AMD Radeon HD 7970 Video Card Review @ [H]

UtopiA said:
The 580 launched last year with MSRP $500.
Considering it's been a year, and the relative performance gain on the 7970... Yeah, it's over-priced. It should be around $499 or less, I would hope.

That's why I'm disappointed.

3870 to 4870, 7 months, 50% increase, MSRP $299.
4870 to 5870, 1 year, 100% increase, MSRP $379.
5870 to 6970, 1 year, 15% increase, MSRP $370.
6970 to 7970, 1 year, 20% increase, MSRP $549.

Prices, dates via Anandtech/TPU.
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It doesn't matter. They have a faster product than anything else on the market, and they are pricing it cheaper than NVIDIA's offerings, so how is it disappointing? If you don't have a 6000-series card, your upgrade path just got a lot cheaper, and if you do, there is now a faster option. The reason they could not charge more for the 4870 or 6970 was because they were not the fastest cards out. The GTX280 was faster than a 4870, the GTX580 was launched right after the 6970. And this is on a low-yield new process, with a new architecture, so I imagine they are pricing it this way to help with costs.

As soon as Kepler drops the prices will fall, possibly even faster if NVIDIA counters with aggressive pricing on the GTX 500-series cards.
 
Rizen said:
It doesn't matter. They have a faster product than anything else on the market, and they are pricing it cheaper than NVIDIA's offerings, so how is it unfair?
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It's unfair because, in the past, AMD is the company that doesn't do that.
Your logic doesn't make sense regardless, the 5870 was much more significant relative to the 4870, than the 7970 is to the 6970, yet the MSRP was almost $200 cheaper.

The 7970 took the same amount of time, is about 30% (vs 100%) yet costs way more?
There's no way anyone can defend that. The only excuse is AMD's production has gotten seriously more expensive (bad economy?) or they're gouging prices like Nvidia.

Shaking my head at this one.
 
Performance will increase with new drivers over the period of time. Price will settle down too. At the moment, the yields suck and AMD needs some money. It's understandable.

When is Kepler arriving?
 
lol i wonder what kind of bullshit we will get from the nvidia fanboys when they realize they will have to pay 700 bucks for their flagship kepler cards.. seriously this bickering about the price is retarded.. the 7970 is within 15% +/- 5% higher performance of an OVERCLOCKED GTX 580 3GB!!! not a reference GTX 580 with 1.5GB of ram.. use your friggin brains people and quit finding excuses to castrate AMD for no damn reason.

the price is justified, there is nothing that competes with it in the single GPU platform.. once afterburner is updated to support overclocking on the 7970 i think we will see why the price is justified. if they are hitting 1100mhz without even touching the voltage, then 1200+mhz should be easy with voltage changes.
 
THIS CARD IS FUCKING AMAZING!!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@

Bzv7.png


tbT7F.png



AMD Graphics division????

ancient-aliens-invisible-something-meme-generator-not-going-to-say-it-s-aliens-but-it-s-aliens-d41d8c.jpg
 
Well let me summarize:
Based on AMD's past history of the following:
1. Launch prices.
2. Launch performance.
3. Development time.

The 7970 should have taken 1 year to develop, be priced at $400 max, and be roughly the same speed as the 6990 (The 6990 is currently 16% faster than the 7970, this is a 14% difference against 5870/4870X2).

So essentially they're ripping us by about $150 and 14% performance, based on past trends.
 
UtopiA said:
It's unfair because, in the past, AMD is the company that doesn't do that.
Your logic doesn't make sense regardless, the 5870 was much more significant relative to the 4870, than the 7970 is to the 6970, yet the MSRP was almost $200 cheaper.

The 7970 took the same amount of time, is about 30% (vs 100%) yet costs nearly double.
There's no way anyone can defend that. The only excuse is AMD's production has gotten seriously more expensive (bad economy?) or they're gouging prices like Nvidia.

Shaking my head at this one.
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1) Your numbers are wrong. The 7970 is a good 30-70% faster than the 6970 depending on tests, not 20%.

