Buy hd 7990 now or wait for 9000 series?

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savagepagan

Gawd
Joined
Jan 9, 2010
Messages
673
Now that the prices are dropping on the 7990, do I buy the 7990 or wait for 9770?
 
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If you can wait, then wait.
Either way, there'll be something better coming.
 
StormClaw said:
9xxx is still a long time away

i'm picking up 780 SLI
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It's not. They will be announced in about a month and for sale about a month after that. 780 is crazy priced because it has no competition right now. It will be $499 or less very shortly.
 
The 7990 is better but still has a few technical problems. However the drivers are getting better so the card is getting better. Like others have said, if you can wait, wait.
 
I do not believe 7990 stocks will withstand demand the new price and new framepace driver created. IT IS THE BETTER SINGLE CARD FOR 1 MONITOR. PERIOD

I foresee NVIDIA striking back with a dual 760 VGA. The 4870x2 back in 2008 lasted me whole 3 years of 1600p gaming, and i do believe that with the new driver a 7990 could give me another 3y, if my 2007 monitor lasts that long.

given current prices i wonder if getting 2 7970s isn't a better option than a 7990 at current prices: i see USD320-350 for many models, including some blowers more suitable for CF than the open air coolers. 7990 prices wont go down twice the price of a 7970 so soon, unless you believe in U$70 rebate promises like these. U$590AR is the only 7990 below 2x7970 prices right now.
 
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funkydmunky said:
It's not. They will be announced in about a month and for sale about a month after that.
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They are doing Tech launch on Sept 25.
With any luck, cards would arrive end of October.
Then they will be sold out everywhere.
And if you want a nice non-ref card you'd have to wait a couple months more.

All in all, 3 to 4 months
 
StormClaw said:
Then they will be sold out everywhere.
All in all, 3 to 4 months
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Why is that? We know it will be market leading, but do you really think it will sell out so fast?
Or do you believe AMD doesn't have the capacity? If so, what is that based on?
 
funkydmunky said:
Why is that? We know it will be market leading, but do you really think it will sell out so fast?
Or do you believe AMD doesn't have the capacity? If so, what is that based on?
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How fast they are so hotcakes...;)
 
funkydmunky said:
Why is that? We know it will be market leading, but do you really think it will sell out so fast?
Or do you believe AMD doesn't have the capacity? If so, what is that based on?
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All the new hot cards are sold out very fast, this is a rule. A lot of people are waiting for them.
And like you said they wont have the capacity at the start to satisfy everyone.
 
PowerColor 7990 Card includes the following games:

Bioshock: Infinite, Sleeping Dogs, Deus Ex: HR, Hitman: Absolution, Tomb Raider, Far Cry 3, FC3: Blood Dragon and Crysis 3.
 
funkydmunky said:
780 is crazy priced because it has no competition right now. It will be $499 or less very shortly.
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I doubt it. Knowing Nvidia they'll still charge more for a slower card.

StormClaw said:
All the new hot cards are sold out very fast, this is a rule
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780s were available the day they were released, and are still in stock everywhere. I'd rather wait a couple months than plop $1300 for cards that may be slower/more expensive in 60 days.
 
I’d love to get a dual GPU card like the 7990 but my 5970 still has Windows 7 issues. Certain games play fine and all afternoon in XP but they crashy crash-crash-crash in Windows 7. This changed in all drivers after 10.11 and they never fixed it. In XP I can use any new drive that supports XP but in Windows 7 I have to stay at 10.11. It’s a dual boot system that my friend uses when we play games but it’s still a drag. It’s also fun when the game is not crossfire friendly and you have to play in a window as they don’t give you a setting in CCC to disable crossfire on dual GPU cards.

With the games that have CF issues and the few that truly benefit, I’d stay away from dual GPUs and if you really want to try it, start with a single GPU 7970 or 9970. Most of the time it’s cheaper, the two card run faster, you can upgrade to a second one later and if it turns out the CF is not working out the way you like you can sell one of the cards.
 
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Tanquen said:
I’d love to get a dual GPU card like the 7990 but my 5970 still has Windows 7 issues. Certain games play fine and all afternoon in XP but they crashy crash-crash-crash in Windows 7. This changed in all drivers after 10.11 and they never fixed it. In XP I can use any new drive that supports XP but in Windows 7 I have to stay at 10.11. It’s a dual boot system that my friend uses when we play games but it’s still a drag. It’s also fun when the game is not crossfire friendly and you have to play in a window as they don’t give you a setting in CCC to disable crossfire on dual GPU cards.

With the games that have CF issues and the few that truly benefit, I’d stay away from dual GPUs and if you really want to try it, start with a single GPU 7970 or 9970. Most of the time it’s cheaper, the two card run faster, you can upgrade to a second one later and if it turns out the CF is not working out the way you like you can sell one of the cards.
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I ran Quadfie 5970 on windows 7 and they never crashed due to anything but over doing the overclocking, the latest drivers just kept getting better for them, it sounds like a system specific issue.
 
CF doesn't even function in windowed mode in my experience... so it shouldn't cause issues there.
 
