7970 After one day

MOOGLEYS · 19 Jan 2012 at 10:51

dave_beast said:
I came from an overclocked 6870 to an overclocked 7970, I game at 1080 and noticed an enormous improvement. Can play BF3 at ultra settings vsynced at 60fps, and it has better graphics than real life

A 1gb 6870 would have had Vram issues in BF3 at ultra settings. A 2GB 6970 manages it at 1080p ultra fine.

I'm not saying it's not better but if you have a 6970 and game at 1080p a 7970 is not going to give you a £500 boost of performance. If you are using say 2560x1440 or eyefinity setups the 7970 is superb.

oweneades · 19 Jan 2012 at 12:13

f00f1ght0r said:
Surely you'd need at least 2 in XF to get decent frame rates and med-ultra settings (game dependent, of course) ?

Well mine at 1075/6000 is 50-60% faster at 3560x1920 than my HD6970 was. At what amounts to basically high settings from a gameplay point of view (Shadows on medium and no HBAO) my HD7970 easily pulls over 50fps whilst the HD6970 was in the mid 30's.

Ultra settings (minus AA and SSAO instead of HBAO) is playable at just over 40fps average but I prefer to balance performance with visuals.

At this resolution the HD7970's minimums are higher than the HD6970's average... The "feel" of the game is much smoother as well although this is difficult to measure objectively without delving into the actual framerate in a second period.

At 1200-1250 on the core I should be matching HD6970CF assuming ~ 80% scaling.

I have said this before but I will say it again (again I think, lol!): The HD7970 is a complete waste over a GTX570/HD6970(et all) at 1080p. It will give higher average framerates but the difference from a "playability" point of view will be minimal barring a few extreme outliers. It really only comes into its own at 2560x1600 (1440) and above.

555BUK · 19 Jan 2012 at 14:48

Is there a reason why anyone needs 3 screens for gaming, other than "because they can"? My single 24"er @ 1920x1200 seems plenty big enough for gaming. Admittedly I use multi-screens at work, but it doesn't take a 7970 to render multiple Excel and Work documents. Surely, >99% of people who buy top end cards will game at 2560x1600 or lower on a single monitor? Even on geeky forums like this, most still "make do" at 1920x1200 or lower.

RedvGreen · 19 Jan 2012 at 15:15

555BUK said:
Is there a reason why anyone needs 3 screens for gaming, other than "because they can"? My single 24"er @ 1920x1200 seems plenty big enough for gaming. Admittedly I use multi-screens at work, but it doesn't take a 7970 to render multiple Excel and Work documents. Surely, >99% of people who buy top end cards will game at 2560x1600 or lower on a single monitor? Even on geeky forums like this, most still "make do" at 1920x1200 or lower.

I found I needed 2 GFX cards for 1920x1200 res to get playable FPS at ultra high settings.

Multiple screens can be useful for different games - flight sims tends to have the horizontal semi-circle (the 5xxx resolutions) whereas I saw a brilliant vertical side-by-side arrangement on the 7970 thread for FPS.

oweneades · 19 Jan 2012 at 15:17

555BUK said:
Is there a reason why anyone needs 3 screens for gaming, other than "because they can"?

Why do we need a reason other than this? Surely we could use this argument for most things we are interested in on here? :confused:

For me I have three screens from a productivity point of view. At work I run dual screens so it is only natural for me to run multi monitors at home. You can't game (properly) on dual screens so three was the next logical step.

MOOGLEYS · 19 Jan 2012 at 15:26

I have three screens and not for any other reason other than I thought it looked cool when I watched a vid and wanted to try it for myself. I doubt I will keep them as it does certainly look cool but gaming on them makes me feel really sick.

Secret_Window · 19 Jan 2012 at 15:32

People say it's overkill for 1080p but wait a sec, 3D gaming is more taxing on the card alone, let alone running in 120hz. Taking that into consideration, 1080p can therefore be demanding in the right circumstances. You don't necessarily need to be gaming in 1440/1600p to see the real gains.

Stanners · 19 Jan 2012 at 15:38

Secret_Window said:
People say it's overkill for 1080p but wait a sec, 3D gaming is more taxing on the card alone, let alone running in 120hz. Taking that into consideration, 1080p can therefore be demanding in the right circumstances. You don't necessarily need to be gaming in 1440/1600p to see the real gains.

Does ATI now support 3d in their drivers ?

I knew they had mentioned it but was not sure they had implemented it.

Secret_Window · 19 Jan 2012 at 15:53

Stanners said:
Does ATI now support 3d in their drivers ?

I knew they had mentioned it but was not sure they had implemented it.

I am not really sure what they offer in their drivers to be honest. But I do know you can use 3rd party software on ATI cards to do 3D, providing you have the right screen to do it.

oweneades · 19 Jan 2012 at 15:55

MOOGLEYS said:
I have three screens and not for any other reason other than I thought it looked cool when I watched a vid and wanted to try it for myself. I doubt I will keep them as it does certainly look cool but gaming on them makes me feel really sick.

Portrait or Landscape? I get the same feeling with the screen in Landscape but in Portrait the feeling goes away.

