AMD Radeon HD 7970 Overclocking Performance Review @ [H]

would be nice if they could create a cpu part like this new gpu. :D
 
Seriously impressive overclocking potential there without a doubt but some of those minimum framerates made me cringe a little for a £450 graphics card when compared with the cheaper and older GTX 580. Good job you can overclock it really as Skyrim's 30 fps and Deus Ex: Human Revolution's 21 fps minimum framerates at the card's stock speeds really is shocking IMO.
 
bloodhawke83 said:
would be nice if they could create a cpu part like this new gpu. :D
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It could happen, if AMD could afford to operate their own fabs, like Intel does.

Remember, both AMD and Nvidia only design the GPUs, while TSMC (and maybe in 10 years, GF) actually produce it.
 
Daz1967 said:
Seriously impressive overclocking potential there without a doubt but some of those minimum framerates made me cringe a little for a £450 graphics card when compared with the cheaper and older GTX 580. Good job you can overclock it really as Skyrim's 30 fps and Deus Ex: Human Revolution's 21 fps minimum framerates at the card's stock speeds really is shocking IMO.
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those dips are present in all cards tested because it's a software issue - no card can overcome that
 
bonehead123 said:
yea they had sufficient stock built up along time ago, but chose to make everyone think they would be in short supply TO BUILD UP DEMAND for launch day.

This in turn caused the sell out @newegg, which told them exactly what they wanted to hear....that LOTS of (apparently wealthy) people would be buying this card, regardless of the price or other considerations........


If they hadn't done this & the initial sales @$599 weren't that great, they would have had to very quickly start to cut the prices to get rid of the initial stock....which is N O T what they wanted to have to do........

end result: consumers get squeezed again & the Corp shitheads get more richer more quickly :eek:

typical greedy bastards :)
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They're a (for profit) corporation... not a charity.

notarat said:
Well you earned your handle with this post
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Heh.
 
Great perf. for 7970.

I dont see 580s price is going down significantly because ref model are much cheaper than this Galaxy and overclock much better than 860mhz.
 
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Daz1967 said:
Seriously impressive overclocking potential there without a doubt but some of those minimum framerates made me cringe a little for a £450 graphics card when compared with the cheaper and older GTX 580. Good job you can overclock it really as Skyrim's 30 fps and Deus Ex: Human Revolution's 21 fps minimum framerates at the card's stock speeds really is shocking IMO.
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I'm glad I wasn't the only one who noticed that. It's a fairly significant gap when you compare it to the 580...

It averages about a 70% gap on the overclocked 7970
vs
the 55%'ish you see with the 580.

This is across the board for the games tested in this review. Granted, some (games) fair much worse then others... In either case, I would expect the gap to get smaller... not larger. Or is this the norm with ATI cards?
 
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Seraphical said:
I'm glad I wasn't the only one who noticed that. It's a fairly significant game when you compare it to the 580...

It averages about a 70% gap on the overclocked 7970
vs
the 55%'ish you see with the 580.

This is across the board for the games tested in this review. Granted, some (games) fair much worse then others... In either case, I would expect the gap to get smaller... not larger. Or is this the norm with ATI cards?
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Since those are minimum averages I think those would be fixed/improved with newer driver revisions being a new architecture and all...
 
Sometimes you may run into lame min frame rates in a game because the devs choose to do something like a good deal of shadow work on the CPU.
 
Daz1967 said:
Seriously impressive overclocking potential there without a doubt but some of those minimum framerates made me cringe a little for a £450 graphics card when compared with the cheaper and older GTX 580. Good job you can overclock it really as Skyrim's 30 fps and Deus Ex: Human Revolution's 21 fps minimum framerates at the card's stock speeds really is shocking IMO.
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Yeah, I noticed that also, which was concerning for me as well, as minimum fps is very important to me. But if you look at the graphs closely, there are only a few instances of it dipping that low. For all the other instances, the fps is well above gtx 580 in all the graphs.
 
I pay more attention to minimum framerates in game benchmarks than high or average ones because those lows are what can make the game feel less smooth and 'unplayable'. It's all very well averaging 100+ fps or managing a high of 200+ fps but if the card dips to unplayable levels (sub-25 fps) then it mars the gameplay experience for me. Ideally a game should run with the minimum, average and maximum framerates as close to each other as possible to ensure an overall smooth feel to the game. Running at 20 fps one second then 160 fps the next would be very jarring for me personally.

