Official Radeon 7970 Reviews Thread

[Kenmitch]

I don't understand why some of you are so disappointed. It's not revolutionary on a 8800GTX level, but it's still a damn fine card and a big step in the right direction regarding GPGPU performance.

I think most are comparing the performance of the 7970 to the GTX 580 1.5gb after rebates price. If you compare it to the GTX 580 3gb then the $549 SRP seems about correct vs performance with a deduction for the somewhat questionable nvidia only features. Give the driver team a couple of months or less and I'd think the performance gap will only increase. I can't see nvidia being able to squeeze much more out of the 580 other than optimization for newer games.

With the 7970 nipping at the heals of the 6990 and 590 it makes me wonder what kinda beast the 7990 is gonna be.

 

[Maximilian]

Meh, it only just beats the 580. Makes me think the 680 or whatever nvidia is bringing with kepler will flatten the 7970.

Power consumption and noise are impressive although performance unfortunately is not.

 

[Joseph F]

With the 7970 nipping at the heals of the 6990 and 590 it makes me wonder what kinda beast the 7990 is gonna be.

The thought of 9 billion transistors on a single card is just about enough to give me a "crisis" as Jeremy Clarkson would put it. xD

Meh, it only just beats the 580. Makes me think the 680 or whatever nvidia is bringing with kepler will flatten the 7970..

I hope it does. Then we'll get competitive price drops and more incentive for AMD to make a yet faster card.
I just hope that the 680 doesn't get launched too soon after the 7970 so AMD can make a good profit off of it in the mean time.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Meh, it only just beats the 580. Makes me think the 680 or whatever nvidia is bringing with kepler will flatten the 7970.

It more than "just" beats the 580. The wildcard is when Nvidia releases 680/Kepler, this snippet from Legit Reviews is somewhat worrisome:

We talked to NVIDIA today and they said they plan on releasing their next generation processor in the first half of 2012 and our sources off the record said it would be at the end of that time frame.
source

6 months is pretty bad, hopefully Nvidia will pull up their socks and trim that down to 2-3 months, I don't feel like being raped on price here. :hmm:

 

[Skurge]

So its not as fast as I was expecting, but it's a great architecture, extremely efficient for the 1st GPU using GCN. The 6970 was about as good as VLIW was going to get. The clock scaling is excellent.

the 7970 caught up to Fermi in all areas AMD was lacking before. Clock scaling, overclocking, Tessellation (actually beats the 580) and GPGPU. So as a gaming card, it's a little disappointing, but from a technical standpoint it's really impressive.

Even in CIV5 where AMD are still lagging behind nvidia, it still manages to overcome that and handily beats the 580. It can only see this architecture get better from here on. I can see this card getting another 10-15% or even 20% from drivers.

And if the GTX680 takes 6months or more to show up. I can see a tweaked/higher clocked Tahiti taking it on. A 7970 at 1125MHz is right on the heels of a 6990/590 without any of the disadvantages.

So it's a little disappointing I was expecting a single card I use for eyefinity and still get similar FPS to what I'm getting now on a single monitor with my 6870.

We'll have to see what kepler has in store for us, but GCN is going to take some beating. The 28nm process doesn't look all that great at the moment, so I can see it being better by the time kepler launches.

Good times ahead.

EDIT: The power use, noise and temps at idle are really impressive, so is something kepler will have to match. Also all the multimedia features the 7970 introduces.

 

[n0x1ous]

Nice to see the OC headroom and that it scales well with it for AMD this round. Still, based on its 25% ish percent average lead on GF110, I think Kepler is gonna trounce this thing.

 

[skycake]

Your link for the HardOCP review is broken. There should be a "22" where you have a "21".

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Nice to see the OC headroom and that it scales well with it for AMD this round. Still, based on its 25% ish percent average lead on GF110, I think Kepler is gonna trounce this thing.

And you think that by the time Kepler gets here, AMD won't have another card to combat it?

