://nl.hardware.info/reviews/2472/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review
http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-rad...ocking-benchmarks-and-conclusion/14308-6.html



Personal view, as a 5870 owner with a 30" monitor: Not quite as bad as Bulldozer... but close. I was hoping for a silver bullet, and this is short by about 30%.



I was ready to buy TOMORROW. But now I am hesitating. Will depending on actual shipping price I guess. This is not a $500+ part.

For what might be a pipecleaner product the performance looks pretty good already. I'd think performance will increase with newer drivers. How much? Time will tell.

 

[nonameo]

I don't know, it's not a huge leap for gaming performance but the die size is smaller and it gets them a lot of compute performance(well, hopefully... see anand's notes on amd's compute support)

So, while this may not be a killer card, it looks like AMD is getting set up quite nicely. They get 2 architectures, 1 to command a high ASP and do well in compute and 1 to have low production costs but good gaming performance for the dollar.

AMD really does need something that will get them some $$$, and I don't think gaming is going to cut it. This keeps them in the "game"(no pun intended) while letting them develop something new and higher revenue at the same time. Let's hope they can get their compute stuff sorted out.

 

[StinkyPinky]

It's certainly not a bad performer. Just wish the price was a bit lower.

 

[Deleted member 4644]

arredondo, here is my take on this card.

For people running smaller monitors, it's not bad. However, for those of us with 30" monitors, many were hoping for a single card solution that lets us play at 2560x1600 at high settings. This card is not that. It comes close, but it doesn't quite make it.

So for me, it means I still have to fool around with SLI or Crossfire, and all the bugs and driver updates that entails.

For me, it is basically as bad as no release at all -- Especially at this price, I would have been better served by buying a 580 at release.

 

[badb0y]

Did you even look at the chart above your post? It has a 25-30% performance advantage overall over a GTX 580 at your resolution....

 

[Chiropteran]

I don't get the OP at all. The card looks great. Better than 580 performance with less power usage, wins all around. I mean sure it's not doubling the previous architecture's performance at half the cost, but what did you expect?

 

[StinkyPinky]

arredondo, here is my take on this card.

For people running smaller monitors, it's not bad. However, for those of us with 30" monitors, many were hoping for a single card solution that lets us play at 2560x1600 at high settings. This card is not that. It comes close, but it doesn't quite make it.

So for me, it means I still have to fool around with SLI or Crossfire, and all the bugs and driver updates that entails.

For me, it is basically as bad as no release at all -- Especially at this price, I would have been better served by buying a 580 at release.

But it is 25% faster than the 580 at your resolution, which is pretty significant imo. And that's on immature drivers.

 

[lOl_lol_lOl]

Oh God...where have I heard this before.

- "50% faster than competing product".
- "Finally breaks the X Ghz barrier".
- "Easy to overclock!"
- "New innovative architecture!"
- "MOAR Cores, moar memory!"

At least it isn't slower than my 6970. Come on AMD, release some good drivers to build up a bigger lead before nvidia responds!

 

[sandorski]

Looks good.

 

[blastingcap]

arredondo, here is my take on this card.

For people running smaller monitors, it's not bad. However, for those of us with 30" monitors, many were hoping for a single card solution that lets us play at 2560x1600 at high settings. This card is not that. It comes close, but it doesn't quite make it.

So for me, it means I still have to fool around with SLI or Crossfire, and all the bugs and driver updates that entails.

For me, it is basically as bad as no release at all -- Especially at this price, I would have been better served by buying a 580 at release.

Overclock it.

 

[Lonbjerg]

LOL

So I was right (alongside a FEW others) in our assesment of ~30% faster than a GTX580 in average.

I guess it's time to look over the threads and see who got chaught up in "SILLY SEASON TM"...and thus cn be ignored at next launch

 

[Hypertag]

Basically, this is the level of performance I would expect from a hypothetical "7950". This is a real generation jump (40nm to 28nm), but the performance jump just isn't there. Note that the power usage is even higher than Cayman, so that "assumed benefit" from a die shrink didn't occur either.

As far as pricing, real market prices will occur when Nvidia releases their 28nm cards. It isn't as if anyone outside the first eight hours of launch day actually got those "$250 MSRP" 5850s. The street price peaked at about $360~ or so for the 5850.

Another concern I have is the performance from the 7950. The 7950 has been confirmed to be more crippled than the past, and it has ROPS disabled. I expect the GTX 580 to easily beat the 7950 in anything that isn't VRAM limited.

edit: As I think more about the price, all a low MSRP would do is allow AMD to give free money to retailers. The only people that benefited in 2009 from the low MSRPs of the 5850 and 5870 were the retailers that hiked the price of their cards like crazy. If the MSRP of the 7970 was $350, then retailers would just hike the price up to a "fair market price" which is likely closer to $450 here.

 

[schneiderguy]

Meanwhile for 1920 we turned Shogun’s settings down to Very High, and yet we still had to disable MSAA to make it work with 1GB cards (did we mention that Shogun loves VRAM?).

Where's the guy that was saying 1GB of vram is more than enough?

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Basically, this is the level of performance I would expect from a hypothetical "7950". This is a real generation jump (40nm to 28nm), but the performance jump just isn't there. Note that the power usage is even higher than Cayman, so that "assumed benefit" from a die shrink didn't occur either.

Performance per watt is better than Cayman, though.