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7970 GHz edition v's 680 Performance Comparison

MichaelM said:
I went with Kepler for practicality but I'm not stupid enough to ignore Tahiti's the better performance chip when pushed.

If the GHz editions come better binned on a mature process offering more headroom, then AMD take the performance crown in my eyes. Stick them under water and they will run away from anything Kepler can offer with hardware.
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they're not better binned, just AMD have realised that they underclocked the 7970 when they first released it so are just releasing a new bios that ups the core clock slightly and printing a new sticker on the box for marketing purposes
 
I can't believe AMD would release a new high end card that at least according to their own tests doesn't beat a 680, it's pointless. The 7970 already competes equally with the 680 on price/performance so why bother releasing a card that doesn't retake the single GPU crown?
 
andybird123 said:
they're not better binned, just AMD have realised that they underclocked the 7970 when they first released it so are just releasing a new bios that ups the core clock slightly and printing a new sticker on the box for marketing purposes
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No proof either way on that one mate, really just down to if you trust the publicity or not, they will never confirm that they are cherry picked to be good oc becuase they wont test everyone to the max and the silicon lottery would prove them wrong on at least a few!
 
straxusii said:
To be fair I can't recall any posts of people not being able to attain at least 1Ghz on a 7970
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Yeah, to be honest the 7970s have plenty of headroom for oc. I thin kthe only reason it wasn't clocked higher on release was because it was against the 580 so it didnt need to be, plus then people could rave about how well it oc'd.

Now the 680 came oc'd boost questions aside they released a card intentionally clocked to be faster than the 7970 by a hefty margin, still to date very few reviews show the 7970 max oc vs the 680 max oc because at that point there isnt a lot in it, though the 680 is still the slightly faster card 7-10 times.

I would bet that all the ghz edition is the card being clocked where it should have been from release. Card will only be of interest if it really is cherry picked chips that oc like crazy.
 
I heard that to but then read in an article somewhere that that was only a start and they were pushing for stable 1100.....but who knows, when you consider what the ghz edition is its crazy how long its taken amd to release it.
 
straxusii said:
I think such reviews, whilst maybe an interesting read, are largely irrelevant. It of course comes down to what clocks they happen to get.
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True but in many way a stock 7970 is underclocked, so its not really stock v stock normally. My idea of a fair comparison with any card is basically a comparison of the cards at their max oc, that can be so certain as to be almost guaranteed (i.e 1ghz in the case of the 7970 or maybe even more) but then agian such opens the way to disupte from amd/nivdia fanboys about what said clocks are....and methinks they have enough to fight about as it is without throwing another log on the fire!
 
Jasonst888 said:
True but in many way a stock 7970 is underclocked, so its not really stock v stock normally. My idea of a fair comparison with any card is basically a comparison of the cards at their max oc, that can be so certain as to be almost guaranteed (i.e 1ghz in the case of the 7970 or maybe even more) but then agian such opens the way to disupte from amd/nivdia fanboys about what said clocks are....and methinks they have enough to fight about as it is without throwing another log on the fire!
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I agree in general apart from the bit in red.... Stock vs stock is still a useful comparison as much as max OC vs max OC (allbeit for different reasons). After all, stock is what the card is shipped as and what it's intended to be run at from the off.

If it is true (I don't think it is) AMD were only aiming for the last generation of nVidia's card when releasing their next top of the range card then that would surprise me. It's AMD's fault for "underclocking" the 7970 and just because it has a large overclocking headroom doesn't invalidate the stock vs stock comparison as long as the person reviewing/comparing caveats that the 7970 has a decent amount of overclocking headroom.
 
I think the 7970's were clocked at only 925mhz as that was all that was needed to beat the 580 comfortably, and their yield at that speed would be very high, meaning they could easily meet demand. They couldn't really target the 680 as they had no real performance estimates to target.

The reverse has happened for the 690/7990. The 690 has been released first and now AMD can fine tune clock speeds to match the competition.
 
psychodil said:
I think the 7970's were clocked at only 925mhz as that was all that was needed to beat the 580 comfortably, and their yield at that speed would be very high, meaning they could easily meet demand. They couldn't really target the 680 as they had no real performance estimates to target.

The reverse has happened for the 690/7990. The 690 has been released first and now AMD can fine tune clock speeds to match the competition.
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True up to a point - they had no definite barrier to aim at with the 7970 as it was first out - but clocking it lower is still a little daft when you know nVidia have a new card in the offing.

They couldn't target the 680 but they would know roughly in percentage terms what increase over the last generation nVidia would be getting.
 
Rusty0611 said:
True up to a point - they had no definite barrier to aim at with the 7970 as it was first out - but clocking it lower is still a little daft when you know nVidia have a new card in the offing.

They couldn't target the 680 but they would know roughly in percentage terms what increase over the last generation nVidia would be getting.
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Perhaps they had an idea, but with apple taking up a lot of production, I think they chose a lowish clock speed so they had a high yield and could supply plenty of cards, rightly or wrongly.

Its obvious AMD could have made a better/faster card than the 7970, but so could nvidia just by giving voltage control IMO. Gimping clock speed is more forgivable than gimping voltage control in my eyes, as an overclocker.
 
psychodil said:
Perhaps they had an idea, but with apple taking up a lot of production, I think they chose a lowish clock speed so they had a high yield and could supply plenty of cards, rightly or wrongly.
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Probably true. This would make sense. It's a good idea but I think they got their margins wrong in hindsight but they do say it's a wonderful thing :)

psychodil said:
Its obvious AMD could have made a better/faster card than the 7970, but so could nvidia just by giving voltage control IMO. Gimping clock speed is more forgivable than gimping voltage control in my eyes, as an overclocker.
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nVidia had a benchmark to aim at though that's the difference. AMD's benchmark shouldn't have been a GTX 580 + single digit increase. It should have been where the 680 came in or indeed slightly higher.

I agree though - it's a million times easier to place your product accordingly when the tiers of products have already been defined by your competitor. You can focus time/effort on refining so that you're slightly better and slightly cheaper as was the case with the 680 when it was released.
 
Jasonst888 said:
True but in many way a stock 7970 is underclocked, so its not really stock v stock normally. My idea of a fair comparison with any card is basically a comparison of the cards at their max oc, that can be so certain as to be almost guaranteed (i.e 1ghz in the case of the 7970 or maybe even more) but then agian such opens the way to disupte from amd/nivdia fanboys about what said clocks are....and methinks they have enough to fight about as it is without throwing another log on the fire!
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Stock is defined by the speed at which is ships at, not how much overclocking room it has. Stock clocks are stock clocks.
 
Both of these cards will suit many gamers. One thing people seem to forget is, a lot of people buy GPU's/CPU's and never OC them. Many users on these forums don't. I see a few posts of users posting the stats and those stats are at the factory shipped spec.

People moan that the 680 is cheating in benches because of the boost clock. Poppycock is what I say. Regardless of what the cards are capable of, the stock speeds are what will interest many prospective buyers.

I started a thread a while back and asked, "do you bother with Overclocking?" Basically I was saying that no game as of then/now is capable of pushing my GPU to a speed where it needs an OC and I guess this is the same for the 7970. If you was running 3 monitors I could well imagine that every frame counts, so an OC is very important but for me on a 1080P, not so.

Anyways, back on topic, Both cards look good for the non overclocker :D
 
Bobisuruncle54 said:
Stock is defined by the speed at which is ships at, not how much overclocking room it has. Stock clocks are stock clocks.
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So when a 680/670 exceeds its stock rated boost clock do you deem that as "overclocking" because you are going past the stock boost clock.
 
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