Official Radeon 7970 Reviews Thread

[Subyman]

People, quit quoting so many images, it makes this thread unbearable to read.

I'm wondering where the 7950 fits at 399. It will probably on par with the 580 or slightly below, but Nvidia will counter with cuts to the 570 and 580 like they did with the 470 last gen. This makes the 7950 a pretty hard buy unless you need the DP 1.2 or other features. Even more worryingly, where does this place the 7850 and 7870? Around the 6950 I'd assume, which is already only a 230 dollar card. I just don't see this line keeping us satisfied for any length of time.

 

[Concillian]

Benchmarks I saw for 2560x1600 showed 30+FPS With 4x-8xAA? how is that not playable? Since AA is mostly irrelevant at those resulotions I think a single 7970 is very playable at 2560x1600. Especially when they get their driver teams rolling out optimizations for this new architecture.

WAT?

Resolution is not really resolution when it comes to monitors. Resolution should be pixel density, however in video card terms, resolution really means more pixels at (roughly) the same density. AA is as needed at 2560x1600 as it is at any other resolution because the pixel spacing for affordable and available desktop monitors hasn't really changed since LCDs came on the scene.

 

[RussianSensation]

But right here and now, there is no competition, the 7970 is the best. When there is a 680 or some early mid-range derivative actually in reality, then it is the time to pass judgments on the 7970 in contrast against said future unreleased card.

Ya, if a gamer was already willing to pony up $ for a GTX580, of course it's much better to grab an HD7970.

But you have to admit, the main reason this card looks "good" is because HD6970 sucked in DX11. Compared to GTX580, it's only 30% faster, which isn't typical at all for a next generation on a new node. I feel like this is going to be X1800XT all over again. AMD will do an X1950XT style refresh with a healthy performance boost. Unless AMD partners launch 1.1ghz cards and drivers improve performance by 10-15%, they'll have no way to compete with NV's next generation architecture on 28nm with this card. That means the $549 price is going to tumble immediately the day NV releases its cards. If you got $ to spare, $550 over $450-500 GTX580 is a no brainer. Persoanlly, I have a feeling this card will lose a lot of value within 12 months as competition really heats up.

 

[atticus14]

lets see how many more times we can quote all the benchmarks, while adding less then a sentence to personal post.

 

[Mistwalker]

So AMD's GPUs are much more well rounded, and like the 480 we see gaming performance go up but not necessarily as the main focus. AMD made the GPGPU switch with the 28nm transition so the 7970 isn't a massive, power hungry monster, but (again, like the 580) I expect a refined part later in 2012 delivering "what people expected from the 7970". As a side bonus to the new architecture, overclocking actually yields good results, and it should have plenty of room to stretch with the new die size.

At $550 it's actually pretty damn good against the 580 at $500, which badly needs a reduction to sane levels (~$400) so the 7970 can follow it down. As long as Nvidia's prices stand, I can't see the 7950 coming in at $400...guess it'll depend on how "disabled" it is.

Love the low power states (CF cards shutting off when not in use? fantastic!), HATE the noise over temps choice. Easy pass for 6900 series owners, hopefully by January 9th we have a better picture of the rest of the forthcoming lineup.

 

[AtenRa]

According to NV's roadmaps presented at conferences, gk100 is not due for 2012, period.

Link please

 

[Grooveriding]

I feel like this is going to be X1800XT all over again. AMD will do an X1950XT style refresh with a healthy performance boost.

Looking at the performance I am waiting for exactly this. A certain apex of performance would of been enough to just jump on board, apex not reached, I am waiting to see what is to come

For someone who is in the market today for a top-tier GPU and is not happy with the performance they have right now and want to get into this performance segment, the 7970 is amazing and is going to make them very happy. I'm sure we'll be seeing threads on successful auto-notifiy emails from newegg anecdotes.

 

[Silverforce11]

Ya, if a gamer was already willing to pony up $ for a GTX580, of course it's much better to grab an HD7970.