 

[OVerLoRDI]

If you hurry n sell those 6970s, the WC setup should fit the 7970.

Have you seen how more beastly it is in CF vs competitors? Add the OC headroom and scaling on top of that.

Uhhh, no?

Need a new water block.

 

[Subyman]

I'd wait for more people to get a hold of the cards before getting too excited about the OC. Tom's commented saying they certainly got a hand picked sample and we should not expect those numbers.

 

[badb0y]

Uhhh, no?

Need a new water block.

Are you using the universal GPU block or the Full card block?

 

[3DVagabond]

Meh, it only just beats the 580. Makes me think the 680 or whatever nvidia is bringing with kepler will flatten the 7970.

It more than "just" beats the 580. The wildcard is when Nvidia releases 680/Kepler, this snippet from Legit Reviews is somewhat worrisome:

We talked to NVIDIA today and they said they plan on releasing their next generation processor in the first half of 2012 and our sources off the record said it would be at the end of that time frame.
source

6 months is pretty bad, hopefully Nvidia will pull up their socks and trim that down to 2-3 months, I don't feel like being raped on price here.

Kepler release seems to be slipping. 1st half means after the 1st quarter, which was the original time frame. They make no mention of it being the 580 replacement either and rumors say Kepler is going to be released from the bottom up. Maybe that chart that's floating around is more accurate than we'd like to believe?

 

[Elfear]

Uhhh, no?

Need a new water block.

Hopefully EK and the other block manufacturers are able to get cards before hard launch. It would be sweet to have the card watercooled from day 1. 1.3Ghz maybe??

 

[n0x1ous]

And you think that by the time Kepler gets here, AMD won't have another card to combat it?

Kinda like how the 6970 was gonna take care of the 580?

yeah im sure they will have some refresh which will most likely be faster stock clocked 7980 type card.

No one really knows when Kepler will be here. No one even considered a 580 to be anywhere near ready when it showed up.

 

[mrcmtl]

One possible reason for AMD being conservative on the clocks is that they might need a higher clocked version to fight on later if needed. Right now, they don't need much clocks to have the GPU crown, so the smart move would be leave yourself with some headroom for improvement.

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Kinda like how the 6970 was gonna take care of the 580?

yeah im sure they will have some refresh which will most likely be faster stock clocked 7980 type card.

No one really knows when Kepler will be here. No one even considered a 580 to be anywhere near ready when it showed up.

Big difference is that 6970 was already pushing the top edge for that architecture and process. 7970 is clearly not near the apex of GCN, so there's plenty of upward space.

My guess is that whenever Kepler comes out, we will have performance parity.

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

One possible reason for AMD being conservative on the clocks is that they might need a higher clocked version to fight on later if needed. Right now, they don't need much clocks to have the GPU crown, so the smart move would be leave yourself with some headroom for improvement.

Exactly. 7970's as fast as it needs to be, and imagine partner cards with 1200mhz + OC'd cores.

 

[bryanW1995]

Your expectations just needs a slight revision. ie. it's already 52 fps @ 1600p in BF3 on ultra. How about running it on High for 99% IQ and easily >60 fps?

Some settings destroy performance for very little visual gain. If you just want automatic MAX everything, you will need 3x 7970 for 1600p, or wait for 12nm, but by then, there's probably BF5 that also needs 3x 9970s to max everything.

So, revise your expectations. Seriously, a single 7970 is capable of playing BF3 at 3x1080p on HIGH, that's impressive enough for me.

He has tri-sli gtx 480's, his expectations are probably a bit higher than most.

Anybody hear anything about Kepler? When is it coming out? Assuming they get even the very weak improvement in gaming that AMD got with GCN then gtx 680 will end up looking very very nice. If AMD can get a few months' head start like they did with 5870 then they'll be able to make some serious money. And those of us in the know can bide our time and wait for prices to drop.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

Are you using the universal GPU block or the Full card block?

