Tsumi
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New details of the 7970 Ghz Edition surfaces
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GoldenTiger
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Very interesting... if AMD prices it right and the drivers get in order finally, they'll have a winner. This is a big boost...
Makes one wonder though... can nVidia do a new revision just like AMD is doing and end up with another huge boost as well?
One thing IS for sure... if I were looking to buy a card now, I'd wait a couple of weeks to be sure
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I had just come here to post this and saw this thread.
Makes one wonder though... can nVidia do a new revision just like AMD is doing and end up with another huge boost as well?
One thing IS for sure... if I were looking to buy a card now, I'd wait a couple of weeks to be sure
.I had just come here to post this and saw this thread
.No. Nvidia intentionally used that turbo boost thingy to win benchmarks. And they are already pushing those cards to the limit already, just to beat AMD cards.
I don't think there is much headroom on those cards. And there is ALOT of difference between all those 680s out there. Not all 680s are doing good OC...
But now every 7970 will be at 1100, with a lower VID.
This is the real 7970. It shows that the previous 7970 is just a half cooked product. However, I believe this 7970 will take at least another 3 months to surface on the market. By that time, more information on the behemoth GK110 would be released, and NV could lower the price on GK104 chips.
You are making statements which are very inflammatory. You don't run a company like AMD. If HD 7970 was half cooked what was GTX 480. GTX 480 needed a chip revision to fix the heat problems and that came 6 months after GTX 480. FYI HD 7970 came out on a spanking new 28nm process. It was AMD's first 28nm chip and the first chip on TSMC 28nm high k process. There were certain engineering decisons made taking into considerations the state of the process and AMD's understanding of the 28nm process.
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1626557&postcount=3100
Dave Baumann of AMD says clearly that the learning from Tahiti was used to improve Pitcairn and cape verde. Tahiti was a fairly big chip on an early 28nm process and AMD chose the most sensible way. that is being conservative.
http://www.legitreviews.com/news/13378/
http://www.techpowerup.com/167377/HIS-Radeon-HD-7970-X2-IceQ-Graphics-Card-Pictured.html
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/new...a-4tflops-card-at-siggraph-firepro-w9000.aspx
Obviously you did not read any of the news. AMD is going to launch the HD 7970 Ghz edition in early July. AMD HD 7970 X2 is scheduled for late July launch and the Firepro W9000 based on Tahiti launches at Siggraph in early August.
Nvidia GK110 for professional markets will launch in Q4 2012. for consumer Geforce its more a early 2013 event.
How come you say that. The clock speeds and other specs are more tied to AMD's confidence in TSMC 28nm process ie leakage and yields. Being first out of the gate their engineering took a certain approach which paid off well. Remember AMD HD 7970 was reviewed as a good product with good gaming, compute perf and excellent overclocking headroom. You could look up hardocp review
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/12/22/amd_radeon_hd_7970_video_card_review/14
"AMD has created an extremely efficient video card with the Radeon HD 7970, which is not surprising given the history of video cards the last couple of generations. What is surprising is the performance advantage compared to a Radeon HD 6970 in the power envelope it is operating. The AMD Radeon HD 7970 is eloquence and efficiency in design. It is not cheap, at $549 it will set you back a decent amount of cash. At this price it is more expensive than a standard GeForce GTX 580, as well Radeon HD 6970. Thankfully, the performance justifies the price, by producing greater real-world gameplay experience advantages and large framerate improvements"
And here you have a person calling it a half cooked product. And you are justifying it.
Those are his words, I simply said I don't find it all that different than implying the GK104 is a midrange chip. There's is nothing wrong with the current Tahiti, but GK104 is just a bit better. I don't feel AMD had to correct a design defect or anything in the current Tahiti, but they clearly realized after GK104 was released that they had to do something to get competitive again.
The quote from HARDOCP was valid but you have to remember it was also written before GK104 came to the market. I don't think anyone saw the 79xx series upon release and said it was a failure, it was and still is a great product, it just need to be updated to be competitive with Nvidia's current GK104 line-up.
The bottom line is that GK104 simply trumped AMD in every possible way this generation, in the past few years Nvidia always had a faster product but it came at the expense of more power draw and heat compared to AMD's more efficient chips, but this generation Nvidia completely one-upped AMD in every way which caught everyone off-guard, likely AMD as well.
The quote from HARDOCP was valid but you have to remember it was also written before GK104 came to the market. I don't think anyone saw the 79xx series upon release and said it was a failure, it was and still is a great product, it just need to be updated to be competitive with Nvidia's current GK104 line-up.