Edit: So it depends on game and resolution but between 35-70%, on average probably 50% faster.

1324209130CZ7mwgCQjR_14_1.gif


2) AMD is a business. Everyone always likes to divide the market into good guys and bad guys (AMD versus Intel, AMD versus NVIDIA, etc). But every company does the same thing when they have an advantageous position. AMD gouged the shit out of FX processors when Intel's NetBurst failures were the alternative. This isn't new or surprising, really. At least these are significantly faster than their previous architecture. 30-70% faster

Also the 5870 also was a lot more than $379. That was the MSRP but good luck getting them at that price. I owned two, one was $429 and one was $395.
 
UtopiA said:
It's unfair because, in the past, AMD is the company that doesn't do that.
Your logic doesn't make sense regardless, the 5870 was much more significant relative to the 4870, than the 7970 is to the 6970, yet the MSRP was almost $200 cheaper.

The 7970 took the same amount of time, is about 30% (vs 100%) yet costs way more?
There's no way anyone can defend that. The only excuse is AMD's production has gotten seriously more expensive (bad economy?) or they're gouging prices like Nvidia.

Shaking my head at this one.
Click to expand...

yeah its called a company that goes by the name TSMC and sucks balls when it comes to new process sizes. the only problem is TSMC is the only option right now when it comes to gpu manufacturing since glofabs 28nm production facility isn't ready.



UtopiA said:
Well let me summarize:
Based on AMD's past history of the following:
1. Launch prices.
2. Launch performance.
3. Development time.

The 7970 should have taken 1 year to develop, be priced at $400 max, and be roughly the same speed as the 6990 (The 6990 is currently 16% faster than the 7970, this is a 14% difference against 5870/4870X2).

So essentially they're ripping us by about $150 and 14% performance, based on past trends.
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what crack are you smoking because i want some of that.. 1 year to develop? you obviously don't know shit about R&D.. on average it takes 3-4 years at best 2-3 years to come up with an architecture and then attempt to implement it to fit a specific process.. odds are they started GCN back when the 200 series came out and Nvidia was kicking their asses. just to give you an idea, the gpu used in the HD3k series took them 5 years.
 
UtopiA said:
It's unfair because, in the past, AMD is the company that doesn't do that.
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Maybe I look at this the wrong way, but either you can afford the card and will buy it, or you can't and won't. Either way complaining about the price is pointless.

This is business. Since when does "fair" factor into it?

The 7970 took the same amount of time, is about 30% (vs 100%) yet costs way more?
There's no way anyone can defend that. The only excuse is AMD's production has gotten seriously more expensive (bad economy?) or they're gouging prices like Nvidia.
Click to expand...

I think by now we're all aware of the hardships AMD has encountered with getting good yields.
 
Rizen said:
1) Your numbers are wrong. The 7970 is a good 50-70% faster than the 6970 depending on tests, not 20%.

2) AMD is a business. Everyone always likes to divide the market into good guys and bad guys (AMD versus Intel, AMD versus NVIDIA, etc). But every company does the same thing when they have an advantageous position. AMD gouged the shit out of FX processors when Intel's NetBurst failures were the alternative. This isn't new or surprising, really. At least these are significantly faster than their previous architecture. 60-70% faster

Also the 5870 also was a lot more than $379. That was the MSRP but good luck getting them at that price. I owned two, one was $429 and one was $395.
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1. Edited a while ago, it's 36%.
2. Again, the figures are based on past trends. Anything deviating from those means AMD has changed their marketing strategy, effectively it means they're scamming us more this time. You're agreeing with me on this one.
3. MSRP vs gouged is irrelevant since, presumably, the 7970 will also be gouged higher than $549.

what crack are you smoking because i want some of that.. 1 year to develop? you obviously don't know shit about R&D.
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It's misworded on my part.
I mean "1 year between launch dates". My points still stand though.
 
