JUST Ordered 3 XFX Black Edition 7970s From the EGG

Anandtech has a review of this card up, and well, it hits the same exact wall as the others at the base vcore of 1.17v of 1125 and 6.3Ghz for core//memory.
That said, the card, as all 7970's when overclocked, is a beast. No other way to put it.
Look at the compute numbers, DirectCompute performance beats the 590 and 6990 with ease.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5314/...ouble-dissipation-the-first-semicustom-7970/6

Again, a beast of a card!

Ohh btw, it does all that while being less noisy than a 570.

"The end result of a further 11% overclock to both the GPU and memory clock results in a very consistent 11% performance increase across the board. From Crysis to Battlefield 3 everything jumps up by 11%, and the combination of the two overclocks means that our overclocked BEDD leaves just about every other single-GPU video card in the dust. Even the dual-GPU 6990 and GTX 590 have their leads seriously eroded, and in a few cases the overclocked BEDD will pull ahead of the GTX 590 in games that AMD does particularly well in. If the reference 7970 and BEDD didn’t impress you, certainly this will."

"So long as we don’t touch the core voltage for the BEDD (or any other 7970), the power tradeoff for overclocking is nearly non-existent, which is fantastic news given that we’ve just driven a 7970 21% over AMD’s reference clocks on reference voltage."

Editting to add 1 tradeoff:
" the notable absence of the active miniDP to SL-DVI adaptor means you’d need to shell out another $25 to build a kit at parity to most other vendors 7970 kits."
 
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Revdarian said:
Anandtech has a review of this card up, and well, it hits the same exact wall as the others at the base vcore of 1.17v of 1125 and 6.3Ghz for core//memory.
That said, the card, as all 7970's when overclocked, is a beast. No other way to put it.
Look at the compute numbers, DirectCompute performance beats the 590 and 6990 with ease.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5314/...ouble-dissipation-the-first-semicustom-7970/6

Again, a beast of a card!

Ohh btw, it does all that while being less noisy than a 570.

"The end result of a further 11% overclock to both the GPU and memory clock results in a very consistent 11% performance increase across the board. From Crysis to Battlefield 3 everything jumps up by 11%, and the combination of the two overclocks means that our overclocked BEDD leaves just about every other single-GPU video card in the dust. Even the dual-GPU 6990 and GTX 590 have their leads seriously eroded, and in a few cases the overclocked BEDD will pull ahead of the GTX 590 in games that AMD does particularly well in. If the reference 7970 and BEDD didn’t impress you, certainly this will."

"So long as we don’t touch the core voltage for the BEDD (or any other 7970), the power tradeoff for overclocking is nearly non-existent, which is fantastic news given that we’ve just driven a 7970 21% over AMD’s reference clocks on reference voltage."

Editting to add 1 tradeoff:
" the notable absence of the active miniDP to SL-DVI adaptor means you’d need to shell out another $25 to build a kit at parity to most other vendors 7970 kits."
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Wow the Black edition doesnt even have voltage control.

Its not even worth the $50 premium imo
 
Yeah XFX is relying on third party tools entirely, mainly MSi's Afterburner it would seem.

The premium is closer to +75$ due to the lack of the active adapter, so unless they are able to up the voltage and get a reasonable increase on the overclocking treshold, i would agree that the premium isn't worth it.

Thing is that due to it being a hot item, it was sold out on Newegg while the Anandtech article was still just being editted last night.
 
I just want to give a big fuck you to anyone that has purchased one of these... :(


Now OP, give me one of your old 6970s :p
 
Lol, well I got a email from Newegg and guess what I'm not getting my 3 Black Editions due to supply but know getting 3 Gigabyte cards. That's kinda fuxxed up, brings my cost down to $1680 so it looks like I will be overclocking them anyways.
 
Gratz actually, not only are you saving some, $$ but you are also getting 75$ worth of active adapters as stated due to the change :D
 
Revdarian said:
Gratz actually, not only are you saving some, $$ but you are also getting 75$ worth of active adapters as stated due to the change :D
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And better cards, apparrently those XFX Double Black 7970 coolers perform *WORSE* than stock anyway.
 
They (XFX) didn't even bother to create custom fan profiles >.<... so the card idles at the same 20% fan than standard, which creates a much lower idle temp, but then it ramps up to keep a specific temp set by AMD (74ºC it seems)...

Dang XFX, you really went overboard on the lazyness this time... the card is a beast when overclocked because the 7970 in general is a beast, if the Black Edition really has any extra potential is something that will only be shown once users try Afterburner themselves.

I jumped too fast to praise XFX, gotta wait and see now.
 
Well maybe it's for the best, should be here weds. I'm taking Thursday off and leaving early on Weds. :)
 
No offense but I have never seen a compelling reason to own an XFX card. They supposedly have decent support, but their cards are pretty vanilla for the most part other than some small clock bumps 99% of people can achieve themselves. Then they usually redesign the boards half-way through the product cycle to use cheaper components and often don't let you know. A couple of their redesigns removed voltage control, how nice.

For AMD, I would always suggest ASUS, MSI or Sapphire before XFX.
 
NickJames said:
Unfortunately this is the only hobby where the value of your investment depreciates 20% every 6 months.
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That's why you have to stay on top of it and change out every 3-6 months, obviously! Don't want all your investment depreciating away! :D
 
Does it bother anyone that open-air designs, while they dissipate heat from the GPU better, spew it out into the case? Reference design gets all that hot air outta the case.