The bottom line is that GK104 simply trumped AMD in every possible way this generation, in the past few years Nvidia always had a faster product but it came at the expense of more power draw and heat compared to AMD's more efficient chips, but this generation Nvidia completely one-upped AMD in every way which caught everyone off-guard, likely AMD as well.
I have a different view from yours. I am of the opinion that Nvidia went to the other extreme. If AMD was too conservative Nvidia was over aggressive. Given that after close to 3 months from launch of 680, 680 SKUs are still difficult to find in stock . Here is a listing at newegg showing 9 GTX 670 SKUs in stock and 2 GTX 680 SKUs in stock
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...activatedMark=False&Order=PRICED&PageSize=100
And to remind you the GTX 670 is the best price perf card in Nvidia's side and all reviewers raved about it giving close to GTX 680 performance for 20% lesser cost. So demand is definitely higher for GTX 670 . But still Nvidia has no problems keeping that in decent supply.
Also you are forgetting that GTX 680 is stripped of compute capabilities. Forget GK104 trumping AMD , in fact its DP performance is lesser than GTX 560. So the comparison is skewed a bit when you compare perf/watt for GTX 680 vs HD 7970 only for gaming. HD 7970 is paying a die cost and a power cost for being targetted as a high end gaming / compute chip. GTX 680 is a good product but not the best thing since sliced bread.
A simple way to evaluate Nvidia's so called efficiency is this. Try beating Pitcairn on these metrics. perf / watt , perf / sqmm with any Nvidia chip. and then we will talk.
Yakk
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The extra speed is nice, but at a lower voltage? VERY nice!
As far as 6 month refreshes go, this is looking like a real nice one!
As far as 6 month refreshes go, this is looking like a real nice one!
Is it. When did that become small market all of a sudden. You are going to be surprised that the Nvidia professional products division makes close to USD 200 - 220 million a quarter. In HPC Nvidia Tesla and in workstations Nvidia Quadro are the top chips. With Nvidia's consumer graphics market size eroding with the advent of CPUs with on-die graphics Nvidia's future growth depends on Tesla, Quadro and Tegra. Geforce is a strong brand but in future on die CPUs with stacked DRAM are going to eat up the entry level graphics cards market upto USD 100.
Why is Nvidia so hard at work to create a 7 billion transistor chip with a heavy focus on compute. because they know thats the most profitable division at Nvidia. and they want to bring their best game to fight Intel MIC (many integrated cores) based Knights Ferry in the HPC space. So underplaying compute because GTX 680 is not good at it, is not a smart answer.
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Its a small market but with vastly higher profit margins.
This market is separated between scientific applications and general productivity for corporate use - AMD does really well in the corporate market with their firepro cards and the profit margin on those is considerably higher than consumer level graphics. Being able to drive a ton of monitors off of 1 card has been a huge perk for AMD for a long time, I know many firms that use AMD cards simply for that reason. That may change in the future since nvidia now supports 4 displays, but AMD still supports more (6). For stuff like Maya, etc I think the new 28nm firepro cards will do really well for them, since nvidia really doesn't have a "viable" competing 28nm product yet.
Nvidia does have more marketshare for scientific applications, though.
Digital Viper-X-
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this could be interesting, Though I have to say, after owning both 7970s and 680s, I prefer the 680 in every way (except price). I hope this 7970 comes with better drivers too
Somehow this thread will turn into nvidia vs ATI, it always does.. Anyway, Of course its important to nvidia, the problem is that GK100 failed and GK110 isnt' ready, thats why they have tesla and quadro cards.
Digital Viper-X-
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why would you expect it not to? ATI and NV are competing companies, in fact the only 2 in the enthusiast video card market, it's only natural. What else is there to get excited about
?That's exactly why they have Tesla and Quadro cards, which means there's not much need for all-out compute performance in a desktop gaming card. Nvidia didn't miscalculate, they knew exactly what they were doing and they did it right.
why would you expect it not to? ATI and NV are competing companies, in fact the only 2 in the enthusiast video card market, it's only natural. What else is there to get excited about
3DFX is coming back next year!
Yakk
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Different company outlooks.
Nvidia will push thier high profit Tesla cards for gpgpu.
AMD are developing APUs which the discreet GPUs can assist. Makes sense for AMD to provide gpgpu functions on all their cards. Plus I'm very curious on how their console developments will affect PC gaming and integrate into their products line.
Nvidia will push thier high profit Tesla cards for gpgpu.