UtopiA said:
1. Edited a while ago, it's 36%.
2. Again, the figures are based on past trends. Anything deviating from those means AMD has changed their marketing strategy, effectively it means they're scamming us more this time. You're agreeing with me on this one.
3. MSRP vs gouged is irrelevant since, presumably, the 7970 will also be gouged higher than $549.
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1) 36% is the lowest figure, in some games and scenarios its up to 70%. Tessellation performance looks much improved so new games will likely show much larger % increases versus both the 580 and 6970 than older games, so in the next year or two this will likely be a faster card.

2) AMD is in a completely different position with this card than they were with the 4000, 5000 or 6000 series cards, so it's not really comparable to talk about their marketing strategy now like it was then.

3) Possibly, depends on their yields. If they are as bad as claimed, which isn't their fault really, then demand will probably drive them up. I hope that isn't the case though.
 
36% is the 2560x1600 average according to TPU which tested around 20 games.
Again, based on the PRICE of the 7970, the % needs to be somewhere around 150% to 200% faster. 36%, 50%, 75%, it's irrelevant to my point.

2) AMD is in a completely different position with this card than they were with the 4000, 5000 or 6000 series cards, so it's not really comparable to talk about their marketing strategy now like it was then.
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You're agreeing with me again.
I'm not saying AMD is doing anything wrong, I'm saying I'm disappointed they would do it. Honestly though I shouldn't be surprised. I guess I would have expected to see this behavior sooner (like the 5870 where it was warranted) but instead they offered a less-performing card and then added $200 to the price. It makes no sense to me why they waited until now, but then again I don't work in AMD's marketing department.
 
Sad day for gaming, but a great day for SCIENCE :D

Can we cook some benchmarks please,
because as it is Nvidia will just sit on it... till the 7800/7700 gets released anyway.

--
They say great science is built on the shoulders of giants - not here. At Aperture we do all our science from scratch; no hand holding.
 
UtopiA said:
You're agreeing with me again.
I'm not saying AMD is doing anything wrong, I'm saying I'm disappointed they would do it. Honestly though I shouldn't be surprised. I guess I would have expected to see this behavior sooner (like the 5870 where it was warranted) but instead they offered a less-performing card and then added $200 to the price. It makes no sense to me why they waited until now, but then again I don't work in AMD's marketing department.
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I guess we are just arguing the same point from a different perspective.

In either case, I don't expect these prices to stay this way for too long. Hopefully NVIDIA counters with some sweet deals.
 
UtopiA said:
36% is the 2560x1600 average according to TPU which tested around 20 games.
Again, based on the PRICE of the 7970, the % needs to be somewhere around 150% to 200% faster. 36%, 50%, 75%, it's irrelevant to my point.


You're agreeing with me again.
I'm not saying AMD is doing anything wrong, I'm saying I'm disappointed they would do it. Honestly though I shouldn't be surprised. I guess I would have expected to see this behavior sooner (like the 5870 where it was warranted) but instead they offered a less-performing card and then added $200 to the price. It makes no sense to me why they waited until now, but then again I don't work in AMD's marketing department.
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why not? Nvidia didn't want to drop their prices on the GTX 580 and yet the HD7970 out performs it by a good margin. so why should they take the high road and offer the HD7970 at a lower price? thats just dumb business practices. its the highest performing single card on the market no matter how you look at it so the 550 dollar price tags justified. if/when kepler comes out expect the same thing to happen with Nvidia only add another 200 dollars to the price you think it will come out as. if Nvidia tries to release their flagship card at the same price as AMD then AMD will just drop the 7970 price. its simple logic, AMD doesn't exist to please you, they exist to make money so deal with it. if you don't like the price then don't buy it, no ones holding a gun to your head telling you to buy the card.



Rizen said:
I guess we are just arguing the same point from a different perspective.

In either case, I don't expect these prices to stay this way for too long. Hopefully NVIDIA counters with some sweet deals.
Click to expand...


we'll probably see the same thing Nvidia did with the GTX 200 series when the 4000 series came out. but then again who knows, they could do the exact opposite and tell everyone to eff off and leave it to the manufactures to decide if they want to drop the price.
 
Taking everything into account, yes, this is a new trend for AMD. It's not yet clear why they are abandoning the "affordability" aspect of their video cards, especially since this is a key area they had gained much success from in the past.

