Who Snagged a HD 7970 Last Night?

[Creig]

It was a nightmare of a card, yet you had it for 3 years?

I honestly don't get all the whine about drivers. I had both nV and ATi for years, and never had an issue with either.

Ditto. In fact, I have an X800XT PE sitting in my spare parts bin that I used for MANY years. It got passed down from main gaming computer, to backup gaming computer, to wife's computer, to daughter's computer, to garage computer and finally relegated to storage for use as a replacement if someone I know needs an AGP card.

Still works perfectly.

I'm still running a single 2GB 5870 and may stick with it awhile and see if prices drop. To be honest, I'm not gaming as much as I used to and my 5870 still seems to have enough hp to run my games well enough (for now).

 

[hdfxst]

new version of trixx out that supports the 7970 https://www.sapphireselectclub.com/ssc/TriXX/TriXX.aspx

 

[SlowSpyder]

I scored two Diamond 7970's. $1100 in video cards but I didn't spend the extra $2.99 for 'rush processing' and went with standard three day delivery. I regret that.

 

[dust]

I scored two Diamond 7970's. $1100 in video cards but I didn't spend the extra $2.99 for 'rush processing' and went with standard three day delivery. I regret that.

Consider the "rush processing" when you upgrade the CPU, it may be soon

 

[blackened23]

I like amazon.com's rush processing. Amazon prime (free for students) 3.99 next day and free next day . No tax either for me, which is a plus...(and a better return policy/CS than newegg)

My 7970s are arriving later today:$

 

[Porter_]

behold! 7 more hours at the office....should feel like a decade.

 

[blackened23]

Nice! The black ed. sold out while I was in the checkout process at newegg

 

[SlowSpyder]

Consider the "rush processing" when you upgrade the CPU, it may be soon

Phenom powa!

 

[byteman99]

I ordered mine last night from Newegg. Also did the 3 day shipping so I don't expect it to be here until Friday at earliest. My GTX 460 did a great job of taking over for my dead GTX 280, but since then, I have upgraded to a 30 in. monitor and felt that the time to upgrade is now.

 

[dust]

Phenom powa!

I'm a little jealous

 

[NumericalMethods]

Mine showed up and is installed

Comments to follow once I run through a few benchmarks and play a round of BF3!

 

[blackened23]

Got my cards earlier today, been fiddling around with them.

So far my impressions:

- all games played have noticeably better framerates according to FRAPS fps counter

- games with high DX11 features seem to have the highest benefit. Games with heavy tessellation seem to do so with less performance penalty than GTX 580 sli

- I was able to get to 1175 GPU / 1600 memory with sapphire trixx. This is with default voltage, I did not up voltage at all. So far everything stable, no artifacts. I have not tried higher because I am testing crossfire and don't want the cards to get too warm

- reference fan is better than the 6970, but not terribly so. Fortunately, you never have to really run it past 50% speed. MSI lightning GTX 580 TF3 fan is a lot quiter, but this is to be expected.

- I was REALLY impressed by metro 2033 and batman: AC performance. Performance increase over SLI 580 is a by a large margin.

- Did I mention overclocking is ridiculously easy? Everyone download the updated Sapphire Trixx utility, it allows you to go past the 1125 limit in CCC.

- BF3 at 2560 resolution, crossfire scaling is ridiculously good. Can play it at max settings and then some with crossfire, never a hitch on 64 player maps

- If you don't mind waiting on the MSI lightning 7970, its going to be sick. I got 1175 (and haven't tried higher) with NO voltage modification. Just imagine TF3 ++ beefy VRM.

 

[lavaheadache]

I got overnight shipping and now 5:30pm eastern time nothing.... Kind of irritating since I usually get UPS at 11 am

 

[Porter_]

- Did I mention overclocking is ridiculously easy? Everyone download the updated Sapphire Trixx utility, it allows you to go past the 1125 limit in CCC.

any reason to choose Sapphire's Trixx utility over the MSI Afterburner beta?

 

[blackened23]

any reason to choose Sapphire's Trixx utility over the MSI Afterburner beta?

Yeah, I couldn't get past the 1125 limit in MSI afterburner. I'm not sure if i'm doing something wrong, but Trixx works just as well for me.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Mine just shipped... I cannot wait! 1.1GHz+ GPU, here I come.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

That's just crazy. My gtx 480 running at 1175 core would be insanely fast and probably take liquid nitrogen to get there. 1175 on a stock cooler is nuts. When they come out with an Asus DCII 7970 I don't know how I'll resist.

 

[nyker96]

wish I did.

 

[NumericalMethods]

Loving mine so far. I have tested up to the 1275/1575 limit of Afterburner without issue so far. I think the most satisfying thing thus far is seeing how much extra performance the overclock has added.

Tonight I only got to test with the Witcher 2, but the overclock I added took Ultra settings with Uber sampling at 1920x1200 from an unplayable mess to reasonably tolerable.

The card is good in terms of acoustics when overclocked. Significant airflow but in no way annoying or distracting for me. I get 77*C with the fan settling about 42% with an ambient of ~20*C. All in all a great first impression

 

[The2ff]

Both of my HIS 7970's go to 1125 in crossfire out of the box. Have not messed with the memory at all.

Best impression I have of these is the build quality of the reference design. They are really heavy compared to my 5850's and stay super cool under full load. So far so good, can't wait to fire up BF3 tonight!

 

[Panopticon]

What do you guys think about diamond as a company?

 

[SlowSpyder]

What do you guys think about diamond as a company?

No experience, but I believe the are average... no EVGA, but these come with a five year warranty, so that's worth something.

 

[blackened23]

What do you guys think about diamond as a company?

They were the best in the mid 90s but they went out of business, and then were revived by some folks that had nothing to do with the original Diamond MM.

I honestly don't really know anything about the "new" diamond. They were a great company a long time ago.

 

[blackened23]

Question: has anyone gotten MSI afterburner to work on the 7970? I've been using sapphire trixx, MSI afterburner is locked at 1125 for me. Using latest beta from guru3d.

 

[ViRGE]

Question: has anyone gotten MSI afterburner to work on the 7970? I've been using sapphire trixx, MSI afterburner is locked at 1125 for me. Using latest beta from guru3d.

From what I've read, Afterburner is limited to the Overdrive limits. You need to use the super secret launch flag (-xcl) to have Afterburner increase the clock limits of Overdrive.