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7970 Questions

hopeful_builder

hopeful_builder

hopeful_builder

Associate
Joined
13 Feb 2012
Posts
543
So its come to that time that I need a GPU.

I've been recommended to get a 7970, I would also like to buy another at a later date and crossfire them, even though I have no experience of this.

My questions are,

Is there much difference between makes? I see the same card by Asus
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-268-AS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=938
and gigabyte
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-089-GI&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=938
and powercolor
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-140-PC&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=938
And why does the price vary by as much as £40 between these? Is it just brand snobbery? :confused:

(I have also seen the XFX series on offer at OC :) )

I'm really getting into gaming, but I still use my computer for video encoding and photo editing. Will these cards helps me in terms of this also? Not to bothered if not, I'm just generally intrigued as to if they will

I'm sorry if you get a lot of question about this but this is my final major purchase for my rig and I really want to make this thing count.
 
apparently driver support for 7970 is so good that people that have bought one are thinking of smashing theirs with a hammer;

ALXAndy said:
Had an idea this morning.

Given that my Radeon crashes if I let my PC go to sleep and then wake it (hitting space or pressing the power button) I came up with an idea.

If EVGA EU send me a GTX 590 I will take the 7970 out of my computer (filming as I go) then take it down to the garden before cutting it in half with a jigsaw fitted with a HSS blade and then smash it into pieces using a very large hammer.

We shall see if they reply :D
Click to expand...
 
The above has me worried. pretty much all the reviews I read about 7970's are glowing. And given as I seen 3 of them fitted to a 7.5k rig I thought they must be decent. Makes me wonder if the guy with the jigsaw is troll?
 
hopeful_builder said:
The above has me worried. pretty much all the reviews I read about 7970's are glowing. And given as I seen 3 of them fitted to a 7.5k rig I thought they must be decent. Makes me wonder if the guy with the jigsaw is troll?
Click to expand...

No troll. Just some one who like, you know? lives with the card and points out its flaws.

In gaming? it's what it is. A very fast card, capable of throwing around pretty much anything.

The drivers however? crap. But then I already knew that, given that every ATI/AMD card I have ever ran has come with a crap set of drivers.

If AMD were capable (well, back then ATI) of producing a good set of drivers they would probably have killed off Nvidia.

Back in the early noughties and late nineties ATI made tremendously fast cards for very reasonable prices. You only have to look at the 9800 pro (a legend) and how it cost £150 less than the 5950u and performed equally.

But, it's never as easy or clear cut as that. The first ATI card I ever used in 2000 had a driver that would make my PC's internal speaker beep, before hard locking my computer in Windows. I would then need to hold down the power button and reboot it. 18 months later they finally released a driver that stopped that happening.

If you would like me to just tell you how good it is in games? oh hell yeah, I can give you tales of wonder and greatness. The drivers however?

Once again, they leave a lot to be desired.

Go find the thread that was posted about their new ones.
 
thanks for your reply ALXAndy.

So would you say these cards are a bit patchy depending on which hardware you're using. This whole driver incompatibility on what should be a high end card is ridiculous.

And there was me thinking It was just a case of plug and play, binning the Driver CD its shipped with and downloading the latest drivers from their web site
 
hopeful_builder said:
thanks for your reply ALXAndy.

So would you say these cards are a bit patchy depending on which hardware you're using. This whole driver incompatibility on what should be a high end card is ridiculous.

And there was me thinking It was just a case of plug and play, binning the Driver CD its shipped with and downloading the latest drivers from their web site
Click to expand...

I think I have it nailed down now mate tbh.

I'm pretty sure it's my monitor it doesn't like. I run a 3D monitor which is passive technology. Meaning, that is probably why the bottom half of it becomes a black hole when I move things down there after waking the PC.

The glitter coloured squares? no bloody idea tbh.

However, I absolutely can not blame it on my monitor. Simply because my monitor comes packaged with Tridef 3D Ignition and that is AMD's chosen one so to speak. Not only that, but on AMD's web site if you look hard enough you will find a list of recommended hardware and monitors for running 3D on an AMD card, and mine is clearly listed there.