AMD are developing APUs which the discreet GPUs can assist. Makes sense for AMD to provide gpgpu functions on all their cards. Plus I'm very curious on how their console developments will affect PC gaming and integrate into their products line.
why would you expect it not to? ATI and NV are competing companies, in fact the only 2 in the enthusiast video card market, it's only natural. What else is there to get excited about
On second thought, you and blkout are right.
Nevermind I only speak the truth, I feel sorry if that was inflammatory. The previous 7970 was half cooked because of several reasons, [1] lower frequency, [2] higher voltage, [3] higher heat and noise, [4] unstable driver. If the new 7970 is full cooked, the previous 7970 was definitely half cooked. I don't think you would call the the new 7970 over cooked, would you?
[1] There are many 7970 unsold in channel, how much would the old 7970 sell for once the new 7970 come out? Considering they were selling at 550 ~ 600 a piece just 3 months ago, many retailers and distributors would take a loss. With current AMD's financial strength, it would be unlikely that AMD can compensate them in cash for their loss.
[2] From the hardware development cycle, a product needs to go through many phases to get to the market, the same for a refresh of an existing chip. The steps involves repeated design, testing, masks. For a chip refresh, it might be easier however, we are looking at around 2 months for this effort. If rumors were right, AMD started this chip refresh since this May, so that points to a date in July that AMD would have the new 7970 chips ready. At the same time, the chips needs to produced in volume and distributed to graphic cards manufactures. Graphic cards would also needs to go through phases of modification and testing to ensure the actual graphic cards work. This effort can also be shortened due to it is a chip refresh, and most likely all interfaces remain the same. It would take more than 1 months for the graphic card manufactures to produce the new 7970 in volume and it would roughly take them 1 week to ship all graphic cards worldwide by air (small quantity) or 1 months by ship (large quantity). By calculating all the dates together, the new 7970 would roughly surface on the market by the end of the August or the beginning of September. Of course, AMD can paper launch the 7970 earlier in July once the chips are starting to be produced. However, the actual graphic cards won't be available until the end of this summer. You also mentioned it took Nvidia 6 months to refresh GTX 480. Assuming the starting date of this effort was as early as this March (doubtful), and considering AMD also needs 6 months to refresh 7970, it also leads the new 7970 actual release date to this September instead of July.
I just have a bad feeling for the existing 7970 owners, as they paid $600 for a half cooked product and their cards will soon worth less than $400 (maybe even $350) on the used market (bitcoin miners excluded). This is just my personal opinion and it is subjective, so hopefully you won't feel too bad as it is not the fact yet.
sirmonkey1985
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I only speak the truth, I feel sorry if that was inflammatory. The previous 7970 was half cooked because of several reasons, [1] lower frequency, [2] higher voltage, [3] higher heat and noise, [4] unstable driver. If the new 7970 is full cooked, the previous 7970 was definitely half cooked. I don't think you would call the the new 7970 over cooked, would you?
didn't know the 7970 was something you could cook and eat?.. some one needs to get me this recipe please.
in reality the Ghz editions are what the 7970 were designed to be from the get go, but you can only do so much with an immature process like 28nm was at the time of the 7970 release. the current 7970 is what they could do at the time and the Ghz editions are what they can do now. as far as people asking if this is something nvidia would be able to do with the GK104? i highly doubt it given how long it took Nvidia to release GK104, the process is already in its mature state.
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I only speak the truth, I feel sorry if that was inflammatory. The previous 7970 was half cooked because of several reasons, [1] lower frequency, [2] higher voltage, [3] higher heat and noise, [4] unstable driver. If the new 7970 is full cooked, the previous 7970 was definitely half cooked. I don't think you would call the the new 7970 over cooked, would you?
yanmeng I know you have only one agenda. and that is to praise Nvidia and badmouth AMD. so don't say you speak only truth. You are not a semiconductor company. The clock speeds and voltage AMD used were linked to the state of the TSMC 28nm process. You can't bin for a non exisiting SKU. in that I mean trying to achieve the HD 7970 Ghz edition specs in Q4 2011 is stupidity. You would not have enough chips to sell. On the issue of unstable driver AMD released a very stable driver in end Jan - RC11
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/RC11Driver.aspx
Have you used a HD 7970 before commenting on it. Or are you on a anti AMD propaganda
So here you are again making assumptions about AMD HD 7970s sales and about products lying unsold in the channel. Also you are talking about retailers and distributors taking a loss. AMD and Nvidia have something called price protection. Go read about it. And you want more proof that you are inflammatory
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/06/08/computex-2012-amd-to-launch-tahiti-2-next-week/
"The short story is that Tahiti 2, aka Tahiti XT 2 in ASIC speak, isn’t actually new silicon, they are just binning better. If you thought that Tahiti/HD7970 was binned really conservatively for yield, you would have been right. "
The AMD HD 7970 Ghz edition is more about better binning. It is not an entire chip revision like GTX 480 -> GTX 580.
