Where is the 7970 Toxic?

[p_monks33]

I have been waiting with my finger on the buy button since the 17th, Sleepless and weary I am. Where are you my precious? Why the heck aren't they showing in stock anywhere yet? Sapphire's site says they will be available for purchase on the 17th of July.

 

[zaydq]

Why not just get a GTX 670/680... at the current price point of the 7970 its hard to justify its performancerice.

 

[RussianSensation]

That card is probably going to be > $600 USD. You can get 2x MSI TwinFrozr HD7950s for that much, or grab a GTX670 for $400 and add a 2nd one later when it drops to $250. I don't think a $600+ HD7970 is worth it. Gigabyte HD7970 is going for $440, Vortex II with 1100mhz clocks for $440 as well, Sapphire Dual-X with a very similar cooler to the TOXIC is $460.

It was nice to see reviews of HD7970 @ 1200-1280mhz though, but not sure those extra 80-100mhz are worth $150-200 price premium. Also, if you are willing to pump 1.25-1.3V into an HD7970, then a lot of them can also reach 1200+.

 

[lavaheadache]

Let him get a toxic if he wants one. Heck, I want one too.

He has already had 680 sli, I'm pretty sure money isn't really an issue

 

[p_monks33]

I want it for the Vram, Gtx 670/80 lag with three monitors and all of the goodness turned up. I am considering the move to (3) 2560*1600 monitors that will freaking eat the Vram up. I game a 5760x1080 now and had issues with exceeding 2gb in a few games. I may just jump on another 7970 and put it under water. I need one with 2 DVI ports though.

 

[moonbogg]

what about two 4gb 670's? They are faster than 7970's and i'm not sure you could manage to use more than 4gb of Vram. Could you?

 

[p_monks33]

I would do (2) 670 4gb's they just dont have enough throughput from what I have heard to use over 2 gb. 256bit bus.

 

[DigitalWolf]

I've been wondering the same thing and even posted about it in another thread.


They certainly seemed to state that it would be available on the 17th for order... every day I search various e/retailers and the net in general. I even found it odd that there were no articles about the fact you can't find one... 5 days after all the articles about how you could order one later that day...


It would be more understandable if the date had simply been speculation in some article... yet the date was given by sapphire so it just seems strange and absolute radio silence since...

 

[p_monks33]

Also does anyone know if this is a ref pcb? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102995
Or this one
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150616

 

[RussianSensation]

what about two 4gb 670's? They are faster than 7970's and i'm not sure you could manage to use more than 4gb of Vram. Could you?

Not at 2560x1600. HD7970 easily beats the GTX670 at 2560x1600, by 10-20% and it grows to 18-30% with 8AA. In fact, at 2560x1600, an overclocked 7970 would even beat an overclocked 680.

The problem is I don't think HD7970 CF is even fast enough for 3x 2560x1600. That's 3x the pixels with only 2x the processing power. The performance would be much worse than a single HD7970 at 2560x1600.

Also does anyone know if this is a ref pcb? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102995
Or this one
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150616

Neither of those cards will work if you want to use ONLY DVI. Both only have 1 Single-Link (1080P) and 1 Dual Link DVI (1600P). The XFX dual fan cards from 7900 series are just bad all-around (Loud, hot and poor overclockers). If you want to run 3x 2560x1600 off native DVI only, I am pretty sure your only option is NV or 3x HD7900 (which is a driver nightmare I hear). Running 3x 2560x1600 with 2x GTX670 is going to tank in modern games without turning down settings. That's 1.5x the workload per card than a single 2560x1600 monitor.

2560x1600 x 3 is asking a lot of modern GPUs.

2560x1440 noAA
GTX670 SLI = 128 fps --> / 3 monitor workload (very rough estimate) = 43 fps average
GTX670 Tri-SLI = 158 fps --> / 3 monitors = 53 fps average

2560x1440 4AA/16AF
GTX670 SLI = 96 fps --> / 3 monitors = 32 fps average
GTX670 Tri-SLI = 120 fps --> / 3 monitors = 40 fps average

2560x1600 is also 11% more pixels, so it'll be even slower than that. Obviously it won't be exactly 3x the workload since not all 3 screens will display equal workload but you can see it'll still be pretty tough.

 

[p_monks33]

Thanks for all the help russian. The way it looks, I may be waiting a little longer on (3) 2560x1600 panels. I still need to have dual link DVI though. My three monitors are 120hz and they won't run off of single dvi. I will keep my two 560's until big kepler hits the market I suppose. I am going to watercool so thats the reason for looking into 7970's, I hear they are beastly overclockers under water. I also wonder if the 7 series is like the 6 series in that the monitors all run off the top card, in that case I would still be screwed to run 3 cards.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Not at 2560x1600. HD7970 easily beats the GTX670 at 2560x1600, by 10-20% and it grows to 18-30% with 8AA. In fact, at 2560x1600, an overclocked 7970 would even beat an overclocked 680.

None of those tests are with 4GB Nvidia cards.

 

[moonbogg]

i'm pretty sure the 4gb 600 series cards would be great. But like OP said, waiting for big kepler is probably a much better idea for this kind of use. Grab 2 of those bad boys and you should be good to go.

 

[Silverforce11]

Nobody knows when big K is going to be released for consumers.

If its in 2013 u may as well judge big K vs 8970 and see. 2 current top gpus isn't enough for 3x 1600p monitors, no way. It's barely enough for 3x 1080p.

 

[RussianSensation]

None of those tests are with 4GB Nvidia cards.

If you look at their tests (and TechPowerup/AnandTech at 2560x1600), GTX670/680 run out of GPU power, not of VRAM at 2560x1600 4AA. The problem here is not the lack of VRAM but GPU power and memory bandwidth (192GB/sec). This is what I am saying, you take 2560x1600 benchmarks on Tri-SLI and see the cards are doing 120 fps+. Now add 2 more of such screens. If GTX670 SLI was constrained by 2GB of VRAM, it wouldn't be getting 100+ fps at 2560x1600 in the first place. Now increase the pixel size 3x and instead of 120 fps, it's going to be more like 40-45 fps average. That's in today's games though, not Watch Dogs, Crysis 3, Metro Last Light. 2560x1600 (x3) is ~5.9x the pixels of a single 1080P screen. It would cost $1,400+ for Tri-SLI GTX670 4GB and I am pretty sure in 12 months it'll run out of GPU power for 3x 30 inch screens anyway once new games come out. If this was 3x 1080P/1200P screens, it would be different. Also, I am looking at the best case scenario assuming 100% SLI scaling for 3 cards.