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Sapphire HD7970

Associate
Joined
13 Nov 2005
Posts
227
Greece here. :D
Both got the cards with phone order on 27/12 and
A friend of mine told me that his new HD7970 card is louder than GTX580.

hd7970.jpg

I take it's 579 euros?
 
Soldato
Joined
20 Oct 2004
Posts
13,059
Location
Nottingham
Is the rather silly xfire different res situation still in place on these cards or have they found a way to allow different (horizontal) resolutions ?

I for example would like to use ;

1200x1600 (portrait) : 2560x1600 : 1200x1600 (portrait)
 
Caporegime
Joined
26 Dec 2003
Posts
25,666
What score do you get in Unigine with tessellation optimizations disabled? (and what do you get with them enabled?).

I've heard that tessellation is improved over 6970 but still not that good at high levels compared to NVidia.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
7 Jan 2011
Posts
146
What score do you get in Unigine with tessellation optimizations disabled? (and what do you get with them enabled?).

I've heard that tessellation is improved over 6970 but still not that good at high levels compared to NVidia.

This is not just an improvement.
Here is a screenshot 3/2011 with my 2x6970CF.

unigine25.jpg


and now

uniginez.jpg
 
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J.D

J.D

Soldato
Joined
26 Jul 2006
Posts
5,223
Location
Edinburgh
:eek: It is good to see it neck 'n neck with 6970 crossfire :D. How are you liking the card so far or have you not had too much time to play other titles with it?.

Could you possibly do the Metro2033 TimeDemo if you have it please?.

Thank you for the information and that goes to Gibbo and Rich also ;).
 
Man of Honour
Joined
9 Jan 2010
Posts
13,721
^^ CPU is clocked lower on the 7970 BM :o (3.8ghz as opposed to 4.2 with the 6970's)
would it make much difference if the 7970 BM was @ 4.2ghz as well?
 
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Associate
OP
Joined
7 Jan 2011
Posts
146
:eek: It is good to see it neck 'n neck with 6970 crossfire :D. How are you liking the card so far or have you not had too much time to play other titles with it?.

Could you possibly do the Metro2033 TimeDemo if you have it please?.

Thank you for the information and that goes to Gibbo and Rich also ;).

This article on guru3d show more games.
Crysis 2 here shows how strong HD7970 it is.

crysis2w.jpg

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-7970-overclock-guide/15
 
Caporegime
Joined
26 Dec 2003
Posts
25,666
Heard where? As far as I know it's better than Nvidia's Tessellation atm.

Here:
http://scalibq.wordpress.com/2011/12/24/amd-and-tessellation-a-difficult-relationship/

This chart shows the performance of AMD’s SubD11 sample, which is included in the DirectX SDK. It clearly demonstrates what I already derived from AMD’s tessellation graphs: the 7970 still suffers from an exponential dropoff in tessellation performance.

Sure, the initial performance of the card is much higher than any other, but it comes down quickly, and as we can see in the chart, from about factor 11, it is already below the level of a GTX580. At about level 14, it’s starting to struggle to keep up with the GTX560Ti.

Diagram showing the dropoff here:
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/screenshots/medium/2011/12/HD-7970-DX11-Tessellation.png
 
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Soldato
Joined
7 May 2006
Posts
12,192
Location
London, Ealing
How does this translate to real-life performance though? Well, that is an interesting situation. The AMD camp has been screaming that many tessellation games and benchmarks are unfair, paid by nVidia etc, and they use unrealistic amounts of tessellation. Well, I have discussed Crysis 2 myself… And although there is some truth to the notion that Crysis 2 may use a bit more detail than required here and there, it’s not as extreme and unrealistic as some people tried to make out… As a result, the tessellation is generally within the ‘sweet spot’ range of the new Radeon 7970. So although the 7970′s tessellator still is not exactly perfect in terms of scaling, it is now good enough to stay ahead of the GTX580. Tomshardware tested Crysis 2 at Extreme and Ultra levels for example: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7970-benchmark-tahiti-gcn,3104-8.html

So that’s a bit of a shock for the AMD camp, I suppose. AMD is now outperforming nVidia in games and benchmarks that they always claimed were completely unfair and biased towards nVidia. But as we see from the German chart above, AMD can only win tessellation benchmarks if they stay below factor 11. Which is hardly unfair or unrealistic. Now if they turned everything hard to factor 64, then the AMD camp would have had a point. Now they just look like the spreaders of FUD that they really are. Being a neutral observer myself (and I suppose it also helps that I’m a developer myself, so I have a reasonable idea of the amout of geometry you can safely and realistically feed a card vs total overkill), I can look back at my earlier Crysis 2 posts without any shame. Nothing I have said is invalidated by the Radeon 7970. Likewise, being neutral I have no problem with the Radeon 7970 being the fastest card.
http://scalibq.wordpress.com/2011/12/24/amd-and-tessellation-a-difficult-relationship/
 
Caporegime
Joined
26 Dec 2003
Posts
25,666
My point is if you're spending £450 on a GPU you want it to be future proof but what happens when games start using higher levels of tessellation? is AMD going to start forcing lower levels again?
 
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