Soldato
Agreed, 480 sli system plays every single game at the highest settings
Until it can't I'll plod on. Maybe add another for tri sli
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So are you getting a 7970 or waiting for Kepler?
- Thread starter Nocky24
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Agreed, 480 sli system plays every single game at the highest settings
Until it can't I'll plod on. Maybe add another for tri sli
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Well I was planning to put a 7970 in my basket today, but the prices here - and mostly elsewhere - are too high. I'm building a new rig and have the parts all ready to order, however I may just throw in a single 6950 and wait until Kepler, or at least for the 7950 release and possible 7970 price drop.
Seems to me you'd only go for a 7970 on this day if money isn't much of an issue. I can wait, and I will.
Seems to me you'd only go for a 7970 on this day if money isn't much of an issue. I can wait, and I will.
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Agreed, 480 sli system plays every single game at the highest settings
Until it can't I'll plod on. Maybe add another for tri sli
I'm kinda on the same thinking as you but less power. I have an unlocked 6950 overclocked to 950Mhz/1500Mhz (can get further on core but mainly use 920/1450 tho) and I was thinking of getting the 7970 but if I add a PSU and another 6950 that will cost about £300 for roughly the same performance although I'm not sure about Crossfire problems. Some love it and have little problems, others are in tears and turn to team green. More and more I think about it, the 7970 is becoming the worst choice for me
.I could do with a little more grunt and I'm itching to spend money on something. NXZT Phantom case and Noctua DH cooler but with 7970 or the economic second 6950 and PSU????. Arrrggghh help!!!.
I'm kinda on the same thinking as you but less power. I have an unlocked 6950 overclocked to 950Mhz/1500Mhz (can get further on core but mainly use 920/1450 tho) and I was thinking of getting the 7970 but if I add a PSU and another 6950 that will cost about £300 for roughly the same performance although I'm not sure about Crossfire problems. Some love it and have little problems, others are in tears and turn to team green. More and more I think about it, the 7970 is becoming the worst choice for me
I could do with a little more grunt and I'm itching to spend money on something. NXZT Phantom case and Noctua DH cooler but with 7970 or the economic second 6950 and PSU????. Arrrggghh help!!!.
Surely you wouldn't need a new power supply switching to the 7970, flog your old 6950 for say £150, £420 - £150 = £270 for a single card with no crossfire headaches, although I've ran crossfire before and never had any trouble with it myself... Of course you would have to pre-order the OcUK versions and wait a bit...
J.
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I'm kinda on the same thinking as you but less power. I have an unlocked 6950 overclocked to 950Mhz/1500Mhz (can get further on core but mainly use 920/1450 tho) and I was thinking of getting the 7970 but if I add a PSU and another 6950 that will cost about £300 for roughly the same performance although I'm not sure about Crossfire problems. Some love it and have little problems, others are in tears and turn to team green. More and more I think about it, the 7970 is becoming the worst choice for me
I could do with a little more grunt and I'm itching to spend money on something. NXZT Phantom case and Noctua DH cooler but with 7970 or the economic second 6950 and PSU????. Arrrggghh help!!!.
Personally, I would avoid CF - it's always given me problems. ATI have convinced me to only go single chip now, or maybe SLI if needed. I'm tempted by the 7970, but for the gains/price it's not quite worth it.
If I was you, I would wait. Spend some of that money on a new game and help the time pass until Kepler, then get a 680 and be happy! That's my plan.
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Massive fan of 3D vision so really got no choice but to wait for Kepler but will watch this 7970 with interest.
Soldato
I think ATI/AMD set the price at $475/£307, that's actually very good! Add VAT and higher than average launch prices and you get UK pricing
Prices will drop after the initial launch crazyness..
Soldato
Duff-Man, could you please look into your crystal-meth ball and give me a rough guesstimation to when you think Keplar will be released. I'll even accept Q1-Q4 as an answer
Crystal-meth ball?
sounds awesome...I don't really have any insight into when they will be released - rumours seem to be suggesting March / April time, but who knows.
The 6850 has certainly held its value very well, but then it has always been a 'bang-for-buck' high-end card. The 7970 carries a price-premium (just like the GTX480 and 580 did) due to being the fastest card available. I don't think there's anything 'wrong' with this - AMD should take the opportunity and make some high-profit margin sales while they have the performance advantage. But, as soon as a faster card emerges, the 7970 immediately loses its price-premium - prices will need to drop for the card to retain a niche in the market.
