7970: Another Disappointment from AMD

[Marine-RX179]

The 7990 was rumoured to be 2-3 months behind the 7970 but I can see it being delayed if they're charging £450-£500 for the 7970. Can see them hanging it back until just before Kepler is released and then adjust their line up in one go once the competition is known.

Problem I can see with 7990 is the same as the 6990...

Why the 6990 was never really recommended despite being the fastest single card? It was because of the cheap and loud hairdryer that AMD decided to smack onto the PCB.

If AMD going to price the 7990 at £800~£1000...they'd better comes with a quiet effective cooler on reference design and not smack a cheap hairdryer on it again!

 

[CaptainRAVE]

Problem I can see with 7990 is the same as the 6990...

Why the 6990 was never really recommended despite being the fastest single card? It was because of the cheap and loud hairdryer that AMD decided to smack onto the PCB.

If AMD going to price the 7990 at £800~£1000...they'd better comes with a quiet effective cooler on reference design and not smack a cheap hairdryer on it again!

You are getting confused - the cooler WAS effective, rated at well above the stock clocks for the card. However, it was also definitely noiser than it needed to be.

The main problem with the 6990 and crossfire, is that AMD's driver support over the last 6 months has been absolutely shocking. Huge game releases that haven't seen CAP drivers for weeks later. Even then, newer CAP drivers have broken previous fixes.

I always like to have the fastest card, but reckon next time I will go single GPU to avoid the headache of driver support.

 

[Jakus]

OK. Is it the best card to go for if the 580 is out of reach price wise?

I've seen the Asus 570 for £240.

The gtx570 is the best card available. I've had most of the cards and was lucky to get a 570 with a very good core, I game at 1920x1200 and the only game for me the card is not powerful enough for is Crysis 2 dx11 hires etc.
Now here's the rub, a 3gb 580 overclocked to 900mhz is only 2-5 fps faster on the minimum fps ! (not enough to make a difference) this new ATI card looks to also not be significantly up on that either !

I don't buy into this b/s about needing 3gb of memory maybe because I don't use multi monitor or play Bf3 etc
I would also not have given you this advice yesterday before the 7970 details came out.

Also realise I compare My overclocked 570 at clock-clock with the 580 3gb Your mileage could vary

I would never use more than 1.1v on the core on my card because the power/regulation circuit is pushed too hard IMHO, the card is reference cooled and I keep it in the 60's C (I have modified the cooling slightly)

If the Asus or MSI has a better non reference regulation I would go for that

I paid about £230 for the card and the best part of £600 for the 580, that's nearly 3x more, but would have been happy if it performed half as well as my expectations

 

[Jakus]

Can't go into detail but percentage wise we sell very similar amounts of both AMD/NVIDIA gaming cards.

Just out of curiosity Gibbo, what would you estimate the whole of the UK's , USA's and World's annual consumption of discrete graphics cards.

Just roughly

 

[flopper]

There is more value for a mid range card than a high end card with the price/performance factor.
I run 6850/6870 crossfire for a long time and the value for the pricepoint been silly good.

You pay a lot more for high end and the result is often not much performance for the money but then you got other things that compensate.
overclocking for example or just sheer bragging rights and those are good things to cheer for.

seems I get a 7970 then

 

[Gibbo]

Have you just dropped the price? I'm sure it was £280 about 10 minutes ago.

EDIT : Thanks anyway if you have. Will you keep until jan when I was planning on buying the card?

I did, back up now, give us a shout and shall sort in Jan for you.

 

[Gibbo]

Just out of curiosity Gibbo, what would you estimate the whole of the UK's , USA's and World's annual consumption of discrete graphics cards.

Just roughly

Not a clue.

But in the UK NVIDIA have the greater share overall, its just here at OcUK its a far more 50/50 split as we push both NV & AMD equally.

 

[Jakus]

Not a clue.

But in the UK NVIDIA have the greater share overall, its just here at OcUK its a far more 50/50 split as we push both NV & AMD equally.

