Read
THIS please. The 7970 is only 30% faster than 6970 and just 10% faster than GTX580 when averaged accross all resolutions and approx 20 games. At 2560x1600 the 7970 pulls ahead a bit more but it is still only 40% faster than the 6970 and 20% faster than a 1.5GB GTX580.
All this noise about the 7970 being much faster than previous gen cards is nonsense. It is notoiceably faster for sure, but it is very far from the Holy Grail of graphics cards. For me the 7970 is disappointing and overpriced. NVidia really would have to mess up on a scale never before seen for the 7970 to remain top-dog after Kepler is realeased.
I am not having a go at above poster, and I actually agree with almost everything he says. I am just trying to correct the misconception that the 7970 is ~70% faster than the 6970 in anything other than very specific circumstances. Never, as far as I am aware has ATI/AMD's current generation card held such a small advantage over the previous gen. It's only saving grace is reasonable performance per watt.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/20.html
Techpowerup for AGES have both been Nvidia shills, and ridiculous, their comparisons mean NOTHING, according to that benchmark the 7970 IS faster than the 6990, flat out, are you saying the 6990 is no faster than a 6970.
You're using bogus results, when they quite simply add in a bunch of cpu limited games, and, this is great for techpowerup, disabled xfire in later reviews in the game AMD did best in earlier on when xfire worked fine, because they are guilty of that as well.
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/12/22/amd_radeon_hd_7970_video_card_review/5
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/01/09/amd_radeon_hd_7970_overclocking_performance_review/3
The 6970, 48fps, the 7970, 71fps WITH HIGHER SETTINGS.
Yeah, its barely any faster.
At stock speed its closer to 30% faster than the 580gtx in deus ex, overclocked its over 50% faster....... yup.
It's really very simple, and try to comprehend, AMD released this card to get within a certain TDP, the 580gtx was not, had you put a 200W TDP limit on the 580gtx, and underclocked it, it would have been an underclocked card, nothing more or less.
You can NOT overclock the 6970 by 35% on the reference cooler, nor the 580gtx, nor the 5870, nor the 285gtx, nor the....... any other top end card ever, you can the 7970...... but its not underclocked is it.
Again MAX 6970 reference overclock vs MAX 7970 reference cooler overclock, the card is anything up pretty much 60-90% faster than the 6970........... but its not faster, because of the stock clock.
Let me ask you this, who cares about the stock clock, my 6950 is overclocked on a 3rd party cooler, compared to the 7970 basic overclocks almost everyone is getting, my card is averaging out 70-80% slower in the same benchmarks....... but its not faster. For the record mine is unlocked to 6970 and overclocked to around 950mhz.
This isn't a new argument, serious what would you have called the 580gtx if it randomly came out at 600Mhz clock speeds, but every single card could do 850Mhz overclocked without an issue.
Comparing rough average "max" overclocks on a giving type of cooling is both, useful because not surprisingly most users can achieve it if you probably can and therefore that is the speed you can get if you buy the card. Stock speed hasn't effected my purchase for 15 years on any computer parts. T-bird 1.4Ghz through to a 5850 which is 20% slower than a 5870 at stock, but overclocked to its max is within 5%.
What I can achieve on the average 6970 vs what you can achieve on an average(and we've still really yet to see driver tweaks, potentially more stable and better overclocking tools with more voltage adjustment, etc) 7970 the performance ends up WELL over 50% apart, and in some games, 100% apart. That is ALL THAT MATTERS HERE, clock speeds mean nothing, clock speeds on the GTX680 won't mean anything.
WHat if the gtx680 comes out with neutered TDP and underclocked by 200Mhz, I will not randomly arbitrarily change my stance, as I haven't here either. What the average person can achieve with default cooling is really the only measure of how good ANY card is, not marketing, tdp, price points that companies "aim" products at for various reasons.
The 590gtx was a cut down joke because Nvidia didn't want it to be a too high power card, so they didn't give it enough power to, well, go as fast as it could. Which is why everyone, myself included said it would have been a great card, if only Nvidia didn't do that.
Had AMD left out the good vrm's and not made the average 7970 capable of hitting 1150-1250Mhz, that is one thing, but all the cards ARE doing that.
I would expect 95% of people buying a 7970 from here to overclock it, I would expect the same percentage of people buying 560ti's, and 5850's, and 6970's and 580gtx's.
Let's not get into the whole Nvidia releasing 560ti to hit a certain TDP then having ridiculously overclocked versions all over the place being compared in reviews to stock 6950's..... but that's ok because its Nvidia.
The only measure of a card and how good it is, is the speed you can get out of it, NOT the speed some bios set's it at for default.
Who buys a 2500k to run at 3.3Ghz, who buys a Phenom quad to run at 3Ghz. Oh I get it, Nvidia users have a problem with how fast the 7970 is, so now overclocking doesn't count...... cry me a river.
You really have to strafe and hold a key to see it working.My favourite part is the start of parish map on l4D2 where i strafe around the jetty looking at zoey's backpack or the lampost slightly trailing like in the video.you probably would not even notice it but i do and it ruins the game imo.Oh and disabling keyboard repeat keys is another small fix which makes zero difference but can in games like Dead island so thats just how extreme i have became that i even disable that now.
Haha people are talking like they actually think that.