Anyway in a couple of weeks we will know the exact details. Also if you dislike AMD just don't post. Keep your dislike to yourself.
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Digital Viper-X-
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I only speak the truth, I feel sorry if that was inflammatory. The previous 7970 was half cooked because of several reasons, [1] lower frequency, [2] higher voltage, [3] higher heat and noise, [4] unstable driver. If the new 7970 is full cooked, the previous 7970 was definitely half cooked. I don't think you would call the the new 7970 over cooked, would you?
[1] There are many 7970 unsold in channel, how much would the old 7970 sell for once the new 7970 come out? Considering they were selling at 550 ~ 600 a piece just 3 months ago, many retailers and distributors would take a loss. With current AMD's financial strength, it would be unlikely that AMD can compensate them in cash for their loss.
[2] From the hardware development cycle, a product needs to go through many phases to get to the market, the same for a refresh of an existing chip. The steps involves repeated design, testing, masks. For a chip refresh, it might be easier however, we are looking at around 2 months for this effort. If rumors were right, AMD started this chip refresh since this May, so that points to a date in July that AMD would have the new 7970 chips ready. At the same time, the chips needs to produced in volume and distributed to graphic cards manufactures. Graphic cards would also needs to go through phases of modification and testing to ensure the actual graphic cards work. This effort can also be shortened due to it is a chip refresh, and most likely all interfaces remain the same. It would take more than 1 months for the graphic card manufactures to produce the new 7970 in volume and it would roughly take them 1 week to ship all graphic cards worldwide by air (small quantity) or 1 months by ship (large quantity). By calculating all the dates together, the new 7970 would roughly surface on the market by the end of the August or the beginning of September. Of course, AMD can paper launch the 7970 earlier in July once the chips are starting to be produced. However, the actual graphic cards won't be available until the end of this summer. You also mentioned it took Nvidia 6 months to refresh GTX 480. Assuming the starting date of this effort was as early as this March (doubtful), and considering AMD also needs 6 months to refresh 7970, it also leads the new 7970 actual release date to this September instead of July.
I just have a bad feeling for the existing 7970 owners, as they paid $600 for a half cooked product and their cards will soon worth less than $400 (maybe even $350) on the used market (bitcoin miners excluded). This is just my personal opinion and it is subjective, so hopefully you won't feel too bad as it is not the fact yet.
you have a few things wrong,
#1, the 7970 was launched, and it was absolutely the fastest card when it did, the 580 and 580 3GB couldn't touch it in terms of power or performance. so it wasn't a half cooked card, it was 30-50% faster than the 6970 and 15-30% faster than the 580, then there was overclocking.
#2 the 7970 launched in December, and was available in January, meaning a june/july refresh is 6months apart,
#3 the 7970 had multiple voltages at launch, all 1.02->1.05->1.12->1.175, it's all about binning , and the 7970 ran cooler than the 680, but louder, so it's about the fan profile there.
#4 people who bought the 7970 wouldn't feel any worse then the ones that bought the GTX 280, GTX 480, or GTX 465, all of which had refreshes that were higher clocked and lower power consumption.
Until the 680 launched, the 7970 was king, pretty simple, regardless of what launches 6 months later., and good luck finding a GTX680 in stock.
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I found it is funny that you calling me having an agenda.
If I do have an agenda, I won't just post so few posts within 4 years. By the way, if you can find out my first post on this forum when 5850 was just released, you could see that I praised that product whole heartly.To be honest, I won't take anything from Charlie seriously, semiaccurate = semiwrong.
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This could be something I overlooked. The new 7970 GHz edition may not have any differences from the existing 7970 other than it is overclocked. The new 7970 described in the story that OP quoted might be a luck of the draw. It could be a result of hand-picked golden card. In fact, there could be no design changes at all for the new 7970 GHz edition. If this is the case, then AMD can release the 7970 GHz edition pretty quickly by setting a higher default frequency using a new BIOS.
Little driver speculation before 79xx "XT2" chips are released: In Guru3D forums Unwinder (writer of RivaTuner and Afterburner) commented:
"Unofficial overclocking mode is completely gone with new drivers, old libs no longer work. So use official mode and stay within CCC clock limits. Thank greedy idiots from AMD for that."