But you have to admit, the main reason this card looks "good" is because HD6970 sucked in DX11. Compared to GTX580, it's only 30% faster, which isn't typical at all for a next generation on a new node. I feel like this is going to be X1800XT all over again. AMD will do an X1950XT style refresh with a healthy performance boost. Unless AMD partners launch 1.1ghz cards and drivers improve performance by 10-15%, they'll have no way to compete with NV's next generation architecture on 28nm with this card. That means the $549 price is going to tumble immediately the day NV releases its cards. If you got $ to spare, $550 over $450-500 GTX580 is a no brainer. Persoanlly, I have a feeling this card will lose a lot of value within 12 months as competition really heats up.

You forget a major factor: TDP and die size. I know this is lost on many gamers, they don't care about perf/w at all, especially since they live in places with cheap electricity. When you have to pay five times as much for power, 50-100W difference matters. Importantly, when server clusters and HPC is concerned, perf/w is critical.

IF the 7970 was designed with 300W and 550mm2 in mind, it would smoke the gtx580 delivering double performance.

But it's not, its designed with ~200W and 365mm2. The only reason its priced $550 is because it can since there's no competition. Whenever gk104 comes and if its around gtx590 levels, AMD can price cut. If its NOT at gtx590 levels, then it will be pretty damn close to the matured 7970.

@AtenRa: NV's recent presentation in china, Kepler spacing suggests mid-2012 release. Unless you believe they are launching high end first, then it has to be gk104.

Geforce-K Q1 FY13 (mid-2012)

 

[RussianSensation]

I hope NV drops the price of the 580 to $380 and then everything else downward has to follow, allowing gamers to buy HD6950 / GTX560 Ti for $150-160. That would actually one of the best things about the HD7970

IF the 7970 was designed with 300W and 550mm2 in mind, it would smoke the gtx580 delivering double performance.

That would have been EPIC. If HD7970 was even 430-450 mm2, with 48 ROPs, 1100 clocks out of the gate, it would have been insane.

 

[Cookie Monster]

On that note, for anyone who is curious about idle clockspeeds and power consumption with multiple monitors, it has not changed relative to the 6970. When using a TMDS-type monitor along with any other monitor, AMD has to raise their idle clockspeeds from 350MHz core and 600Mhz memory to 350MHz core and the full 5.5GHz speed for memory, with the power penalty for that being around 30W. Matched timing monitors used exclusively over DisplayPort will continue to be the only way to be able to use multiple monitors without incurring an idle penalty.

Damn it..

 

[Mistwalker]

Actually, some of the reviews reporting very impressive overclocking put these cards within spitting distance of current dual-GPU cards, and that's at stock voltage. Smaller manufacturing process + non-massive power hungry card = fantastic overclocker.

Really, really looking forward to what the 7950 can do.

 

[Nintendesert]

I hope NV drops the price of the 580 to $380 and then everything else downward has to follow, allowing gamers to buy HD6950 / GTX560 Ti for $150-160. That would actually one of the best things about the HD7970



That would have been EPIC. If HD7970 was even 430-450 mm2, with 48 ROPs, 1100 clocks out of the gate, it would have been insane.

They drop the 580 into that price range and I might bite! I'm not sure the 7970 impressed me enough to go mid 500s. I'll see what the 7950 can do and the overclocking.

 

[MrK6]

It's a very nice card and the overclocking looks like it could be insane. Unfortunately, at $550 it's just too expensive to buy one just to tinker with (although 1.2GHz+ on the GPU sounds so damn tempting). That said, there's also not much impetus otherwise as my current games of Skyrim and SWTOR play very well on my 6950. I'll be following the overclocking results though, as this card looks like it could be a beast.

 

[Silverforce11]

They drop the 580 into that price range and I might bite! I'm not sure the 7970 impressed me enough to go mid 500s. I'll see what the 7950 can do and the overclocking.

Pretty damn beastly OC @ stock voltage. Kinda makes you see it in a new light when you compare its competitors (price/power).