I do tend to play games with v-sync and triple buffering enabled though but prefer the framerate to be between 40 and 60 fps ideally. Any lower than 40 fps and the game starts to feel sluggish. Skyrim for example was horrible to play because of this until the v1.3.10 patch, the v290.53 betas and the TESVA.dll/SkyBoost mod; the game now runs between 45 and 60 fps at all times and feels silky-smooth now. So much more enjoyable to play.
 
Daz1967 said:
I pay more attention to minimum framerates in game benchmarks than high or average ones because those lows are what can make the game feel less smooth and 'unplayable'. It's all very well averaging 100+ fps or managing a high of 200+ fps but if the card dips to unplayable levels (sub-25 fps) then it mars the gameplay experience for me. Ideally a game should run with the minimum, average and maximum framerates as close to each other as possible to ensure an overall smooth feel to the game. Running at 20 fps one second then 160 fps the next would be very jarring for me personally.

I do tend to play games with v-sync and triple buffering enabled though but prefer the framerate to be between 40 and 60 fps ideally. Any lower than 40 fps and the game starts to feel sluggish. Skyrim for example was horrible to play because of this until the v1.3.10 patch, the v290.53 betas and the TESVA.dll/SkyBoost mod; the game now runs between 45 and 60 fps at all times and feels silky-smooth now. So much more enjoyable to play.
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right, but the fact is that the 7970 achieves better minimum frame rates than a 580
 
JMccovery said:
It could happen, if AMD could afford to operate their own fabs, like Intel does.

Remember, both AMD and Nvidia only design the GPUs, while TSMC (and maybe in 10 years, GF) actually produce it.
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They can't compete with Intel, Intel has its own fabs that make chips specifically customized for their needs, using the most cutting edge equipment that no one else can afford (other companies are actually teaming up to split the costs, it's too expensive solo, except for Intel) and multiple teams of engineers working on parallel processor designs at the same time (and multiple in each category to boot, high end, low end, server, etc).

Hell, Intel's "R&D" budget alone is bigger than AMD's entire budget, that alone seals the deal.

AMD has to use third party fabs where they compete with other customers and have less room to customize the production for their specific needs. That's more cost and less performance potential right at the starting gate.

It's amazing that AMD's making something as interesting as the Bulldozer line to begin with, it may relatively pale in comparison to Intel's cutting edge CPUs performance-wise, but it's not bad at all, certainly second place worthy, amazes me their performance can even get that close to its much larger competitor with such odds stacked against it.

At least in the video card market it's two well matched companies so far.
 
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I wonder why the 7970 stutters in deus ex HR while the 580 looks smooth across the board. You guys think that will be a driver fix?
 
Flyinfinni said:
Where did you get that it stutters? I don't remember anything about that in the [H] review...
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if you look at the deus ex graphs you'll see the 7970 plummets at certain spots the GTX 580 does not. serpretetsky brings up a good question. i wonder how noticeable this was to Brent during testing?
 
Flyinfinni said:
Where did you get that it stutters? I don't remember anything about that in the [H] review...
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Which leads me to my question. Are Nvidia cards better at maintaining a more consistent and steadier frame rate than AMD cards? Anyone who has had experience in both know?
 
now this is fucking impressive. This is the performance I wanted to see! Looks like ill be getting one of these for my birthday in march.
 
addictedto60fps said:
Which leads me to my question. Are Nvidia cards better at maintaining a more consistent and steadier frame rate than AMD cards? Anyone who has had experience in both know?
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Im pretty sure this just depends on the game tbh. Maybe Nvidia a tiny bit because they have better drivers(slightly) and get boosts in some games(I think BF3 gives nvidia an advantage due to coding)
 
To Kyle or Brent:

I probably missed it somewhere in this thread, but was the 7970 used for over clock testing branded? If so, which brand was it?

Separately, which brands do you two feel will do the most careful binning of chips to reserve for custom cards?
 
Despite many Intel/nVidia fanboys that want AMD to fail, it seems they hit it big with that one. The move to TSMC, weird at first, now we know why. All around win on that one.
 
