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** ATI RADEON 7950 OVERCLOCKING & HEAVEN RESULTS!! **

Hmmm due a lump sum of cash inside the next few weeks, its either a pair of these and constant ear ache from the missus or a deposit on a new bathroom and slightly less ear ache :p

So this pretty much makes the 580 redundant then?
 
drunkenmaster said:
With the GK104 being linked with a $299 price, you can imagine where pricing for these will be in a month or two(sorry Gibbo). AMD are fully taking advantage of no competition we can do what we like pricing.
Click to expand...

No they are not. What they are doing is looking at Nvidia's "Fat and greedy" prices, comparing their cards in spec and performance and then pricing them accordingly.

How much is a 3gb 580? Oh yeah ! £430.

How much is a 1.5gb 580 that the 7950 will take on? Oh yeah ! £350.

AMD are taking the pee because Nvidia have taken the pee for ages. FFS, how can you charge frigging launch prices nearly a year after launch?

Quite easy if you're a fat bugger greedy corporation like Nvidia.

So right now AMD cards are the value cards, as crazy as it sounds.
 
erm andy amd are still charging £280 or thereabouts for a 6970, my HIS card i bought in dec 2010 is now a whopping 10 cheaper than what i paid for it 14 months ago :)
 
Hi there

Right some odd Heaven results here:-

7950 @ 925MHz / 5500MHz = 1504 points
7950 on 7970 BIOS @ 925MHz / 5500MHz = 1545 points
7970 @ Stock (925/5500) = 1584 points

So even though according to GPU-Z the shaders are not unlocking, flashing to the Asus 7970 BIOS is definetely giving a performance boost, though its not quite at genuine 7970 performance levels, kind of like half way from the results.

So either some shaders are unlocking or the 7970 BIOS is making other improvements, maybe memory timings etc. which is giving the boost.

Still flashing the BIOS is so easy anyway and it would appear the 7970 BIOS is giving some performance enhancement even when clock speeds are identical.
 
Foxtrot26 said:
erm andy amd are still charging £280 or thereabouts for a 6970, my HIS card i bought in dec 2010 is now a whopping 10 cheaper than what i paid for it 14 months ago :)
Click to expand...

It's still worth that, that's why.

When AMD get a range out that beats Nvidia like for like Nvidia will drop their prices. That will then force AMD to do the same on lower end parts.

Due to Nvidia having a commanding lead they haven't dropped prices of the 500 series. And given that the AMD range was always cheaper any way they haven't had to either.

Price to performance the 6970 is one of the cheapest cards on the market. And if what you say is right (not doubting you, I just paid no attention to the 69xx prices on launch because I wasn't looking for a new card) then they were very cheap at launch also.

But alas, this is what happens when one product has a commanding lead. See also - Sandybridge. That won't drop any time soon either, and given that AMD don't even have a paper launch or any exaggerated charts Ivybridge is a "free launch" and thus will come at a price.

The last time GPUs dropped like stones in value was when the 5000 series launched. Then the Fermi came, but were a bit of a fail, meaning Nvidia couldn't price them as they wanted to. They fixed that, 5000 series cards dropped like the proverbial lead balloons and so did the 4 series.

I mean FFS, four months after the 470 launched at £350 I got one for £179.99 delivered.
 
Gibbo said:
Hi there

Right some odd Heaven results here:-

7950 @ 925MHz / 5500MHz = 1504 points
7950 on 7970 BIOS @ 925MHz / 5500MHz = 1545 points
7970 @ Stock (925/5500) = 1584 points

So even though according to GPU-Z the shaders are not unlocking, flashing to the Asus 7970 BIOS is definetely giving a performance boost, though its not quite at genuine 7970 performance levels, kind of like half way from the results.

So either some shaders are unlocking or the 7970 BIOS is making other improvements, maybe memory timings etc. which is giving the boost.

Still flashing the BIOS is so easy anyway and it would appear the 7970 BIOS is giving some performance enhancement even when clock speeds are identical.
Click to expand...

Will definitely be interesting to test them on games, Crysis the original would be perfect as it seems to scale with shaders quite well.
 
Seems like a gem to me at £350 inc VAT.

But yeah as any company would they are delaying 6970 price point replacements to clear the stock and yes pricing hasn't dropped much (I paid £254 Dec '10).
 
straxusii said:
So overclocked we go from 54.8 to 76.9, that's a 40% increase which is absolutely mental!

Damn I was hoping to last until kepler turned up :(
Click to expand...

They are clearly speed-binned 7970's!!!!

Which means with a 7970 BIOS they will clock to similar levels, the only difference is 1792 shaders VS 2048 shaders, but your saving approx £100 for a card that nearly performs the same.
 
[WU-TANG]GZA;21102369 said:
Seems like a gem to me at £350 inc VAT.

But yeah as any company would they are delaying 6970 price point replacements to clear the stock and yes pricing hasn't dropped much (I paid £254 Dec '10).
Click to expand...

I don't think AMD made the same "mass stock" mistakes that Nvidia did.

The only cards that have really been truly stunning value over the past couple of years were the 470 and 480. I mean for cripe's sake, a 480 could be had in November of 2010 for £189.99 with free delivery :eek:

The hilarity of course was that the 570 cost around £300 and was pretty much the same card, only cooler and quieter. But, what most people missed was the first fix for Fermi - Adaptive performance. This led to very low idle temps, even on the 470 and 480 with those pathetic 1" fan coolers.

With a saving like that the noise at load was worth putting up with TBH.
 
To put it in short, for an extra £100 you get:-

Additional 256 shaders!
Faster stock card!
Best OC potential card!
Better quality and better performing cooler!
Much cooler case temperatures (Cooler design)
E-peen status!!!!!! :D :D :D

Too some the extra £100 would be worth the above, if I had a gaming PC I'd want the 7970, but there is no denying the 7950 is the better value choice. :)
 
Thanks Gibbo highly helpful reading:) looking to buy a system soon and this was the card I had my eye on just want ivy to hurry up now...
 
Gibbo said:
To put it in short, for an extra £100 you get:-

Additional 256 shaders!
Faster stock card!
Best OC potential card!
Better quality and better performing cooler!
Much cooler case temperatures (Cooler design)
E-peen status!!!!!! :D :D :D

Too some the extra £100 would be worth the above, if I had a gaming PC I'd want the 7970, but there is no denying the 7950 is the better value choice. :)
Click to expand...

You're tempting me with every post man. Boost in min FPS is tempting me to get rid of my 6970 and get a 7950 next month.

Damn u Gibbo and damn u AMD
 
If these turn out to be extremely close to 7970 performance in games then I will pick up a couple once the price comes down and non-reference coolers are added. Still going strong with my MSI GTX 470 Twin Frozr IIs - now they were some bargain - £295.98 for the pair! :)

(Bought from OcUK of course)
 
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