 

[AtenRa]

@AtenRa: NV's recent presentation in china, Kepler spacing suggests mid-2012 release. Unless you believe they are launching high end first, then it has to be gk104.

Geforce-K Q1 FY13 (mid-2012)

First slide is about drivers, second slide is not an official NV road map and I dont see GK100 anywhere in those slides

 

[blastingcap]

Ya, if a gamer was already willing to pony up $ for a GTX580, of course it's much better to grab an HD7970.

But you have to admit, the main reason this card looks "good" is because HD6970 sucked in DX11. Compared to GTX580, it's only 30% faster, which isn't typical at all for a next generation on a new node. I feel like this is going to be X1800XT all over again. AMD will do an X1950XT style refresh with a healthy performance boost. Unless AMD partners launch 1.1ghz cards and drivers improve performance by 10-15%, they'll have no way to compete with NV's next generation architecture on 28nm with this card. That means the $549 price is going to tumble immediately the day NV releases its cards. If you got $ to spare, $550 over $450-500 GTX580 is a no brainer. Persoanlly, I have a feeling this card will lose a lot of value within 12 months as competition really heats up.

Someone made a good point that people are comparing the 1.5GB version of the GTX580's price. If you compare 3GB vs 3GB the story changes. But not everyone wants/needs 3GB of VRAM.

 

[7970]

http://nl.hardware.info/reviews/2472/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review
http://www.ixbt.com/video3/tahiti-part2.shtml
http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review/
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/AMD-Radeon-HD-7970-Video-Card-Review/1458
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/33031-amd-radeon-hd-7970-3gb/
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/12/21/amd_radeon_hd_7970_video_card_review
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...rossfire-performance-review-introduction.html
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/fe..._7970_43_billion_transistors_pure_performance
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...-graphics-card-review-batman-arkham-city.html
http://www.overclockers.com/amd-radeon-hd-7970-graphics-card-review/
http://icrontic.com/article/amd-radeon-7970
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/AMD-Radeon-HD-7970-28nm-Tahiti-GPU-Review/
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/AMD-Radeon-HD-7970-3GB-Graphics-Card-Review-Tahiti-28nm/
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7970-benchmark-tahiti-gcn,3104.html
http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/graphics-cards/1289251/amd-radeon-hd-7970
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1805/1/
http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/zardon/amd-hd7970-graphics-card-review/
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/AMD_HD_7970/
http://www.lesnumeriques.com/carte-graphique/generic-amd-radeon-hd-7970-3-go-p12460/test.html
http://widescreengamingforum.com/article/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review-benchmarking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoGzSbaFVuI
http://www.clubic.com/carte-graphiq...0/article-466356-1-radeon-hd-7970-tahiti.html
http://www.presence-pc.com/tests/amd-Radeon-hd-7970-23426/
http://ht4u.net/reviews/2011/amd_radeon_hd_7900_southern_island_test/

mix of french german english russian chinese reviews lots of difference !! Have fun

 

[blastingcap]

Each company's strength is also its achilles heel, one takes it on the front end (nvidia) and the other takes it on the back end (amd).

AMD's small die strategy has been letting them get to market first and have it all to the themselves. This has gotten them penetration and increased sales. The 5770 is still the most used/sold DX11 card, in large part due to AMD having DX11 all to themselves for six months. Their downside is they can't match the top-tier big die from nvidia.

Nvidia's big die strategy lets them claim the single-gpu crown when they end up getting a card out and get the premium pricing for it. But they take longer to get to market and lose those initial sales AMD takes up, leaving them locked out of some buyers who went AMD and are not going to upgrade again for 20% more performance and more money.

If AMD has their ducks lined up they should get out the 7870, 7850 and 7770 in no short order before nvidia gets anything out the door. I believe they did this with the 5XXX series launch ? They should aim to do it again.

edit: A more direct response to your 7980 comment. Looking at the crossfire scaling, overclocking potential and thermals - the 7990 is going to be a complete beast for a single card. This is also where AMD has been winning the fastest graphics card crown with their small die strategy. They can pack two dies on a single card and keep the temperatures reasonable while keeping the clocks high. Nvidia takes an arrow in the knee on dual gpu cards with their big die strategy.