In short, I can't be sure when the Kepler cards are released, but I'm fairly sure that the 7970 will drop in price sharply when they are. How sharply will depend on just how good the Nvidia cards actually are.
Caporegime
To save me looking through all the threads, does anybody have a rough idea on release dates for keplar? If it is to long a wait, then I might just say **** it and get one 
Caporegime
sorry just seen above me...thanks
Personally, there are no PC games right now which make these a must buy. PC game quality is down in my opinion. There are many dodgy ports that don't properly utlize a PC's full potential. I will just wait for better options. Waiting for the Xbox 720 and PS4 release might change the PC releases for the better.
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Quite a good point. Perhaps we'll be able to plan our upgrade paths when they announce the target release date for these consoles.
Oh no, the new power supply would only be if I bought another 6950
.Selling for around £150-170 and the card costing around £300 sounds tempting though. I was going to give it to a friend for £100 but he would need to upgrade his CPU and PSU as well as just about to buy a car so I'll probably be able to sell it on here for a little more.
Yes the dreaded problems I've read from users are just about equal with the glorified reports so I've always stuck with a one card solution. I'll hang on a bit and see what's happening as suggested. Thank you for helping bringing clarity to my mind of fog
.Crossfire is like Marmite
. Some love it, some hate it and I've never experienced it to be self opinionated with reading a 50/50 split (roughly) on likes or dislikes. I will hold off for now on the card, buy my case and cooler then see what happens with pricing or the release of Keplar.I'll hold off for now as I've just fired up a game that I thought was running slow in comparison to other systems with a 6950 in them. Well what I thought was running slow was 44-48 FPS in certain areas of the map. Now I know that's not bad but it's visually noticeable and to be honest before I ran "render.drawfps 1" I thought these slowdowns were in the 18-30 FPS range and this was on Auto. Auto for me was Ultra Textures and high everything else with AA on deferred high post. I switched to Ultra settings, put AA to deferred, high post @ 1900x1200 and shadows at "High" and the results were roughly the same as Auto compared to higher settings in custom
. I'm confused but happy that my results are in line with other cards. I seriously thought people were running 18-30 FPS in certain areas with the 6950 but somehow benchmarks showed differently. I should have rendered the FPS counter to begin with 
.Crystal-meth ball?
I don't really have any insight into when they will be released - rumours seem to be suggesting March / April time, but who knows.
The 6850 has certainly held its value very well, but then it has always been a 'bang-for-buck' high-end card. The 7970 carries a price-premium (just like the GTX480 and 580 did) due to being the fastest card available. I don't think there's anything 'wrong' with this - AMD should take the opportunity and make some high-profit margin sales while they have the performance advantage. But, as soon as a faster card emerges, the 7970 immediately loses its price-premium - prices will need to drop for the card to retain a niche in the market.
In short, I can't be sure when the Kepler cards are released, but I'm fairly sure that the 7970 will drop in price sharply when they are. How sharply will depend on just how good the Nvidia cards actually are.
Lol that's a result of our experiences shaping us so I have a head full of nonsense through some of the garbage I've watched in my younger days
. *Damn you hollywood!.March would be great for Nvidia but if your speculation is correct it might be well worth it for Nvidia to be behind if it's as strong as I've read you and others think it may be. I know it's speculation but interesting to read none-the-less. You release the correct card at the correct price and you can destroy the competition even if you have the slower card (HD4870/GTX285). Well maybe not destroy but gave Nvidia a beating with not having the fastest GPU.
It's the best budget card the 6850 IMO. I went from the 4870 to the 6950 though as the pricing wasn't as great as it is now. The premium for the GTX480 and 580 is what made me go with AMD but the main attraction was the unlocking of the shaders for me (free performance and nothing to do with overclocking ahhh bisto). The 7970 should warrant the price tag when you have the GTX 580 3GB at the price they are so I can't fault AMD but with all the value we've had over the years, we've been spoiled and you can see it by the shocked faces and distain for the price but as you have said and perfectly so "they have the performance advantage".