Ah well, you have a question to ask the next time you talk to someone like MSI

Every now and again Steam asks if it can take basic information from your PC, it then takes you to the stat's Cpu speeds, memory, GFX etc, I've not studied it hard but it did seem more balanced with the GFX cards than it used to be.

 

[Jakus]

I just found this...

http://pcper.com/news/Graphics-Card...s-See-Slight-Increase-Versus-Previous-Quarter

Wow, more than I was expecting

 

[Yamahahahahaha]

Would also be nice to see AMD undercut nvidia and start a price war, but they don't need to so unless sales really struggle then I expect the price to be slightly higher than a 3GB GTX580.

Like the HD5850 and HD6950 I'm hoping the HD7950 is the sweet spot for price/performance.

AMD wouldn't benefit from a price war. They want to milk this advantage and then step it up when Nvidia's bomb drops.

Ideally the 7950 will be unlockable like the 6950. I'm sure we'll know as soon as it lands.

 

[Jakus]

AMD wouldn't benefit from a price war. They want to milk this advantage and then step it up when Nvidia's bomb drops.

Ideally the 7950 will be unlockable like the 6950. I'm sure we'll know as soon as it lands.

The unlockable bit may not happen with this new fab

 

[Nightglow]

Hopefully when we get the 12.1 drivers, we will see further improvements with the 7970 & other 79xx cards.

 

[magick]

I did, back up now, give us a shout and shall sort in Jan for you.

Will do, thanks a lot. Merry Christmas

 

[kitch9]

It seems like AMD can do no right recently: their Bulldozer chip was designed for a world that doesn't exist, and consequently is sometimes even outperformed by the old Phenom 2 Quads. Now we have this 7970, which by all account seems to be about 30-35% faster than a 6970, and (in terms of minimums) is only just ahead of the 40nm GTX580!

At 28nm you have roughly double the transistors per area compared with 40nm, yet the 7970, which is almost the same size as the 6970, is only 1/3 faster. It should be at least twice as far ahead of the 6970 even on immature drivers. Given that the 40nm GTX-580 is only just behind the 7970 specifically for minimums (which is really the only thing that matters), AMD is surely going to get destroyed when Nvidia moves to 28nm.

Think about it this way: For 3.4 billion transistors, AMD could have done no research at all and simply integrated two 6870s onto a single die (similar to 5870 vs 4870), ramping the clock speed up 20-30% to somewhere over 1Ghz (28nm would easily allow this). This would have produced performance somewhere close to a 6990, and far ahead of the 7970. Instead, AMD have spent lots of money on research and used 4.1 billion transistors to produce performance far worse than a 6990.

There has to be something wrong with a company when the fruits of their research are far worse than if they hadn't bothered doing any.

Thread title should have been "7970 another disappointing OP from a clearly clueless person."

Only a complete retard could look at all the reviews and conclude a faster, quieter and less power hungry card is a disappointment.

 

[cancausecancer]

Now we have this 7970, which by all account seems to be about 30-35% faster than a 6970, and (in terms of minimums) is only just ahead of the 40nm GTX580!

At 28nm you have roughly double the transistors per area compared with 40nm, yet the 7970, which is almost the same size as the 6970, is only 1/3 faster. It should be at least twice as far ahead of the 6970 even on immature drivers. Given that the 40nm GTX-580 is only just behind the 7970 specifically for minimums (which is really the only thing that matters), AMD is surely going to get destroyed when Nvidia moves to 28nm.

Think about it this way: For 3.4 billion transistors, AMD could have done no research at all and simply integrated two 6870s onto a single die (similar to 5870 vs 4870), ramping the clock speed up 20-30% to somewhere over 1Ghz (28nm would easily allow this). This would have produced performance somewhere close to a 6990, and far ahead of the 7970. Instead, AMD have spent lots of money on research and used 4.1 billion transistors to produce performance far worse than a 6990.

There has to be something wrong with a company when the fruits of their research are far worse than if they hadn't bothered doing any.

