Is it me or is anyo9ne else not that excited about the 7900 release

Secret_Window · 11 Jan 2012 at 17:39

I want to SLI my 570 before opting for a 7970. Especially if I can get another 570 with the same clock speed as my current one. :cool:

chaparral · 11 Jan 2012 at 17:58

Is it me or is anyo9ne else not that excited about the 7900 release

Problem is there nothing to get excited about when the old highend GPU cards can run every game fine

nitram100 · 11 Jan 2012 at 18:01

I'm not excited for 2 reasons, a) my 5850 runs just fine and b) Can't afford it.

melmac · 11 Jan 2012 at 18:08

Erm, I don't get this at all. Why wouldn't AMD price this at around the same as the 3Gb 580's. If you want to blame somebody for the overpricing blame Nvidia. They have shown that people will pay a premium for the best card, look at the difference in pricing between the 580 and the 570.

So now AMD release the fastest single card on the planet, with 3GB of ram and amazing overclocking ability and people expected to be priced lower than the worse performing card from Nvidia? Really? AMD will charge whatever the market will pay.

And since Kepler is still 6 months away then all you can compare it to is a year old card.

AMD had to price the the 6970 and 6950 so low as they were competing with the 570. But now that they have the fastest card it would be daft for them to sell their card cheaper than a year old nvidia model. It would make no sense at all. Count us lucky that they are selling it at roughly the same price as the 580 and not at a huge markup.

FreeStream · 11 Jan 2012 at 18:12

drunkenmaster said:
Yes and no, the simple idea that AMD has been winning on in the past 3 years is, we can charge a huge amount and not sell that many cards, or we can charge a lot less and sell exponentially more cards, and make more profit overall.

The simple fact is that with the 7970 at £350, Nvidia(till something kepler launched) would sell handfuls of cards, right now with the 7970 at £450 + they aren't a worse option, slower, but priced in a way that its fair performance/value.

That is the point here, if AMD sold this card at £380, and had strict instructions with companies to not massively price gouge, then Nvidia sales would drop through the floor. Ultimately a 530mm2 core is still very expensive to make and selling them all for sub £200 would be a loss leader, so Nvidia would stop any more production or lose almost all their sales, THAT is a win win for AMD.

If there is more demand than they can supply then technically, the price is too low for maximised profits.

I'd agree with you that if there was a plentiful supply then it should be priced lower, but as long as supplies are constrained then the price will stay high.

The Cruical M4 is an example of this! Going up because the demand outstrips supply.

As I said earlier, by the time Feb rolls around it'll be around the £350 mark

oweneades · 11 Jan 2012 at 21:14

TheRealDeal said:
Not sure if this has already been posted somewhere but it backs my point above up. Hardocp done some nice overclocking results with an out of the box overclocked gtx580. The gtx580 gets soundly spanked. My only gripe is they never fully overclocked the gtx580 but if they did it would still have got soundly beaten.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/01/09/amd_radeon_hd_7970_overclocking_performance_review/2

They did overclock the Galaxy MDT in a previous review and found even at its max clocks (890/4400 IIRC) it wasn't much faster (~5%) than its "stock" performance.

The biggest issue with that card is the fact that Galaxy based it on the 1.5GB model rather than the 3GB model which is downright baffling.

Mookzen · 12 Jan 2012 at 01:00

MichaelM said:
Why are you taking it so personally? Just don't buy it.

Noooooooo, quick cover your eyes guys shy away from the painful light !

tereu5 · 12 Jan 2012 at 06:49

hedgey said:
its a crap overpriced piece of ****. and anyone who buys it = fool.