If Keplar is as good as it's proclaimed to be then yeah, the 7970 will plummet. I hate the waiting and seeing though ...... Crystal-meth ball?. lol
Thank you for your reply, it's appreciated and I apologise for the DM style post
.Thrown Spanner --> works
I'm just about to order my case and cooler at 2PM. What will help my dips (44-48FPS) in BF3 @ 1900x1200 and maybe let me add 2/4xAA?. 7970 ( or new PSU and second 6950?. I don't think my Corsair HX620W PSU would power 2x6950 and 4Ghz i7 and 3 HDDs
.£508 for the NZXT case, Noctua DH14, XFX 850Watt PSU and a second 6950.
£650 for case, cooler and Club 7970.
Seems a no brainer regarding the choice but not wanting to make the wrong choice either as both might be a bad option. I'm seriously a nightmare when it comes to decision making when buying things for myself. I probably should just buy the case and cooler and dribble at others insane benchmarks lol.
Or buy this and live with the dips http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-089-OC&groupid=701&catid=2104&subcat=2198 ?. (Joking but I want one soon, my drives are horrible).
Soldato
^^^ If it were me, I would order the rest of the gear, and just keep the single 6950 that you have right now.
Unless you really want/need the extra GPU power now, waiting will give you more options.
Unless you really want/need the extra GPU power now, waiting will give you more options.
Aye as the pricing can only get better on both the 6950 and 7970 give it a little time. Though the dips in BF3 are getting worse. Down to mid 30s in a session I was testing to eradicate scope lag. I can tone down a few settings and let this new card dust settle. The money is burning a hole in my pocket though and BF3 isn't helping
.I hate choices and need to leave now. Hope I don't make any rash decisions lol but I'll prob just get case n cooler.
Thank you.
Caporegime
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The only rumours that have been remotely trusty and haven't changed on a weekly basis are, GK107 Q1, potentially slipping to Q2, its a baby chip, IE, game on it at your own peril. GK104 might be hard pushed to make Q2, and GF112, or GK100/110, whatever Nvidia are going to call the "big" chip....... if that makes it out before Q3 it would be surprising and it could easily not be this year at all.
Somehow I highly doubt the GK104 will spank the 7970, infact, both overclock to their limits I think the 7970 will pummel it and have the same lead the 6970 has over the 560ti, but with less "worse case scenarios" that VLIW 4 had, and no tessellation problems.
The idea that Nvidia will go from hugely less efficient per mm2 to much more so in one generation is silly.
The real issue will be power.
If 80% performance improvement takes anywhere from 40-60% power increase over the previous gen, the 7970 had very little room to grow as AMD give it the +20% power tune limit and don't want to break 300W in that case. GF100 has very little room to grow in that sense, GK104/6870 both have a bit more margin for error in higher power usage........ IF AMD/Nvidia want to move their power usage up.
IE a Gk104 at 250W could likely get very close to a 7970 at its stock clocks and 225w ish tdp, at what is seemingly the 7970's "real" clocks, the gk104 likely has no chance of being close.
What will be most interesting is what Nvidia does with the GK112 big chip, will it just release a 400W card, ignore having stock clocks not breaking 300W tdp, I'm all for that. its quite possible the 300W limit will be broken by multiple 3rd party overclocked 7970 long before the GK112 gets to market so the 300W "limit" might be a thing of the past by then.
Somehow I highly doubt the GK104 will spank the 7970, infact, both overclock to their limits I think the 7970 will pummel it and have the same lead the 6970 has over the 560ti, but with less "worse case scenarios" that VLIW 4 had, and no tessellation problems.
The idea that Nvidia will go from hugely less efficient per mm2 to much more so in one generation is silly.
The real issue will be power.
If 80% performance improvement takes anywhere from 40-60% power increase over the previous gen, the 7970 had very little room to grow as AMD give it the +20% power tune limit and don't want to break 300W in that case. GF100 has very little room to grow in that sense, GK104/6870 both have a bit more margin for error in higher power usage........ IF AMD/Nvidia want to move their power usage up.
IE a Gk104 at 250W could likely get very close to a 7970 at its stock clocks and 225w ish tdp, at what is seemingly the 7970's "real" clocks, the gk104 likely has no chance of being close.
What will be most interesting is what Nvidia does with the GK112 big chip, will it just release a 400W card, ignore having stock clocks not breaking 300W tdp, I'm all for that. its quite possible the 300W limit will be broken by multiple 3rd party overclocked 7970 long before the GK112 gets to market so the 300W "limit" might be a thing of the past by then.