555BUK · 19 Jan 2012 at 16:25

oweneades said:
Portrait or Landscape? I get the same feeling with the screen in Landscape but in Portrait the feeling goes away.

Is that not simply because 3 screens in portrait are pretty close to the landscape aspect ratio anyway (1920x1080 = 16:9 and 3240x1920 = 16:9.5). The whole reason tv screens are now 16:9 is because it works well with a human beings overall view of the world. As such, 5760x1080 or 5760x1200 is pretty damn pointless because our peripheral vision cannot make out side detail anyway. Our eyes and brain simply cannot view and process everything at such wide angles. This is the likely cause of feeling nauseous, brain overload.

MOOGLEYS · 19 Jan 2012 at 16:31

oweneades said:
Portrait or Landscape? I get the same feeling with the screen in Landscape but in Portrait the feeling goes away.

Landscape as I cannot really do portrait as I'm using the monitors stands and there is no swivel.

Zeed · 19 Jan 2012 at 16:38

Someone thinking about electricity bill DOES NOT BUY ~460f card LOL
Its like guy that buys new ferrari thinking how much MPG will he get out of it. hahahaa

Besides that i would take single gpu card anytime over 10% faster crossfire/sli. At least you dont need 2 w8 months for good drivers and game fixes to play without problems....

oweneades · 19 Jan 2012 at 16:45

555BUK said:
Is that not simply because 3 screens in portrait are pretty close to the landscape aspect ratio anyway (1920x1080 = 16:9 and 3240x1920 = 16:9.5). The whole reason tv screens are now 16:9 is because it works well with a human beings overall view of the world. As such, 5760x1080 or 5760x1200 is pretty damn pointless because our peripheral vision cannot make out side detail anyway. Our eyes and brain simply cannot view and process everything at such wide angles. This is the likely cause of feeling nauseous, brain overload.

Potentially yes. For FPS at least I have found Landscape pretty much pointless. It is also a pain to use for "normal use" as the field of vision is too wide.

RedvGreen · 19 Jan 2012 at 16:55

555BUK said:
Is that not simply because 3 screens in portrait are pretty close to the landscape aspect ratio anyway (1920x1080 = 16:9 and 3240x1920 = 16:9.5). The whole reason tv screens are now 16:9 is because it works well with a human beings overall view of the world. As such, 5760x1080 or 5760x1200 is pretty damn pointless because our peripheral vision cannot make out side detail anyway. Our eyes and brain simply cannot view and process everything at such wide angles. This is the likely cause of feeling nauseous, brain overload.

You are kidding right? Brain Overload? You do realise that we have eyes that see images far more vivid, bright and higher 'dpi' than monitors in our every day lives. By your logic our brains are overloaded ever waking moment of our lives... :rolleyes:

wodgah · 19 Jan 2012 at 16:57

ManikMiner said:
True though isn't it? :S

No not at all but thats the conclusion you have drawn, i didnt know it would be black when I ordered. I did state my reasons in my first post but I can tell you them again.

1. Watercooling my system and wanted one gpu to cool rather than 2.

2. My cards didnt match which makes no performance difference at all but doesnt look as nice to me and seeing as im going to be making a little project of it, it bothered me.

3. Didnt want to pay for another radiator and gpu block right now.

4. I had the opportunity to swop 2 older cards for 1 brand new one and not have to pay anything.

Thats pretty much it, my benches etc were to show strictly on the heaven benchmark which is in this forum on those settings what the difference was and to iform anyone who was wondering that the ASUS card comes with a black PCB.

andybird123 · 19 Jan 2012 at 17:06

I don't really understand why you'd run 3 monitors sideways and give yourself black lines right in the middle of your vision when you could run one big hi res monitor without the annoying black lines

the whole point of 3 monitor is to give you peripheral vision to catch movement and spot someone trying to shoot you that you wouldn't otherwise see, not just give you a bigger 16:9 screen with horrible black lines in the middle, IMO

we do have peripheral vision all day everyday so you can't say that it causes brain overload, lmao

TheRealDeal · 19 Jan 2012 at 17:14

Its most likely motion sickness. As the extra field of view gives you more of a sense of motion. This is why 3 monitors are so useful in racing games as the feeling of speed is much better so you can judge things better. In f1 michael schumacher could not use the simulater much at first because it made him feel sick. Just a guess but its what it could be.

Syphadeus · 19 Jan 2012 at 18:40

Whilst we're on the subject of this Asus 7970 and all the price for performance and comparison gubbins, can anyone say why the Asus model of this card is commanding a £45 price premium over the next most expensive "stock" clocked model?

I mean, I know Asus is a good brand and all, but it's a reference design other than the PCB colour right? So where is that extra money going?

Crezzlin · 19 Jan 2012 at 18:43

Just gone from 6990/6970 to 7979/7970 xfx black edition cards.. Blown away super smooth all max apart from AA on Bf3 at 5760x1200. I was getting good fps on the 6000 cards but mouse to screen lag time to time and fps drops.. Runs like a dream on the 7000 cards didn't think it would but it does

overclocked them to thev CCC max without any probs..