So are you getting a 7970 or waiting for Kepler?

[Bobisuruncle54]

To be honest, I find that AMD managed something pretty impressive with the 7970 - it's a brand new architecture on a brand new process, first to market, adheres to the DX 11.1 spec, scales very well with higher clocks and has had decent performance from the off on immature drivers.

The price is probably this high to help pay off the R&D investment that was required to create GCN. I don't agree with it, and I'd be all over a 7970 if they were priced at 6970 levels, but I'm waiting to see how much the 1.3Ghz factory overclocked editions are, or if indeed a 2304 shader part is going to be released over the next couple of months.

 

[Wucked]

Patiently waiting for GK112 while bearing the irritation of my upgrade itch. And actually my single 1.5GB 580 is coping surprisingly well with 2560x1440, even in such titles as BF3... Also with next gen consoles still at least a year away I don't anticipate PC titles doing anything amazing this year.

 

[Duff-Man]

To be honest, I find that AMD managed something pretty impressive with the 7970 - it's a brand new architecture on a brand new process, first to market, adheres to the DX 11.1 spec, scales very well with higher clocks and has had decent performance from the off on immature drivers.

The price is probably this high to help pay off the R&D investment that was required to create GCN. I don't agree with it, and I'd be all over a 7970 if they were priced at 6970 levels, but I'm waiting to see how much the 1.3Ghz factory overclocked editions are, or if indeed a 2304 shader part is going to be released over the next couple of months.

Well the card certainly appears to be significantly more powerful when examined under the light of overclocking, and beating the competition to market by several months is always an achievement. That said, GCN still isn't as power-efficient, densely-packed, or as powerful at stock as I (and many others) were expecting. I think that the architecture can only really be judged against Kepler - it's just unfortunate that we may have to wait so long.


Regarding these rumoured ~1.3Ghz "super-clocked" cards: Has anyone actually seen anything official on this? Or is it just those 'leaked' sapphire spec sheets from chiphell (the ones with the "2304 shader" card listed)?

I have a feeling that we just won't see third-party cards clocked to these levels. Yes, I'm sure that a few cherry-picked GPUs could hit ~1300Mhz on air, but I suspect AMD will not want people doing this. As I've said before, I think AMD will release a "super-clocked" 7970 at some stage (at 1100Mhz+, 275W, probably called 7980 or similar), to compete with Kepler.

If this is still a 2048-shader card (...and it looks increasingly likely that this is all the shaders contained in the 7970GPU; no hidden or locked shaders), then AMD will not want to blur the line between the two cards by having custom 7970s which are clocked above the "7980" at stock.

 

[ryryryan]

Will probably stick with my 5870

 

[xsistor]

There was also a report where AMD said the 7970 had no inactive cores.
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/new...dden-cores-in-radeon-hd-7970-(tahiti-xt).aspx

So that's their flagship GPU. There will be nothing higher for this cycle... which casts aspersions on the "sapphire leak".

 

[Yamahahahahaha]

I have a feeling that we just won't see third-party cards clocked to these levels. Yes, I'm sure that a few cherry-picked GPUs could hit ~1300Mhz on air, but I suspect AMD will not want people doing this. As I've said before, I think AMD will release a "super-clocked" 7970 at some stage (at 1100Mhz+, 275W, probably called 7980 or similar), to compete with Kepler.

I don't know about the 2304 shader cards, they probably don't exist.

What does exist are overclocking utilities for the current batch of 7970 cards.
HardOCP's own analysis of overclocking on the Sapphire 7970 took them up to 1260mhz core, 6.9ghz memory - http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/01/09/amd_radeon_hd_7970_overclocking_performance_review/1
With a decent non-stock cooler and perhaps uprated power regulation components, we could easily see off-the-shelf cards pushing those numbers without much of an issue.

The down side is on page 6 - http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/01/09/amd_radeon_hd_7970_overclocking_performance_review/6
A truly gobsmacking 380w power consumption from a single card. That's 30w more than an overclocked GTX 580 and 90w more than the stock 7970.
Without a cooler involving much larger, slower-spinning fans you'll have trouble hearing!

 

[iviv]

What happened with the XDR2 RAM? All just rumors?