I've spent the last few hours digging around on single gpu prices and so far, this new $550 is sticking out like a sore thumb. Yes, there have been many many expensive cards but not $550 expensive.

If you look at past tends, we are absolutely in new uncharted territory. However you want to slice it, spin it, point of view it, put this into context, they are breaking new ground here. It's a bit alarming to more than a few of us.

Using just basic math, their new price point to performance ration vs the 6970 has them asking nearly a 90% premium price increase.
 
Rizen said:
I guess we are just arguing the same point from a different perspective.
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I've bought ATI exclusively since 2007, but if this perf/$ scales down to the rest of the 7000 series then I have no reason to buy Red anymore. I might as well go green for the same perf/$ and also get better drivers, better warranty (for their performance cards anyway). It would be foolish not to.

If ATI and Nvidia are matching in performance and price then why would someone choose ATI? It's been their entire gimmick for 4+ years and they've just thrown it out the window.
I don't use Eyefinity but there seriously can't be any benefits to it when Nvidia is the same price, considering the endless amount of horror stories with late/broken CrossFire profiles.
 
Rizen said:
Out of curiosity, why no overclocking tests in the review, being as its the first 28nm desktop GPU available? I'd love to see you guys push this thing.
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Me too, I literally finished this review 1 hour before it had to launch. Did what I could in the time I had. Now I'm headed out in the morning for Christmas vacation, much needed, and knowing whats coming in the schedule, it may be a few weeks before we can dive into overclocking on this particular video card. I'll get to it when time allows, schedule is pretty busy coming back after Christmas.
 
Brent_Justice said:
Me too, I literally finished this review 1 hour before it had to launch. Did what I could in the time I had. Now I'm headed out in the morning for Christmas vacation, much needed, and knowing whats coming in the schedule, it may be a few weeks before we can dive into overclocking on this particular video card. I'll get to it when time allows, schedule is pretty busy coming back after Christmas.
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Grrrrr brent, why must you have a life just as I have cash to spare?! ;)
 
Brent_Justice said:
Me too, I literally finished this review 1 hour before it had to launch. Did what I could in the time I had. Now I'm headed out in the morning for Christmas vacation, much needed, and knowing whats coming in the schedule, it may be a few weeks before we can dive into overclocking on this particular video card. I'll get to it when time allows, schedule is pretty busy coming back after Christmas.
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I would also like to see 7970 vs 6990 stock and 7970 OC vs 6990.
I think that will show the true value of the card.
 
UtopiA said:
Well let me summarize:
Based on AMD's past history of the following:
1. Launch prices.
2. Launch performance.
3. Development time.

The 7970 should have taken 1 year to develop, be priced at $400 max, and be roughly the same speed as the 6990 (The 6990 is currently 16% faster than the 7970, this is a 14% difference against 5870/4870X2).

So essentially they're ripping us by about $150 and 14% performance, based on past trends.
Click to expand...

Not only are your numbers wrong as others have noted, but you're failing to take into account the fact that this is simultaneously incorporating a die shrink and the largest architecture change in quite some time.

You also continue to assume that the pricing should be relative to their own parts, which is incorrect. When you have the fastest GPU you can pretty well price it however you wish and as others have noted they're still cheaper than 3GB 580s, much less OCed cards like the one it was being compared to here.

If it isn't worth it to you then fine, but who has given you the authority to adjudicate about what is or isn't fair?
 
That's really bad news for gamers.

Nvidia doesn't even need to release their next gen looking at this performance. Make GTX 585 with slightly higher clocks drop prices a bit on rest of cards and they can continue for next next few moths easily.
 
One thing this video card does do, whether you think the performance improvements are good or not, is that it drives down prices on current video cards, putting those into more peoples hands, and it helps fuel competition with NVIDIA, which is a good thing for us hardware enthusiasts and gamers.

Personally, 7970 is going into my main system for gaming. Can't deny its performance lead at this time. After playing games on it, it certainly provided the best gameplay experience.
 