Teenyman45 said:
To Kyle or Brent:

I probably missed it somewhere in this thread, but was the 7970 used for over clock testing branded? If so, which brand was it?

Separately, which brands do you two feel will do the most careful binning of chips to reserve for custom cards?
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i think the one they used was the sample one they got. but some where in this thread they mentioned they are testing a sapphire, gigabyte and an asus card right now.
 
I hope that some 7970s are gonna be given away at the GamExperience event, as that'll probably be my only chance at getting one (or a newer video card) for the next two years.
 
The card tested was the reference one sent to us directly from AMD.

I haven't done any overclocking yet on the retail cards, I'm hoping to get newer drivers to test with.
 
cdr_74_premium said:
Despite many Intel/nVidia fanboys that want AMD to fail, it seems they hit it big with that one. The move to TSMC, weird at first, now we know why. All around win on that one.
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I've been an nVidia-preferring buyer for quite awhile now (years) but switched to the 7970... LOVING the thing.

Only issue I have is (even at stock) a flashing taskbar when scrolling in firefox (which is a driver issue it seems, heh... IE has no problem, or any 3d game).

Running this puppy at 1240core/6620mem with only 1.281v currently and 44% fan, maxing at about 70c during BF3 sessions and 64c during the brief 3dmark11 Extreme preset runs. I am 100% sure I could push higher if I went to 1.3v and higher fan, but with 44% fan and 1.3v it seems to start to have checker-box artifacts if I run it for several minutes, presumably due to thermals (I noticed once it passes 75c or so it starts doing that). Higher fan would of course do the trick but I'm happy with the 44% noise level.
 
Wow, very impressive results. I was thinking I'd treat myself and splurge on a video card after working 750+ hours of overtime last year, but I just can't justify half a mortgage payment for any single PC component...

Here's hoping for a $300 variant and/or some competition!
 
GoldenTiger said:
I've been an nVidia-preferring buyer for quite awhile now (years) but switched to the 7970... LOVING the thing.
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Kudos for your purchase.

Matter of fact, I've never owned an AMD (or ATI) GPU. All my GPUs were from nVidia. Why? Simple. AMD/ATI were really hard to get here in my town/country. It was just a couple of years ago that they arrived, and the price was higher. Now it's getting to the point that the price difference between an AMD and a nVidia model is the same seen on the US market, which is a good thing. I'm all for having choice.

Competition is great. After BD I saw many here wanting AMD dead. Now I wonder what they think about it. I hope they kick some serious ass with their GPUs and get the cash to develop some kick ass CPUs again.

Choice is a good thing.
 
notarat said:
Well if Yobbles says it's not possible then it's just not fucking possible. :rolleyes:
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Never said that but anyone who buys a video card based on overclocks is myopic because my experience has taught me that just because a reviewer's video card, or cpu, overclocks well does not mean mine will. That's a fool's game.
 
if you bothered to read previous reviews you should know that Kyle and Brett dont do the PR shill crap. They always have told it like it is.
 
mercyground said:
if you bothered to read previous reviews you should know that Kyle and Brett dont do the PR shill crap. They always have told it like it is.
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he didn't say Kyle and Brett do any "PR shill crap" he's pointing out that AMD could be sending out cherry picked video cards that overclock well to the reviewers.

If you want to really put on your conspiracy hat, they might even cherry pick the first month of video cards to really get the purchasing momentum and good user reviews going, and then start selling the rest of their cards.
 
Yobbles said:
I'm basing my comment on my own experiences. <snip>
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Well then obviously your experiences with early release hardware far outweigh mine, so I will defer to you the expert.


You are wrong.
 
I picked up 2 Sapphire 7970s, one of them does not like 1125 =p I'm alright @ 1075 though and BF3 runs smooth @ 3600x1920 so I'm a happy camper ;)
 
Tiporaro said:
Any dreaded tearing/microstutter?
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Actually, no microstutter at all, it seems the fps are high enough to keep it smooth, there is tearing on 1 monitor since I'm using 2 dp + 1 DVI, can't be helped atm but it doesn't mother me unless I'm watching a movie / TV show which i use my tv for anyway. so non issue atm.
 
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