It would probably be easy for AMD, or nVidia, to make open-air as their reference. But they don't.
 
artichoke said:
Does it bother anyone that open-air designs, while they dissipate heat from the GPU better, spew it out into the case? Reference design gets all that hot air outta the case.

It would probably be easy for AMD, or nVidia, to make open-air as their reference. But they don't.
Click to expand...

I've been wondering this too. You get varying opinions on this. Most say it really makes little difference. I would like to see a study on it. I'm putting two of the Black Editions in Crossfire so I'll soon see if it's a problem.
 
I had two open air 6970's in my case, and my temps were nice and cool. As long as you have good airflow in your case, it's no big deal. My CPU temps didn't move going from a ref 6950 to dual 6970 lightnings
 
GreenGoose said:
I've been wondering this too. You get varying opinions on this. Most say it really makes little difference. I would like to see a study on it. I'm putting two of the Black Editions in Crossfire so I'll soon see if it's a problem.
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I think its really just a function of your case layout and airflow past your cards/through your case. If you have very good airflow then the open air coolers don't really hurt your system temps and are not limited in that respect, and are probably better at removing heat directly from the gpu; conversely, if you have poor case flow, the open air cooler will get "backed up" as it raises the surrounding temps.

Contrast that with the reference coolers, and I'm guessing they're there to hedge your bets - don't have as much potential upside in increased cooling, but limit your downside of dumping heat into a stagnate surrounding.
 
GreenGoose said:
I've been wondering this too. You get varying opinions on this. Most say it really makes little difference. I would like to see a study on it. I'm putting two of the Black Editions in Crossfire so I'll soon see if it's a problem.
Click to expand...

quote from the Anandtech article:
Just don’t throw it [BEDD] directly up against another card in CrossFire, as these open air cards typically fare poorly without an open slot to work with.
Click to expand...
 
Well my 6970s heat my case up something fierce all 3 of them dump the heat back into the case I didn't like the design either.
 
I thought you would have learned not to use cards that dump air into the case for multi gpu setups...
 
Lol but the powecolors looked cool at the time... And double fans and factory overclocked it should have blown out the back.
 
heatlesssun said:
True, but over a lifetime building high-end gaming rigs will add up to many multiples of this.
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While tweaking goes on in a lot of hobbies usually the costs are up front with some change over of equipment from novice to pro-sumer. 4k a year in equipment can seem small in purchases, but man 10 years later, 40k later, and a stack of unused parts no one wants to touch, seems like a bad deal.
 
Topweasel said:
While tweaking goes on in a lot of hobbies usually the costs are up front with some change over of equipment from novice to pro-sumer. 4k a year in equipment can seem small in purchases, but man 10 years later, 40k later, and a stack of unused parts no one wants to touch, seems like a bad deal.
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Sell, sell, sell. Don't let that stuff accumulate and it mitigates the pain a tremendous amount.
 
Even though I teach programming, A++, etc. in college my wife would just as soon cut off my testicles then have me buy PC stuff. Guess what, I do it anyway.:D
 
Ah, we all know that wife = limited access to testicles anyhow, so whats the downside =)
 
Tiporaro said:
Ah, we all know that wife = limited access to testicles anyhow, so whats the downside =)
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No shit! I haven't seen any action from my wife in about 15 years so I'll buy any fucking video card I please. :p
 
Seems like a lot of marriage problems going on here.

Continue...



On a side note, NCIXUS has the Black Edition for $572.98 except that it's not in stock.
 
Tiporaro said:
Sell, sell, sell. Don't let that stuff accumulate and it mitigates the pain a tremendous amount.
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I am single so it doesn't really matter, but I know for some people, selling at a big loss is even worse then buying the original piece.
 
Topweasel said:
I am single so it doesn't really matter, but I know for some people, selling at a big loss is even worse then buying the original piece.
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Oh, nothing to do with single or not. What I was saying was instead of setting aside a part in a closet somewhere never to be used again, sell it while it still has value. Too often I think a lot of us stick something in a drawer thinking we'll have it as a second or third backup, and then come across the old PCI or ISA board years later =) No sense in keeping it unless there's a very real possibility of it being useful.
 
Tiporaro said:
Oh, nothing to do with single or not. What I was saying was instead of setting aside a part in a closet somewhere never to be used again, sell it while it still has value. Too often I think a lot of us stick something in a drawer thinking we'll have it as a second or third backup, and then come across the old PCI or ISA board years later =) No sense in keeping it unless there's a very real possibility of it being useful.
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Call me a pack rat then. I sell to friends in need but in the end I would rather keep something around just in case then go through the trouble of selling it to a stranger just to get a portion of the money back.
 
Haha, fair enough. Its always nice to have the spare parts on hand. I just have a lot harder time justifying jumping off into new tech constantly if I'm not selling the stuff I'm not using. That, or claim that I need a third or fourth "second" workstation. For a backup. Always necessary.
 
Both of mine shipped. I fucked up and got standard shipping. They will be here Thursday. :(
 
I have my Fedex tracking number now. My 2x XFX Blacks will be here tomorrow.
 
My blackie just shipped. Thursday it is I suppose.... My Sapphire will be here tomorrow... but which one to keep? hmmm.
 
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