I don't know what to say. It sounds like you're ranting to defend yourself and nVidia but trying not to get caught.

AMD is a great company and nVidia is a great company. This chip is good just like nVidia's Fermi is good. AMD excited and underwhelmed people just like nVidia did. Just relax and support the whole industry rather than picking one side.

 

[HangTime]

Gotta say I'm somewhat surprised at all the negativity around this card, 'disappointing' or not it is still a fair bit faster than then GTX580. This is not another HD2900 fiasco, there is actually a reason for people to buy these (fastest single gpu on the market).

The easy response is for people to say "just wait until NV release their 28nm parts, they will wipe the floor with these" but past experience tells me that graphics cards (from all manufacturers) very rarely live up to the alleged potential / hype when it comes to actual performance numbers. Is NV going to come up with something 30% faster than 7970 at a similar price point? I very much doubt it. I'm one of those people that doesn't actually care all that much about how effectively an architecture is used, I just wanna know what the performance is relative to other parts, irrespective of how the numbers are come up with, old tech / new tech who cares.

Real question is surely around whether they can release a moderately crippled version with good overclocking potential at a much more competitive price point (also opening up the prospect of a crossfire monster).

 

[Rroff]

Think the problem is, its a great card, but its not the card people expected for the 7970 and its a lot of money for what it is - and its quite likely to be superseded performance wise a lot sooner than is normal for a new generation top end card.

On the flipside tho if the 7950 has a decent amount of VRAM, around 80% of the performance but can keep the price down closer to the £300 mark it will probably sell very well.

AMD is a great company and nVidia is a great company. This chip is good just like nVidia's Fermi is good. AMD excited and underwhelmed people just like nVidia did. Just relax and support the whole industry rather than picking one side.

Fermi was hot, noisey and expensive... but it blew the socks off the GTX280/285 in anything shader heavy and most older games to and topped the latest from AMD to - while the 7970 doesn't really make the 6970 look slow in comparision and while it beats the GTX580 its not beating it overly convincingly a lot of the time and is looking like its priced a lot higher.

 

[arc@css]

I'm one of those people that doesn't actually care all that much about how effectively an architecture is used, I just wanna know what the performance is relative to other parts, irrespective of how the numbers are come up with, old tech / new tech who cares.

Same here. Seems like a pretty good effort to me, especially when you consider it does very well against the 590.


As mentioned, something like a lower priced 7950 should be a real gem in their line up, and will probably sell like hot cakes.

 

[233]

thread title is a bit well erm stupid.


comparing like for like to 12 months ago when amd-ati had just launched the 6970 its a good 20-25% up like for like compared to what we were buying last year. i'm sorry but that sort of performance increase in a 12 month period is pretty good in my book a lot of it will depend on price but when i look at 6970's selling for more now than i paid at launch 12 months ago i do wonder where amd is going to set the 7970 price wise. i'd imagine that it will obviously be more than the £300 that we are seeing 6970's at just now.

Personally i'm quite happy with the performance that my 6970 offers (i game at 1920x1080 but if i was in the market for a new card i'd certainly be hanging fire just now and waiting to see what happens with launch prices and of course the effect that has on nvidias prices too(as well as those of the 6950/70 cards

its a wait and see from me and if somehow they come in at £3-350 i would be very tempted to pick one up

 

[HangTime]

Did I imagine it or did AMD not claim a couple of years back that they were focussing on the mainstream / cheaper price point (under say £250) rather than bringing out expensive high end cards? I'm sure at the time it was a case of "er, we can't compete with Nvidia in terms of top end performance so lets market ourselves at the mainstream" but having come out and said that it seems a bit strange for them to be offering cards priced at say £400.

Thing is with a new card like this, GTX580 costs £350, 7970 is a fair bit faster so will be at least £400, question is for how long i.e. at what point will NV cut prices on the high end parts to try and remarket the GTX580 as an 'almost as good, costs considerably less' alternative, which could then force AMD to tweak their pricing a little (depending on where the 7950 fits in).