Maybe, but if you had a 5970 would you bother to upgrade?
I bought a 5970 two years ago at almost the same price one of these retails at now, having two years gaming pleasure from it since then. I thought it was alot of cash for a video card at the time but seeing what's going on here I feel somewhat vindicated.
No disrespect meant from that, I hope and know y'all have fun with the new cards. I'd like to have one to play with too but not really sure it's worth it for me, even x2 for crossfirex presently. I knew I'd skip the last generation but might end up skipping this generation too, we'll have to see where it goes.
At what etailer? As of this post, the Egg has a Sapphire, an HIS, and a Powercolor model in stock, with both XFX, the Asus and Gigabyte OOS.
Maybe, but if you had a 5970 would you bother to upgrade?
I bought a 5970 two years ago at almost the same price one of these retails at now, having two years gaming pleasure from it since then. I thought it was alot of cash for a video card at the time but seeing what's going on here I feel somewhat vindicated.
No disrespect meant from that, I hope and know y'all have fun with the new cards. I'd like to have one to play with too but not really sure it's worth it for me, even x2 for crossfirex presently. I knew I'd skip the last generation but might end up skipping this generation too, we'll have to see where it goes.
At what etailer? As of this post, the Egg has a Sapphire, an HIS, and a Powercolor model in stock, with both XFX, the Asus and Gigabyte OOS.
Sapphire is a good card maker, I'm surprised to see PowerColor sell out before Sapphire. Unless PowerColor, being one of the lesser-tier partners, had a lesser quantity to sell.
My BIL's rig was built with two Sapphire HD6870 cards, and I haven't heard any problems from him.
If I had the spare cash, I would have picked up one of these for him, to replace those. At least, I think that would be an upgrade. (Would it?) Then he could pick up another one in the future for crossfire. Then again, his CPU is only a Q9550 @ 3.5, so more than one might be too CPU-limited in that rig.
Sapphire is a good card maker, I'm surprised to see PowerColor sell out before Sapphire. Unless PowerColor, being one of the lesser-tier partners, had a lesser quantity to sell.
My BIL's rig was built with two Sapphire HD6870 cards, and I haven't heard any problems from him.
If I had the spare cash, I would have picked up one of these for him, to replace those. At least, I think that would be an upgrade. (Would it?) Then he could pick up another one in the future for crossfire. Then again, his CPU is only a Q9550 @ 3.5, so more than one might be too CPU-limited in that rig.
Yep. Although Gigabyte's warranty and service are better, I still feel comfortable buying a Sapphire. Sapphire's warranty is fine, they just take forever in my experience. In the past, all ATI branded cards were at once point built by Sapphire, IIRC, during the 9700, 9800 days. After the ATI brand dropped, Sapphire still carries a lot of weight with them I believe. I feel confident buying one of their reference cards because I know it follows specs to a T (something I wouldn't be confident about about with say, an XFX). We'll see if this 7970 will change that or keep it going .From what I know, Sapphire gets preferential treatment and a lot more stock because of its relationship with ATI/AMD. I think they are also involved in R&D activities with AMD.
Prices are starting to go up since I last checked about 15 minutes ago.
Prices are starting to go up since I last checked about 15 minutes ago.
Kinda curious what other retailers are going to do in the coming hours. Given newegg's sellout, I wonder if we're going to see markups reaching the nonsensical ebay levels... or if the cut from AMD will mitigate that.
FYI hardware canucks has an article on XFX's lineup. looks like the 'black edition' cards on newegg are the cream of the crop (for the time being) and are the "HD 7970 Black Edition Double Dissipation (DD)"
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/news/video/xfx-shows-off-their-hd-7970-lineup/
edit: hmmm maybe not such a hot item. noisier and hotter. http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphi...-7970-3GB-Black-Edition-and-CrossFire-Results
XFX is the worst card manufacturer out of all of them. I wouldn't touch their cards if they were the only thing available.