So the lazy ******** just haven't added in the support or fixed the issues in their drivers.

And this is common for ATI/AMD, as they simply don't invest enough into their drivers. This would be why the 79xx are underwhelming in BF3 and a couple of other games.

TBH? no one else seems to have the issue I do. That would likely be because they are running a basic straight forward monitor. When, however, you run something endorsed and recommended by AMD you expect it to work.
 
All graphics cards can crash, All drivers can crash. the jigsaw quote was abit much to be honest as im sure we have all had issues with Hardware. I had a geforce3 TD once, piece of dump. But I wont rate all nvida cards with a bad brush due to me having a gimped card. It happens, deal with it. Look at it logically. Any hardware can fail or be gimped when bought. Ever the so-called mighty nvidia.

By the way OP. You wont be disapointed if you did get a 7970, drivers work a treat, card runs sweet as. Game FP are amazing and they pretty much play anything at max.
 
DigitalPrime said:
All graphics cards can crash, All drivers can crash. the jigsaw quote was abit much to be honest as im sure we have all had issues with Hardware. I had a geforce3 TD once, piece of dump. But I wont rate all nvida cards with a bad brush due to me having a gimped card. It happens, deal with it. Look at it logically. Any hardware can fail or be gimped when bought. Ever the so-called mighty nvidia.

By the way OP. You wont be disapointed if you did get a 7970, drivers work a treat, card runs sweet as. Game FP are amazing and they pretty much play anything at max.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your input - especially seen as we have the same Mobo and RAM :) always re-assuring.

Is there much difference in the black edition you have? Other than a slightly higher clock speed?
 
Loving my PowerColor 7970 also, not had 1 problem since day 1 over 2 months ago, clocks like a beast, runs cool and quiet. Avoid Kepler, it's a rebadged hashed up mid range card to perform like highend at highend cost (LOL)
 
ALXAndy said:
I think I have it nailed down now mate tbh.

I'm pretty sure it's my monitor it doesn't like. I run a 3D monitor which is passive technology. Meaning, that is probably why the bottom half of it becomes a black hole when I move things down there after waking the PC.

The glitter coloured squares? no bloody idea tbh.

However, I absolutely can not blame it on my monitor. Simply because my monitor comes packaged with Tridef 3D Ignition and that is AMD's chosen one so to speak. Not only that, but on AMD's web site if you look hard enough you will find a list of recommended hardware and monitors for running 3D on an AMD card, and mine is clearly listed there.

So the lazy ******** just haven't added in the support or fixed the issues in their drivers.

And this is common for ATI/AMD, as they simply don't invest enough into their drivers. This would be why the 79xx are underwhelming in BF3 and a couple of other games.

TBH? no one else seems to have the issue I do. That would likely be because they are running a basic straight forward monitor. When, however, you run something endorsed and recommended by AMD you expect it to work.
Click to expand...

And yet, I ran a 5850 for nearly 1.5 years and it was absolutely flawless.

Any problems I had were caused by me, attempting to overclock. It was a VTX so I'll let you guys guess how well it overclocked. :p

I've said this before but I'm guessing problems are cause by certain hardware configurations.
So it's luck if it works nicely for you or not.

Either that or there are a lot of dedicated ATI/AMD haters. ;)

Edit: Grammar.
 
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Adster3000 said:
And yet, I ran a 5850 for nearly 1.5 years and it was absolutely flawless.

Any problems I had was caused by me attempting to overclock. It was a VTX, I'll let you guess how well it overclocked. :p

I've said this before but I'm guessing problems are cause by certain hardware configurations.
So it's luck if it works nicely for you or not.

Either that or there are a lot of dedicated ATI/AMD haters. ;)
Click to expand...

Only card I ever had from ATI that didn't have issues was the 9200 Pro. But, that goes back to what was IMO ATI's golden era. Their cards were absolutely stunning then. Oddly Nvidia's were utter garbage.
 
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