[Official] HD 7970 Reviews

straxusii · 22 Dec 2011 at 10:10

MichaelM said:
£300 for a card that can get to around 6990 performance in reference design and no voltage increase? Christmas is a wondrous time of year but that's pushing it a bit too far

Erm that is exactly what happened with the last gen, check your facts.

5870 was as fast as 4870x2 and was £300, and was the top single gpu card.

roadie · 22 Dec 2011 at 10:12

I will glance through most of the reviews, but The Tech Report one is the one I am most anticipating. I have the most faith in their reviews.

In any case, I expect to purchase the 7870/50 next year.

Stanners · 22 Dec 2011 at 10:12

MichaelM said:
£300 for a card that can get to around 6990 performance in reference design and no voltage increase? Christmas is a wondrous time of year but that's pushing it a bit too far

So the card is £300 then ?

straxusii · 22 Dec 2011 at 10:15

Stanners said:
So the card is £300 then ?

No, Anand says the card will be $549 so converting to GBP and adding vat that gets us £420. Expect higher initially though due to the usual launch gouging.

DarrenM343 · 22 Dec 2011 at 10:17

It's no different from the last round is it? (first DX11 cards). So Ati rush cards to market which I'll add is not necessarily a bad thing, before Nvidia comes along with fully designed and developed cards to blow them out of the water. Ati then later produce some cards to try to complete before the battle commences again for the next new tech cards.

So if you want the single fastest card now you could buy the Ati offering. If not you wait for Nvidia. Ifyou love Ati you wait for the post Nvidia released cards.

Someone else mentioned the difference in comparison now between 6990(or 70) and 580 from when the were previously compared but it's worth noting both companies would have developed their drivers since. So reviews now probably way different than a year or so ago (or whenever both cards hit the market)

straxusii · 22 Dec 2011 at 10:19

The difference this time around is the new ATI part has 2/3 the performance gain of the prior gen performance gain and costs 40% more.

Purgatory · 22 Dec 2011 at 10:19

drunkenmaster said:
ACtually I've said many many times in the past that generally speaking you'd be comparing non refresh products,

Good morning mate

I will leave straxusii to do the maths for you

CraigN · 22 Dec 2011 at 10:20

27% increase at my resolution for a single card.

Thats why i run multi cards

I was hoping they would be cheaper than the rumoured £400 as i would ditch my 6990 any day of the week for something quieter.

I cant go back to the shocking FPS one card gives me though

MichaelM · 22 Dec 2011 at 10:24

straxusii said:
Erm that is exactly what happened with the last gen, check your facts.

5870 was as fast as 4870x2 and was £300, and was the top single gpu card.

I was not interested in discrete GPU's at that time so I can't comment on whatever situations resulted in that. Was the 4870x2 twice the price?

CraigN said:
I cant go back to the shocking FPS one card gives me though

^ This hahaha

Guru · 22 Dec 2011 at 10:29

James J said:
No offense to OcUK, but 3gb cards can be picked up cheaper. They do appear to be coming down in price nicely! I know this for a fact as I bought one 2 days ago to SLI. Arrives in about 10 mins according to my DPD track

I can't say where or for how much due to the rules on here, but I'd expect OcUK to follow suit with the pricing sooner rather than later.

You can say how much I think, but Defo not where.

Anyone know if 570's are dropping?

Surveyor · 22 Dec 2011 at 10:35

Guru said:
You can say how much I think, but Defo not where.

Any competitor talk is frowned upon:

Andrew Moore said:
Also may I remind all that talking about competitors regardless of whether or not you mention where is against the forum rules. This is a forum run and owned by a company. Anyone else caught doing this in the future will find themselves with an infraction or worse.

oli collett · 22 Dec 2011 at 10:37

CraigN said:
i would ditch my 6990 any day of the week for something quieter.

Doesn't look like the 7970 will be the answer on that front either!

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 22 Dec 2011 at 10:39

Looking at the tessellation and compute benchmarks the HD7970 does seem a massive improvement over the HD6970. Hopefully,this will be seen with the HD7800 and HD7700 series.

jakspyder · 22 Dec 2011 at 10:41

While im not floored by this release i say good on AMD for making a good card. Let them price it above a 580. After all it does beat it in performance. And when Nvidia bring out their next gen stuff to compete with it, AMD will hopefully have sold enough and be able to drop their prices to keep them in the game. When that happens this might be quite a highly rated card. At its current price though I certainly wouldn't part with my cash just yet.

panyan · 22 Dec 2011 at 10:43

xsistor said:
It's not bad at all... But now it's embarrassingly clear that AMD went overboard with their "OMFG!!! IT'S THE FASTEST **** SINCE FERRARRISSS! THE MOST ADVANCED CRAP EVER" "leaked" slide after "leaked" slide. And looking at one of the more demanding benches, it shows what a good card the GTX 580 was despite being over an year old, and officially now "last gen".

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review/19

i agree, the card is very good, but is in no way earth shattering

Owenb · 22 Dec 2011 at 10:44

Not all that surprising. Once NV started to focus more on GPGPU their GPU performance suffered and now it's the same for AMD. Unless AMD give up the smaller die strategy their cards will be either uncompetitive or just unprofitable. Hopefully they will not move the midrange cards to GCN as they are likely to be fairly rubbish.

xsistor · 22 Dec 2011 at 10:50

Owenb said:
Not all that surprising. Once NV started to focus more on GPGPU their GPU performance suffered and now it's the same for AMD. Unless AMD give up the smaller die strategy their cards will be either uncompetitive or just unprofitable. Hopefully they will not move the midrange cards to GCN as they are likely to be fairly rubbish.

That could also be part of the story.

flopper · 22 Dec 2011 at 10:50

Owenb said:
Not all that surprising. Once NV started to focus more on GPGPU their GPU performance suffered and now it's the same for AMD. Unless AMD give up the smaller die strategy their cards will be either uncompetitive or just unprofitable. Hopefully they will not move the midrange cards to GCN as they are likely to be fairly rubbish.

kepler face the same issues.
compute is more important for them anyhow due to where the money is.

xsistor · 22 Dec 2011 at 10:52

CraigN said:
27% increase at my resolution for a single card.

Thats why i run multi cards

I was hoping they would be cheaper than the rumoured £400 as i would ditch my 6990 any day of the week for something quieter.

I cant go back to the shocking FPS one card gives me though

You'll need NVIDIA cards then.

flopper said:
kepler face the same issues.
compute is more important for them anyhow due to where the money is.

NVIDIA has already been pushing hard with Compute, so their performance has, all this time, been the compute-affected variety.

SirCanealot · 22 Dec 2011 at 10:55

I have to say I'm a little disappointed. Coming from a 5850, it would be a big jump for me. But, somehow, I was expecting just a little more. Imo, AMD have seemed to have crammed tons of extra features into their chip which haven't really increased performance and may or may not increase performance in the future. Not sure how I think about that really.

One thing I was wondering. Will the GPU go into long idle when the PC switches the display off, or when the user switches the monitor off? I usually have my screen off time quite high since I usually switch my monitor off when I leave my PC for a while (screen off time to cover forgetting

). It seems like a silly question, but monitor off will trigger long idle, right?
Another thing I was thinking is what if I left Chrome open with some GPU accelerated flash open when I switched off the monitor. What will happen then?