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** SINGLE GTX 580 3GB VS SINGLE 7970 3GB REVIEW BY OcUK **

It seems that the AMD cards perform well within old benchmarks and Quake (which always prefers pure clock speed over shader power and memory bandwidth). What we need are new/recent game benchmarks that provide an idea of furture performance potential. Please also provide non-overclocked scores so that we can see how well the cards scale.

Keep up the good work.
 
555BUK said:
It seems that the AMD cards perform well within old benchmarks and Quake (which always prefers pure clock speed over shader power and memory bandwidth). What we need are new/recent game benchmarks that provide an idea of furture performance potential. Please also provide non-overclocked scores so that we can see how well the cards scale.
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Yea...interesting that you mention that. I've noticed how since 6000 series, the cards performing better on older titles that people love to use to bench (i.e. Crysis, Metro2033) and try to show off how they are faster than Nvidia's equivalent cards, but when benching for new titles that release AFTER the launch of the cards, the extra grunt implied from the bench of the older game titles simply isn't there...
 
I've done some tuning to day.

Turned HT off, set fps limit to 60 and now the game never drops below 60 with all on High and 2xAA. I love my 5970...gonna keep it for another year. GFX prices are out of control. All you that buy are just feeding these companies money. We need another graphics card company to sort things out....
 
old gamer said:
intresting what you mentioned about the ati having more vivid colour as its the reason i changed from nvidia to ati, at the time i changed from a 8800gts to 3870 xfire and thought the nvidia colours looked a bit washed out compared to ati, ive said it before here and other forums but pretty much been told im talking out my rear end, i used to go to quite a few lan partys and could tell who was using ati or nvidia just by looking at the screens
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What does it matter on a calibrated display?

Gibbo said:
No different, I need the new AMD GPU Clock tool before we go there, which I can't find. :(
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Legit Reviews use some unofficial BIOS from AMD that unlocked overclocking with these cards, that should give you a little more headroom to play with.
 
A few points, If you examine the PCB as pointed out in a few reviews it has the option to have 2x8pin power connectors and greater power stepping I believe although I'm not sure, I'm just noting optional points on the PCB which are unpopulated in the review samples. I strongly suspect this has been done to allow manufacturers to add these extra components for overclocked models like MSIs Lightning but save time and cost on an expensive PCB redesign like the lightnings have. We have already seen paperwork from Sapphire (no idea if genuine etc) suggesting that there will be models clocked well beyond 1300mhz, models which could then have further overclocking headroom towards the 1500mhz mark. Also seemed to be suggested that there will be a 6gb model as an interesting side note.

I am however almost sure that I saw at least one review were they didn't hit the 1125mhz limit, So I don't think it should be taken as granted that all cards can attain this level of overclock. It does however seem that 1125mhz is somewhat conservative for the vast majority of cards currently in the hands of reviewers.

Also worth noting is BF3 and Crysis2 perform badly (but still better) in comparison to the GTX580 3GB or even 1.5GB with AA at x2 or lower.

Also very ecstatic that the card supports a total of 3xDVI connections with supplied HDMI and DP adapters, I still can't afford this card but I'm hoping that's how the 7870 come also... and under £200 for a stock model please for the love of god... Also nice if they have the same or a very similar cooler and overclock just as well/better :)

EDIT: The wonderful irony of this being my 1125 post :P
 
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Loving the quake 3 bench :D (btw tho due to timing (in)accuracy with that engine you'd need to run that test atleast 3 times each to get a proper score above 500fps which I assume you didn't have time for heh).

People might complain about the lack of BF3, etc. scores but the heaven one is a good indication of future performance in shader heavy titles.
 
This is very interesting though:

What this test shows is ATI is a clear winner, they shall be very similar price to each other and ATI may become a little cheaper a few weeks after launch.
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The current speculation is that AMD releases 7970s at $549 price point (around £425 in the UK). For all we know it's just a speculation, I remember the stir up before 6970s launch when "everyone" assumed the cards would perform better and cost much more than they did in the end.

The cheapest GeForce GTX580 at your place is around £370, we know the launch prices for Radeon 6970 and 6950 were $369 (£285 with the current exchange rates) and $299 (£230), Radeon 5870 and 5850 were $379 (£295) and $259 (£200) respectively. That gives us "some" idea on what the marketing strategy from AMD may be, I guess with many new models on the market they will retake some of the lower end sectors as well as expand their enthusiast range.

Is it likely that AMD will follow their scheme adding a small enthusiast range at the top? That would probably push a 7950 1.5GB (£250 - $329) and 7950 3GB (around £290 - $379) into the previous pricing strategy and add 7970 as the top end card with price tag around £360 - $469, which would be slightly lower than GTX580 1.5GB currently is and at a reasonable price tag. $549, on the other hand, is the lowest price you can get a GTX 580 3GB in retail in the US, so I guess that launch price isn't anything surprising - Radeon 7970 destroys GTX 580 3GB and has the same amount of vRAM.

It would make sense for AMD to take over the market shortly after launch since they can attract enthusiast buyers with the soft launch and new performance crown and then discount their entire range to destroy Nvidia's products in the price war.

You've hinted before that Nvidia has already stopped production of GTX570/580s so I guess they're rushing Kepler's release for Q2/Q3 2012.

Next year will be very interesting in terms of hardware upgrades, new die shrinks, Ivy Bridge, Kepler and new Radeons, all promising better performance at the same price point. Hopefully they won't disappoint.
 
Is it just me or is the ~20% average increase of the 7970 over the one-year-old 580 a bit underwhelming? I hope AMD has a refresh up their sleeve as I think Kepler is going to steamroll the 7970 mid-year.
 
Vega said:
Is it just me or is the ~20% average increase of the 7970 over the one-year-old 580 a bit underwhelming? I hope AMD has a refresh up their sleeve as I think Kepler is going to steamroll the 7970 mid-year.
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I doubt they will have a refresh but they might have a 7980 with increased clock speeds. It's a bit unusual for a high end GPU to have such overclocking headroom. AMD could easily release a new SKU with 1.1Ghz a core, or even higher if they do a bit of cherry picking over the next few months and build up some stock of the best cores(although they are probably already doing that for the 7990).
 
I would look at comparing HD6970 cards to HD7970 cards. The die sizes are about the same, so the performance increment is pretty good considering the additional die area and transistors that have gone into the additional 128bit of memory interface and the immaturity of the drivers.

nVIDIA GPUs have had the best performance for a while, mainly because they have used very large dies, and this is reflected in the performance advantage that they maintain in single GPU situations. They lose some of this in multi-GPU scaling which allows AMD to release dual GPU cards that are more on a par performance wise.
 
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