Runningflame570 said:
When you have the fastest GPU you can pretty well price it however you wish
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My entire point is that AMD didn't do this in the past. This is exactly why I am disappointed with AMD now.
The numbers being correct is what makes this an especially painful slap in the face. If you don't believe them then I point you to TPU's averages and a calculator. If you still don't believe them then I point you to email TPU's editor, whoever that may be.
 
Brent_Justice said:
One thing this video card does do, whether you think the performance improvements are good or not, is that it drives down prices on current video cards, putting those into more peoples hands, and it helps fuel competition with NVIDIA, which is a good thing for us hardware enthusiasts and gamers.

Personally, 7970 is going into my main system for gaming. Can't deny its performance lead at this time. After playing games on it, it certainly provided the best gameplay experience.
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I'm a single card whore, I could never find use for two, and the inconveniece of driver profiles is why I don't rock nV anymore.

So this is probably my card. bahahah
 
Michaelius said:
That's really bad news for gamers.

Nvidia doesn't even need to release their next gen looking at this performance. Make GTX 585 with slightly higher clocks drop prices a bit on rest of cards and they can continue for next next few moths easily.
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Or release a Kepler GTX 680 and destroy AMD...and then charge $799 for the card. :p
 
Brent or Kyle, will you guys be doing the review with it heavily overclocked just like amd says it is. It seems to overclock like a beast and seems really efficient at it too. Only reason I am asking this is because you kept mentioning that the galaxy gtx is heavily overclocked so I guess I would like to see the card heavily overclocked and benched against overclocked gtx 580
 
amazing card all around, what's most impressive is the idle power consumption and the vastly improved tessellation and geometry performances.

this surely will shut those NV fanboys mouth when it comes to bragging who's got computing power now.

I'm getting one as soon as it becomes available. it's definitely an awesome upgrade over my 5870.
 
There are too many typos and also some painful sentence structures... But great review as far as testing!

For BF3 triple-monitor gamers a 7970 is now the best option considering the heat, power draw, and noise a 6970 CFX setup generates or the price of 2 580s. I will buy 1 when it is available. I'am expecting a street price of $600.
 
This review is atrocious.

The 5970 should be compared with a stock GTX 580, not a heavily overclocked one. Most people just look at the graphs and aren't going to notice that the GTX 580 used in the review is heavily overclocked.
 
Michaelius said:
That's really bad news for gamers.

Nvidia doesn't even need to release their next gen looking at this performance. Make GTX 585 with slightly higher clocks drop prices a bit on rest of cards and they can continue for next next few moths easily.
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how is it bad news. The galaxy that was tested is already overclocked, have you seen the overclocks on this card? It fricking overclocks like a monster and really excels at it too. 1125mhz OC is nothing ot sneeze at. If I can overclock it that much, it will smoke the gtx 580 that was tested in this review which is already overclocked.

It is not a disappointement when it gives you 60-70% improvement over previous gen when used in dx 11 games that actually use tessellation.

Overclock it and you are getting close to 6990 performance.

Yes it is not a gtx 580 killer than again, when Nvidia release 680 I am sure Ati will be ready with a refined card.
 
jbz7890 said:
This review is atrocious.

The 5970 should be compared with a stock GTX 580, not a heavily overclocked one. Most people just look at the graphs and aren't going to notice that the GTX 580 used in the review is heavily overclocked.
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True, I think people arent even reading the review and just looking at the graphs. Nvidia cards give you like a linear performance increase when you overclock shaders.

The way this card overclocks it could easily reach 30% over gtx 580 used in this review.
 
Brent, thanks for the great review! After reading this I may just give ATI another shot since trying the 9800XT back in the day.
 
SixFootDuo said:
Taking everything into account, yes, this is a new trend for AMD. It's not yet clear why they are abandoning the "affordability" aspect of their video cards, especially since this is a key area they had gained much success from in the past.

I've spent the last few hours digging around on single gpu prices and so far, this new $550 is sticking out like a sore thumb. Yes, there have been many many expensive cards but not $550 expensive.