 

[Nelly]

Waiting for Kepler, will get a card with a custom cooler, don't mind waiting a month or too longer after release if need be.

 

[Duff-Man]

There was also a report where AMD said the 7970 had no inactive cores.
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/new...dden-cores-in-radeon-hd-7970-(tahiti-xt).aspx

So that's their flagship GPU. There will be nothing higher for this cycle... which casts aspersions on the "sapphire leak".

Yeah, I saw that report, and was the reason for me saying that this 2048-shader model is probably the "full" GPU:

If this is still a 2048-shader card (...and it looks increasingly likely that this is all the shaders contained in the 7970GPU; no hidden or locked shaders)

It's a pity though. I liked the idea of AMD having a few cores in hand to launch a higher-end card. Given how well these things clock, if AMD do release a "super-clocked" model, most enthusiasts will probably just go for the vanilla 7970 with a third-party cooler. A few extra shaders would have set the card apart on a more fundamental level.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/01/09/amd_radeon_hd_7970_overclocking_performance_review/6
A truly gobsmacking 380w power consumption from a single card. That's 30w more than an overclocked GTX 580 and 90w more than the stock 7970.
Without a cooler involving much larger, slower-spinning fans you'll have trouble hearing!

Yes, that is a pretty brutal power draw. I doubt very much AMD would want to release a card that hot. It seems that the increased voltage needed to reach these clocks is really drawing in the power.

But, from the same review, the power draw at 1125mhz is really very reasonable... At less than 30W increase over the stock card, AMD could easily release another card clocked around these levels. Given how little the power consumption increases here, it's very surprising that AMD didn't simply release the 7970 on a 250W TDP, with the GPU clocked around 1100Mhz.

 

[Jakus]

What I don't understand is why they are putting so much power through this core 1.3v, sure it can take it and it is more efficient than a GTX580, but I would have thought it's not as efficient as it should be for a 28nm fab, obviously at this stage we have nothing to compare with.

 

[Bobisuruncle54]

Well the card certainly appears to be significantly more powerful when examined under the light of overclocking, and beating the competition to market by several months is always an achievement. That said, GCN still isn't as power-efficient, densely-packed, or as powerful at stock as I (and many others) were expecting. I think that the architecture can only really be judged against Kepler - it's just unfortunate that we may have to wait so long.


Regarding these rumoured ~1.3Ghz "super-clocked" cards: Has anyone actually seen anything official on this? Or is it just those 'leaked' sapphire spec sheets from chiphell (the ones with the "2304 shader" card listed)?

I have a feeling that we just won't see third-party cards clocked to these levels. Yes, I'm sure that a few cherry-picked GPUs could hit ~1300Mhz on air, but I suspect AMD will not want people doing this. As I've said before, I think AMD will release a "super-clocked" 7970 at some stage (at 1100Mhz+, 275W, probably called 7980 or similar), to compete with Kepler.

If this is still a 2048-shader card (...and it looks increasingly likely that this is all the shaders contained in the 7970GPU; no hidden or locked shaders), then AMD will not want to blur the line between the two cards by having custom 7970s which are clocked above the "7980" at stock.

That's pretty much always going to be the case with full compute shaders versus dedicated shaders though isn't it, some efficiency gives way to flexibility. As for overall performance though I think it's too early to tell, 6 months down the line with better drivers should let us know just how powerful GCN is.

As for overclocking, the 7970s overclock far better than the 6970s, and the performance scaling keeps up as well, unlike the 6900 series which I think people tend to forget. With regards to overclocking limits, I've heard comparatively few cases of those who can't easily hit 1.125Ghz compared to those who can. It also seems there are a lot of voltage irregularities across the cards with XFX cards having particular issues, and it's certainly true that not all cards are responding to tweaks made with Afterburner. It also seems some cards are receiving less voltage than others, which may be the cause behind some lackluster overclocks.

We won't really see what the 7970 can do until we see versions with better power delivery, but as far as stock cards go, it's quite a monster. As for the the 1.3Ghz versions and a possible 2304 shader part, the 1.3Ghz card is probably the more likely of the two to appear. Simply because I get the impression that AMD clocked the 7970 at 925Mhz for power consumption, not outright performance.