GTX 580 vs 7970

DamoTourettes · 22 Dec 2011 at 12:47

...so I play BF3 at 2560x1600, and with my GTX 580 1.5G I've been unable to run Ultra textures and any MSAA. I was hoping that the 7970 might have performance figures that would allow me to have the above config @ 60FPS, but it appears to hit that number I'm going to have to buy two of them and Crossfire.

Underwhelmed.

Yes yes - it's (slightly) faster, cooler and less power hungry beasty, but it doesn't munch the 580 the way I think lots of folks that game at high res were hoping for. I'll probably still buy 2 of them as Kepler is miles out, but I'd just as sooner buy 2 x 580's @ 3GB if they drop in price. Sitting tight on this one - could prove to be interesting in the price wars.

Thoughts?

porkmince · 22 Dec 2011 at 12:53

sit tight and things will pan out in the new year

nitram100 · 22 Dec 2011 at 13:10

DamoTourettes said:
Yes yes - it's (slightly) faster, cooler and less power hungry beasty

Thoughts?

What else do AMD have to do to please people? It will also be cheaper for crying out loud, not to mention the massive OC potential when the likes of MSI and Sapphire get hold of them.

DamoTourettes · 22 Dec 2011 at 14:47

nitram100 said:
What else do AMD have to do to please people? It will also be cheaper for crying out loud, not to mention the massive OC potential when the likes of MSI and Sapphire get hold of them.

Yes, but you can also OC a GTX 580 substantially - 900 out of the box is totally doable.

Let's compare apples with apples - at this point in time the 7970 isn't all that.

thezakarum · 22 Dec 2011 at 14:57

DamoTourettes said:
Yes, but you can also OC a GTX 580 substantially - 900 out of the box is totally doable.

Let's compare apples with apples - at this point in time the 7970 isn't all that.

Sounds like you've already made up you're mind.

DamoTourettes · 22 Dec 2011 at 14:58

Well I'm willing to listen to arguments - these are just my thoughts on it at the moment.

TheRealDeal · 22 Dec 2011 at 15:00

The gtx580 is probably on the limit of any gains it will see in bf3 where as i think theres more performance to be had from the 7970 in pretty much all games considering its a new architecture. Bf3 is pretty much a pc poster child game and i would think amd would want there new star to do better than it currently does in this game.

DamoTourettes · 22 Dec 2011 at 15:03

Interesting take that Anandtech has on it - apparently Nvidia uses some special commands to increase FPS in BF3...

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

Mr Paul · 22 Dec 2011 at 15:31

DamoTourettes said:
Interesting take that Anandtech has on it - apparently Nvidia uses some special commands to increase FPS in BF3...

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

Indeed, what is this "Driver Command Lists"???

I wonder if it's something AMD can implement???

Mojo · 22 Dec 2011 at 17:34

Mr Paul said:
Indeed, what is this "Driver Command Lists"???

I wonder if it's something AMD can implement???

I'm sure AMD will try their utmost. BF3 is used extensively by all the Hardware websites but it is preferential to Nvidia hardware at the moment.

I try to ignore the benchmarks for games that work better on one brand over another (Far Cry 2 for Nvidia, Stalker games for AMD etc) but such a large release as BF3 doing the same is going to be a sticking point for AMD. Check out some launch reviews down the line, as this is still essentially a paper launch using Beta drivers.

J.D · 23 Dec 2011 at 03:51

DamoTourettes said:
Interesting take that Anandtech has on it - apparently Nvidia uses some special commands to increase FPS in BF3...

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

This smells of ASSassins creed. Nvidia asked Ubisoft to thwart the gains AMD had in their sponsored title. Ubisoft then patched the game rendering gains the 4800 series had with DX10.1.

I understand it on a business sense, but when I'm not gaining performances due to these practices, it kinda annoys me. I wouldn't hope for a fix, Assassins Creed didn't get one from what I can remember. Well, apart from not applying the patch

.

James J · 23 Dec 2011 at 04:15

J.D said:
This smells of ASSassins creed. Nvidia asked Ubisoft to thwart the gains AMD had in their sponsored title. Ubisoft then patched the game rendering gains the 4800 series had with DX10.1.

I understand it on a business sense, but when I'm not gaining performances due to these practices, it kinda annoys me. I wouldn't hope for a fix, Assassins Creed didn't get one from what I can remember. Well, apart from not applying the patch .

AMD did exactly the same thing with shogun 2 and the Dirt series so both are as bad as each other.

chaotic_uk · 23 Dec 2011 at 04:28

nitram100 said:
What else do AMD have to do to please people? It will also be cheaper for crying out loud, not to mention the massive OC potential when the likes of MSI and Sapphire get hold of them.

what will be cheaper ? , it is said the 7970 will be around £450 + vat and you call this cheaper ?

Rroff · 23 Dec 2011 at 04:33

Mr Paul said:
Indeed, what is this "Driver Command Lists"???

I wonder if it's something AMD can implement???

Off the top of my head its threaded driver command queues but I've not looked into it in any depth. AFAIK theres no real gains from using it on current GPUs (possibly 79xx series aside) and don't think theres any negative side effects performance wise in supporting it.

ThePengu1n · 23 Dec 2011 at 12:05

Give AMD a month to get their drivers sorted, then start comparing the 7970 to its current "last gen#" competition, I suspect significant improvements in the not so distant future, i.e. by the timne you can actually buy these cards.

Davefran · 23 Dec 2011 at 12:22

chaotic_uk said:
what will be cheaper ? , it is said the 7970 will be around £450 + vat and you call this cheaper ?

They're not even on sale yet, you don't know what price they'll actually be until you can buy one.

andybird123 · 23 Dec 2011 at 12:26

it'll all come down to pricing - similarly if the 7950 is unlockable that will also be a very interesting card to watch

Jokester · 23 Dec 2011 at 12:31

Yeah if the 7950 comes in at about £300-£350 and it unlocks, good times. I don't think AMD will make the same mistake again though.

xsistor · 23 Dec 2011 at 12:33

J.D said:
This smells of ASSassins creed. Nvidia asked Ubisoft to thwart the gains AMD had in their sponsored title. Ubisoft then patched the game rendering gains the 4800 series had with DX10.1.

I understand it on a business sense, but when I'm not gaining performances due to these practices, it kinda annoys me. I wouldn't hope for a fix, Assassins Creed didn't get one from what I can remember. Well, apart from not applying the patch .

Ah yes, the good old, "I don't understand X and my favourite card manufacturer is losing out cos of X so it must be NVIDIA's fault" argument.

Direct3D 11 deferred context command lists are a multi-threading feature in DirectX 11 defined by microsoft that NVIDIA added driver support for in CUDA 4.0 (iirc). If AMD is limping along on this front without driver support for a multithreading DX11 feature (and they claim to be all up in DX11!) it's their own damn fault. Sheesh! The level of fanboism here is ridiculous.

xsistor · 23 Dec 2011 at 12:35

Rroff said:
Off the top of my head its threaded driver command queues but I've not looked into it in any depth. AFAIK theres no real gains from using it on current GPUs (possibly 79xx series aside) and don't think theres any negative side effects performance wise in supporting it.

The lack of performance effect is only in the case where the DX runtime software emulates the feature iirc... i.e. in not supporting it.