If you look at past tends, we are absolutely in new uncharted territory. However you want to slice it, spin it, point of view it, put this into context, they are breaking new ground here. It's a bit alarming to more than a few of us.

Using just basic math, their new price point to performance ration vs the 6970 has them asking nearly a 90% premium price increase.
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90%? where are you getting this number from? the 6970 came out at 400+ dollars(even though the MSRP was 370 dollars) depending on where you got it and what manufacture.. the 7970 is 150 dollars more for 40-70%(depending on the game) more performance.. again where did you get the 90% from?

but the biggest difference between now and then is that now they don't have anything to compete with.. the GTX 580 is the closest single card to it and still sells for 500+ dollars. when the 6970 came out they had to compete with the GTX 580, when the 5k series came out they had to price based on the speculation that Fermi was coming out sooner then it actually did(smart marketing by Nvidia). when the 4k series came out it was competing against the 200 series which had already been out for a year while still under performing against the 200 series..

so do the math correctly and you would understand what AMD is doing here. this is all common sense stuff anyone could figure out on their own. people need to quit bitching and do the research themselves.



jbz7890 said:
This review is atrocious.

The 5970 should be compared with a stock GTX 580, not a heavily overclocked one. Most people just look at the graphs and aren't going to notice that the GTX 580 used in the review is heavily overclocked.
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read through the 4-8 pages(what ever you have your forum preferences set at) and its quite obvious people are ignoring the fact that its going up against a 600 dollar factory overclocked GTX 580 3GB custom PCB card.
 
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Im selling things to buy this card lol. I have a 6950 unlocked to 6970. And ill probably end up selling it to try this card.
 
No doubt, the correct people that normally would have priced the 7970 are no longer with AMD. They were fired. We have new people, without the proper culture, experience in such areas making what probably amount to knee-jerk pricing. Sorry, I can't see any logic whatsoever in a $550 price point. This is not the AMD of old, the one we've come to love and respect. This is a new modern day breed entirely. Basically, the same hands that crafted / handled the Bulldozer fiasco. A scary-%@#ing-thought indeed.

"When you have the fastest GPU on the planet you can charge whatever you want" .... that statement is so far beyond ridicules it's just absurd. Sorry, you just don't abandon your loyal customers like that and throw out the window a key area of your past success and that is, affordability. Had the 7970 been priced $399, everyone of us would have been waiting in line to buy this card. Now, common sense tells us to wait for Nvidia. Why? Read further.

See, here is the common sense of it all. This is the white elephant in the room people are ignoring. The 7970 is so close in performance to the 580, you can pretty must safely assume, their new 780 card is not only going to be priced about the same but have better performance than the 7970. Using the same "video card performance logic" if you took the same gains, and yes, this is a piss poor example, but if you took the same gains from the 7970 over the 6970 and applied it GTX 580, well, yeah, that is a lot more performance than the 7970 @ $550 is going to give us. It would almost be foolish not to wait on Nvidia's new card and pass up the 7970.

I'm also ready to have PhysX and Cuda for a change.
 
psyside said:
THIS CARD IS FUCKING AMAZING!!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@

http://pic.mk/images/Bzv7.png

http://pic.mk/images/tbT7F.png


AMD Graphics division????

ancient-aliens-invisible-something-meme-generator-not-going-to-say-it-s-aliens-but-it-s-aliens-d41d8c.jpg
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I have to admit, you have the best post by far in this thread! :D

I looked at other reviews and this card is lower at idle than my old Radeon 3870 from years ago! In other reviews, an overclocked 7970 is anywhere from 5 to 20 FPS short of Radeon 6990, faster than stock-clock 580, and can match, beat or is near a 580 SLI.

Crazy man, just crazy.

Aliens or not, that's friggin' impressive.
 
Tom's certainly paints a different picture of the 7970's performance vs GTX 580 in BF2. The 7970's min FPS matches the 580's avg and beats its avg by 38%. With a standard OC, the 7970 will be well ahead by 50% and out pacing a 590 (priced at $750).
BF3%20Ultra%201080.png
 
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