Hence 5970 was the fastest card and nvidia couldn't even release a dual 480 due to thermals, then 6990 replaced it and again the 590 is slower because it is held back by thermals. We'll likely see the same play out for 7990, although with the delayed nvidia timeline, I'm thinking it will be 8990 or whatever they call the refresh vs the 690.

The real money is not in gaming cards, it's in professional cards. AMD has tons of work to do to crack NVDA's de facto monopoly in professional graphics. GCN may help.

 

[Silverforce11]

First slide is about drivers, second slide is not an official NV road map and I dont see GK100 anywhere in those slides

Drivers as in "$$$" income for NV. Big games starting off, fits with BF3, Skyrim, CoD and a few other big AAA titles this quarter. Then their tablet stuff next Q, and Kepler a Q after that. Mid-2012.

So you think they launching high end kepler gk100 first? Mighty optimistic and contrary to the rumors which suggest gk104 first.

 

[7970]

http://www.vortez.net/articles_pages/amd_hd7970_3gb_tahiti_review,1.html

 

[AtenRa]

Q1 2012 for the GeForce-K, i will guess it is a GTX580 replacement and not GTX560.

 

[Silverforce11]

Q1 2012 for the GeForce-K, i will guess it is a GTX580 replacement and not GTX560.

That's Q1 Financial Year 2013, which is mid-2012.

If gk104 is "slightly faster" than gtx580 as per rumors, thats a competitor to the 7970, in fact, it may even lose by then as GCN drivers mature.

gk100.. still nothing even remotely close to concrete and your guess is as good as anyones, as i've said, may as well compare it to unicorns.

 

[AtenRa]

2012 is Financial Year 2013, Kal-El Tablets were released in Q4 2011 as the slide shows. So according to the above slide, GeForce-K is supposed to be released in Q1 2012 (January to March).

How come the rumored GK104 with 50% more Cuda cores will be slightly faster than GTX580 ?? even if it will be 25% faster than GTX580 it will be equal or 5% faster than HD7970.

Any way, no point talking about it in this thread

 

[Gloomy]

If Nvidia releases 6 months from now they better be a lot better than the 7xxx. Just sayin'

lets see how many more times we can quote all the benchmarks, while adding less then a sentence to personal post.

its over, this thread is finished

 

[Red Hawk]

So, what I've picked out that I find personally relevant:

--The tessellation engine is fundamentally the same as that in the 6970, but it's been tweaked to the point that it can compete with Nvidia's tessellation engine at high tessellation loads;
--Video Codec Engine is AMD's answer to Intel's QuickSync. I figured AMD wouldn't let Intel get away with stealing the thunder from dedicated GPUs for encoding. It's only a matter of time until this gets incorporated into Fusion APUs.
--The 7970 is significantly faster than the 580 right now. As AMD works to tune and tweak the drivers, that gap is only going to increase.
--Bandwidth over PCI-E is much more important for compute functions. Suddenly I'm regretting not bothering with PCI-E 3.0 for my current build.
--In a response to Anandtech over anti-aliasing, AMD cut the marketing BS and admitted that post process AA methods like MLAA are inferior in quality to MSAA. They also said they aren't pushing for driver-implemented SSAA in DX10+ games; instead, they're looking to encourage native implementation.
--Substantial overclocking headroom.

The 7970 will never be a product I buy; it's just too far out of my price range. But the GCN architecture seems to be a success. They're ahead of their competitor Nvidia when it comes to manufacturing process, and the 7000 series should have an overall advantage over Nvidia's current 500 series lineup -- the exact opposite of their CPU competition with Bulldozer. The Anandtech review mentions that GCN has been designed with Bulldozer in mind, and vice versa. That makes me wonder -- GCN is a leap forward for AMD in GPGPU compute performance. Could GCN actually contribute to Bulldozer's general CPU functionality, and provide performance advantages versus Intel at both iGPU performance and CPU performance, when needed?