This is with current 9.xx beta drivers and possibly drivers coming after that. Could this be AMD's way to prevent the overclocking of current 79xx chips so they can "make room" for "XT2" chips with higher CCC overclocking limits after "unofficial overclocking limits" are no longer working. This means that current 79xx cards would be CCC capped to 1125 / 1575 MHz. This is purely my speculation at this point.
"Unofficial overclocking mode is completely gone with new drivers, old libs no longer work. So use official mode and stay within CCC clock limits. Thank greedy idiots from AMD for that."
This is with current 9.xx beta drivers and possibly drivers coming after that. Could this be AMD's way to prevent the overclocking of current 79xx chips so they can "make room" for "XT2" chips with higher CCC overclocking limits after "unofficial overclocking limits" are no longer working. This means that current 79xx cards would be CCC capped to 1125 / 1575 MHz. This is purely my speculation at this point.
Comparison of AMD 7970 (@1100 MHZ) to Nvidia 680
AMD 7970 is faster in 15 games out of 18 & this is with catalyst 12.4 drivers
http://ht4u.net/reviews/2012/amd_ra...LAA&filter[2][]=Post+AA&filter[3][]=16&aa=all
In 12.6 beta drivers Skyrim performance is improved quite a bit. So it will be 16-2 in favour of GHz Edition
Detailed Preview:
http://ht4u.net/reviews/2012/amd_radeon_hd_7970_ghz_edition_tahiti_2/
Even the stock 7970 is 5% faster than 680 by winning in 13 games as compared to Nvidia 680 winning in 5 & people say 680 is faster
AMD 7970 is faster in 15 games out of 18 & this is with catalyst 12.4 drivers
http://ht4u.net/reviews/2012/amd_ra...LAA&filter[2][]=Post+AA&filter[3][]=16&aa=all
In 12.6 beta drivers Skyrim performance is improved quite a bit. So it will be 16-2 in favour of GHz Edition
Detailed Preview:
http://ht4u.net/reviews/2012/amd_radeon_hd_7970_ghz_edition_tahiti_2/
Even the stock 7970 is 5% faster than 680 by winning in 13 games as compared to Nvidia 680 winning in 5 & people say 680 is faster
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Why are you so butthurt about every comment that may not completely agree with you?
I just pointed out that Nvidia's dominance is even more complete in markets where compute performance matters. When the GTX 500 cards kicked the s**t out of the HD 6900 cards in compute performance everybody was all praise for the GTX 500 cards and now when the tables are turned wrt HD 7970 and GTX 680 compute performance does not matter. how convenient.
I just pointed out that Nvidia's dominance is even more complete in markets where compute performance matters. When the GTX 500 cards kicked the s**t out of the HD 6900 cards in compute performance everybody was all praise for the GTX 500 cards and now when the tables are turned wrt HD 7970 and GTX 680 compute performance does not matter. how convenient.
People praised the GTX 570 and 580 because they were faster in gaming than the 6950 and 6970, not because of compute performance. Now, Nvidia has given up some compute performance because it just wasn't a high priority on a gaming card. The 670 and 680 are praised now for their performance while still running cool and quiet and drawing less power.
I am waiting for your opinions when GK110 aka GTX 780 arrives. Given its transistor count at 7 billion and heavy focus on compute performance I doubt its going to run anywhere as cool and quiet as GTX 680. It will be faster than GTX 680 but perf/watt of GTX 680 will be difficult to match. But it will crush the GTX 680 on compute. Lets see if you value perf/watt on gaming workloads or all round performance at a higher power cost.
I'll be waiting to see how it performs in games if its used in that capacity because for now it seemed to be geared towards Tesla for professional use. To be honest all I use my cards for is gaming. I don't fold proteins or mine for bitcoins or research cures for cancer so I want the fastest card for gaming that provides the least amount of power draw, runs the coolest and quietest. Whether its made by AMD or Nvidia doesn't matter much to me.
I just pointed out that Nvidia's dominance is even more complete in markets where compute performance matters. When the GTX 500 cards kicked the s**t out of the HD 6900 cards in compute performance everybody was all praise for the GTX 500 cards and now when the tables are turned wrt HD 7970 and GTX 680 compute performance does not matter. how convenient.
I don't see what youre seeing, and I too didn't find anything inflammatory about the earlier post. I think it's just you. Gaming is the #1 reason most people on THIS forum buy a card, compute is secondary. Else I'd just have hung on to my 5870. It's also the reason why I went with a 680 over the 7970. Better gaming performance and at the time of my purchase, cheaper.