If you could afford it and don't worry about the costs why not?
Same as the super cars ...200K for a car that will never go possibly half the top speed but I can afford it & would like to have one - why not

even if I will drive twice a year

555BUK · 12 Jan 2012 at 10:25

TheRealDeal said:
Not sure if this has already been posted somewhere but it backs my point above up. Hardocp done some nice overclocking results with an out of the box overclocked gtx580. The gtx580 gets soundly spanked. My only gripe is they never fully overclocked the gtx580 but if they did it would still have got soundly beaten.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/01/09/amd_radeon_hd_7970_overclocking_performance_review/2

It is no surprise that a top-end 28nm GPU beats a top-end 40nm GPU. The 40nm GTX480 also spanked AMD's previous gen 65nm 48xx cards, but this comparison is equally pointless. The true measure of 7970 performance will be made clear once Kepler arrives.

edit: Just re-read that link, and it seems to me that for minimun framerates (the most important measure for good gaming experience), the 580 wins more tests than the 7970. Strange, but true.

TheRealDeal · 12 Jan 2012 at 10:31

555BUK said:
It is no surprise that a top-end 28nm GPU beats a top-end 40nm GPU. The 40nm GTX480 also spanked AMD's previous gen 65nm 48xx cards, but this comparison is equally pointless. The true measure of 7970 performance will be made clear once Kepler arrives.

Its not pointless, its amds top end v nvidias top end. Keplar sounds like its pretty far away with some sites going as far to say we may not see the top end until 2013. Until it does arrive with a faster card then the gtx580 is all nvidia have to combat amd in the single gpu department. If nvidia is as late as some claims we may not even see 7970 v keplar highend as amd will probably be ready or somewhere near ready with an 8 series. Its all ifs and buts but nvidia are looking like they are gonna be pretty late to the party.

Read it again and have a look at the realtime frame graphs for a real look at min fps. For the majority of the time the 7970 minimums are way above the gtx580 average.

555BUK · 12 Jan 2012 at 10:36

TheRealDeal said:
Read it again and have a look at the realtime frame graphs for a real look at min fps.

I have, and strangely the 580 has better minimun FPS within the majority of tests. Hard to believe considering the 580 was only the 1.5GB version.

TheRealDeal · 12 Jan 2012 at 10:38

555BUK said:
I have, and strangely the 580 has better minimun FPS within the majority of tests.

Look at the blue line and then look at the red line. You cant seriously tell me because the blue line dips below the red line for a split second over the whole test that the gtx580 has better min fps over the 7970. Even the yellow line is above the red line for the majority of the time.

555BUK · 12 Jan 2012 at 10:42

TheRealDeal said:
Look at the blue line and then look at the red line. You cant seriously tell me because the blue line dips below the red line for a split second over the whole test that the gtx580 has better min fps over the 7970.

Do you know what minimun fps means? You told me to look at it so I did, and according to these tests the 580 is just as good as the 7970 for min fps.

TheRealDeal · 12 Jan 2012 at 10:45

555BUK said:
Do you know what minimun fps means?

Offcourse if you look at the number, the 7970 has lower minimums in some tests but looking at the line its consistently higher than the gtx580. A number tells you nothing in the reality of fps over a test. Take skyrim for instance the 7970 oc is 98% of the time above 60fps where as the gtx580 is only above 60fps for around 2%. If the 7970 had dipped to below that of the gtx580 minimum for a split second would the gtx580 have better minimums. Numbers mean very little when you can have a look at the actual frame rates over time.

ebilcake · 12 Jan 2012 at 10:51

I'm not impressed, I spent less on my GTX580 when it was released.

It's a good card, just a shame they didn't release it a year ago.

555BUK · 12 Jan 2012 at 11:15

TheRealDeal said:
Offcourse if you look at the number, the 7970 has lower minimums in some tests but looking at the line its consistently higher than the gtx580. A number tells you nothing in the reality of fps over a test. Take skyrim for instance the 7970 oc is 98% of the time above 60fps where as the gtx580 is only above 60fps for around 2%. If the 7970 had dipped to below that of the gtx580 minimum for a split second would the gtx580 have better minimums. Numbers mean very little when you can have a look at the actual frame rates over time.

SKYRIM is an interesting choice. Within this benchmark the 7970 has a clear lead for both Max and Ave framerates. However, it does frequently drop below 60fps meaning that quite a lot of tearing will be noticeable unless vsync is enabled. With vsync enabled, both cards should provide a similar experience, with both dropping framerates down to 30fps when needed. It is clear that the 7970 is much faster/better if tearing does not bother you. If tearing does bother you, min fps is very important. The 580 seems to provide lower, but much more consistent average framerates (the delta between min and max is much smaller).