Full card block.

 

[Nintendesert]

One possible reason for AMD being conservative on the clocks is that they might need a higher clocked version to fight on later if needed. Right now, they don't need much clocks to have the GPU crown, so the smart move would be leave yourself with some headroom for improvement.

No, I think they are trying to maximize the yields and get the most useable chips out to card manufacturers. I don't think all 7970s will get close to the clocks that the review sites are getting. I may very well be wrong though and the 7970 is like the 2500k/2600k chips.

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

He has tri-sli gtx 480's, his expectations are probably a bit higher than most.

Anybody hear anything about Kepler? When is it coming out? Assuming they get even the very weak improvement in gaming that AMD got with GCN then gtx 680 will end up looking very very nice. If AMD can get a few months' head start like they did with 5870 then they'll be able to make some serious money. And those of us in the know can bide our time and wait for prices to drop.

I've seen estimates ranging from 2-7 months. :\

 

[AnandThenMan]

Your link for the HardOCP review is broken. There should be a "22" where you have a "21".

Thanks, fixed.

 

[slayernine]

Not even close! It's not 50% faster than HD6970.

Only when you cherry pick benchmark results. When you look at overall performance in any proper review it shows ~50% gain on the HD6970. Some scenarios still require a dual GPU setup to get good framerates. Compared to any other single GPU card the 7970 is the best at the benchmarks you posted.

 

[AnandThenMan]

A little perspective I think is in order. When Fermi aka the GTX480 came out, this is what we got:
From techreport.com

These two new GeForces draw more power, generate more heat and noise, and have higher price tags than the closest competing Radeons, but they're not substantially faster at running current games. For many, that will be the brutal bottom line on the GeForce GTX 470 and 480. Given the complexity and the rich feature sets of modern graphics processors, that hardly seems fair, but the GF100 is facing formidable competition that made it to market first and is clearly more efficient in pretty much every way that matters. The GF100's major contribution to real-time graphics, beyond the DirectX 11 features that its competitor also possesses, is an increased geometry processing facility that has little value for today's games and questionable value for tomorrow's. As a graphics geek, it's not hard to admire this aspect of the GF100, but I think it will be difficult for gamers to appreciate for quite some time—perhaps throughout the useful life of these graphics cards.

Fermi, a new architecture, going up against the 5870, which is a tweaked and warmed over iteration of what ATI/AMD has been giving us since the 2900. Nvidia gave us about 15% over the 5870, at the cost of heat and power.

The 7970 is in contrast giving us 25% higher performance with much lower power draw, going up against a Fermi refresh. How is this a fail? And how can anyone even begin to compare it to Fermi? BTW, I take a bit of issue with the conclusion on Anandtech's review, seems muted. Compare that to what they wrote about Fermi.

To wrap things up, let’s start with the obvious: NVIDIA has reclaimed their crown – they have the fastest single-GPU card. The GTX 480 is between 10 and 15% faster than the Radeon 5870 depending on the resolution, giving it a comfortable lead over AMD’s best single-GPU card.

Meanwhile if you look at straight averages the 7970 is only around 15-25% faster than the GTX 580 in our tests, with its advantage being highly game dependent. It always wins at 2560 and 1920, but there are some cases where it’s not much of a win. The 7970’s domination of the 6970 is more absolute, but then again the 6970 is a good $200 cheaper at this point in time.

10-15% is a comfortable lead, but 15-25% is characterized as "only". :|

 

[SirPauly]

You also have to take in the context of 40nm Fermi going head-to-head with ATI's 40nm DirectX 11 hardware. -- and --- the 28 nm DirectX 11. 1 7970 is going head-to-head with nVidia's current 40nm DirectX 11 generation GTX 580. Granted, execution has its rewards and a company may enjoy the advantages and fruits but I think the key is what will nVidia's answer be for this generation from AMD? The answer for the future isn't Fermi but Kepler but when?