Marine-RX179 · 12 Jan 2012 at 11:21

ebilcake said:
It's a good card, just a shame they didn't release it a year ago.

This to be honest. The asking price of 7970 would make sense if it was released alongside the GTX580 a year ago. Now despite 7970 is the current fastest single GPU card, it simply given off the feeling of entering the court too late, and people are getting 1 year less usage out of it. Also, while it has moved onto 28nm, the currenty performance is still underwhelming comparing to what most people expected of the flagship 28nm GPU.

TheRealDeal · 12 Jan 2012 at 11:22

555BUK said:
SKYRIM is an interesting choice. Within this benchmark the 7970 has a clear lead for both Max and Ave framerates. However, it does frequently drop below 60fps meaning that quite a lot of tearing will be noticeable unless vsync is enabled. With vsync enabled, both cards should provide a similar experience, with both dropping framerates down to 30fps when needed. It is clear that the 7970 is much faster/better if tearing does not bother you. If tearing does bother you, min fps is very important.

I am mainly comparing the 7970oc to the gtx580oc as its not a stock gtx580. There is only 2 times in skyrim where the 7970 with the 1260mhz core drops below 60fps. vsync in this case would provide a much smoother tearing free game on the 7970oc as it will be pretty much a smooth 60fps.

RizlaKing · 12 Jan 2012 at 12:00

To be honest the only reason the 7970 is looking over priced is because despite age nvidia don't drop their prices so when amd come out with something better they have to price above the equivilent. This works out quite well for nvidia as they get to keep asking premium price for hardware out now and get to further increase the price when they do release new hardware so how about some nvidia attacking rather then constant slating of amd.

Not as much fun for some of you i know but why the hell one set of rules is ok for nvidia and not for amd is total fanboy hypocrisy. How much better things would be if people only bought considering their budget and their needs and left the brand loyalty rubbish out of it. When i do my upgrade later this year i will look at all the alternatives and as it stands right now i will likely being going for an ivybridge cpu even though i don't like intel as a company and if they manage to get kepler out and it isn't too much an nvidia gpu despite also not liking them as a company.

Those options look likeliest to offer me the best for the money i will have despite the fact both companys routinely act thoroughly unpleasantly in their business dealings. What is best for my money with my needs no brand loyalty because being loyal to a company in this day and age has to be one of the dumbest things you can do they sure as hell have no loyalty to us.

TheRealDeal · 12 Jan 2012 at 12:05

RizlaKing said:
To be honest the only reason the 7970 is looking over priced is because despite age nvidia don't drop their prices so when amd come out with something better they have to price above the equivilent. This works out quite well for nvidia as they get to keep asking premium price for hardware out now and get to further increase the price when they do release new hardware so how about some nvidia attacking rather then constant slating of amd.

Not as much fun for some of you i know but why the hell one set of rules is ok for nvidia and not for amd is total fanboy hypocrisy. How much better things would be if people only bought considering their budget and their needs and left the brand loyalty rubbish out of it. When i do my upgrade later this year i will look at all the alternatives and as it stands right now i will likely being going for an ivybridge cpu even though i don't like intel as a company and if they manage to get kepler out and it isn't too much an nvidia gpu despite also not liking them as a company.

Those options look likeliest to offer me the best for the money i will have despite the fact both companys routinely act thoroughly unpleasantly in their business dealings. What is best for my money with my needs no brand loyalty because being loyal to a company in this day and age has to be one of the dumbest things you can do they sure as hell have no loyalty to us.

Sums it up nicely for me. I might be going ivy bridge myself, as for gpu i am not sure. I will probably be buying before the summer gpu wise so will be interesting to see whats on the market if anything from nvidia. Nvidia always seem to release a nice card after i have bought an amd card or are out of my price range. Thinking of going for highend this time out though so i hope the prices drop some. I reckon £350-£400 is gonna be the max i will pay.