Final8ty said:
I ran Quadfie 5970 on windows 7 and they never crashed due to anything but over doing the overclocking, the latest drivers just kept getting better for them, it sounds like a system specific issue.
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I don’t know what to tell you but Diablo 3, the new Age of Empires, a few others and now Company of Heroes 2 crash in Windows 7. It’s not right away is always like 20 minutes plus.

How is it my system? When:
The same PC booted into Windows XP with any of the new drivers works fine.
The same PC booted into Windows 7 with an old driver works fine.
The same PC booted into Windows 7 with a driver newer than 10.11 the games crash.

And it’s only some games. The system is only used when my friend comes over to play. We default to Windows 7 and many games run fine for hours and hours throughout the day we play. But some we find crash over and over. Sometimes it can be an hour or more into the game before a crash. Then we boot into XP and no more crashing. Both the XP and Windows 7 installs are clean and up to date just for playing games.

I talked to support numerous times way back when it was my main system and at the time I was playing Dead Rising 2 and Darksiders, both would carsh in Windows 7 with the newest driver. Dead Rising 2 would crash every time just before the menus. And changing to the older driver or booting into XP (With the new driver!) was like flipping a switch. A few drivers later they said in the release note that they fixed random lockups for Dead Rising 2 and it did work but other titles still have the same issue.
 
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Tanquen said:
???
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Never mind I read what you said wrong, thought you were saying CF was causing issues when running under windowed mode. Yes, they should add an option to disable it when in fullscreen. I think you can do it in Radeon Pro, though.
 
Tanquen said:
I don’t know what to tell you but Diablo 3, the new Age of Empires, a few others and now Company of Heroes 2 crash in Windows 7. It’s not right away is always like 20 minutes plus.

How is it my system? When:
The same PC booted into Windows XP with any of the new drivers works fine.
The same PC booted into Windows 7 with an old driver works fine.
The same PC booted into Windows 7 with a driver newer than 10.11 the games crash.

And it’s only some games. The system is only used when my friend comes over to play. We default to Windows 7 and many games run fine for hours and hours throughout the day we play. But some we find crash over and over. Sometimes it can be an hour or more into the game before a crash. Then we boot into XP and no more crashing. Both the XP and Windows 7 installs are clean and up to date just for playing games.

I talked to support numerous times way back when it was my main system and at the time I was playing Dead Rising 2 and Darksiders, both would carsh in Windows 7 with the newest driver. Dead Rising 2 would crash every time just before the menus. And changing to the older driver or booting into XP (With the new driver!) was like flipping a switch. A few drivers later they said in the release note that they fixed random lockups for Dead Rising 2 and it did work but other titles still have the same issue.
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Im just saying that your issue is not common at all.

I dont put my run of good fortune down to luck, im starting to believe that compatibility is more guaranteed on AMD motherboards than Intel.

It because it works on XP does not meant that it still cant be down to the system, there was a common issue with random pausing with windows XP when used on a specific DFI motherboard that was totally gone when used with vista.
Even overclocking has been know to be effected depending on what OS is being used and even if its a 32bit version or 64bit version can make as difference.
 
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Final8ty said:
Im just saying that your issue is not common at all.

I dont put my run of good fortune down to luck, im starting to believe that compatibility is more guaranteed on AMD motherboards than Intel.

It because it works on XP does not meant that it still cant be down to the system, there was a common issue with random pausing with windows XP when used on a specific DFI motherboard that was totally gone when used with vista.
Even overclocking has been know to be effected depending on what OS is being used and even if its a 32bit version or 64bit version can make as difference.
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I know but everyone told me the same thing about the 7970 with an X79 MB randomly crashing for like a year and then they fixed it and said so only in the driver notes. But AMD support and others just kept telling me it was my PS or CPU or RAM or MB and so on. Surprisingly, trying different RAM and PS and MB did not help.

The fact that I can toggle on the crashing in Windows 7 with a driver newer than 10.11 makes me think its the driver. What can I say? Getting a dual GPU card is just asking for trouble. Fewer people have them and less time is spent testing them by AMD and the developers and they cost more and are slower and so on. Do what you like but I bet two 5XXX cards in my old rig would work fine but another 5970 would do the same thing.
 
Tanquen said:
I know but everyone told me the same thing about the 7970 with an X79 MB randomly crashing for like a year and then they fixed it and said so only in the driver notes. But AMD support and others just kept telling me it was my PS or CPU or RAM or MB and so on. Surprisingly, trying different RAM and PS and MB did not help.

The fact that I can toggle on the crashing in Windows 7 with a driver newer than 10.11 makes me think its the driver. What can I say? Getting a dual GPU card is just asking for trouble. Fewer people have them and less time is spent testing them by AMD and the developers and they cost more and are slower and so on. Do what you like but I bet two 5XXX cards in my old rig would work fine but another 5970 would do the same thing.
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7970 with an X79 issue is different as the OS made no difference to the issue, it was clearly early on for people who could work it out that there was a motherboard compatibility issue, i even said so myself weeks before conformation.

Drivers can have compatibility issues with specific set-ups and OS, yours is one of them, but if you are in the rare category then you have little chance of getting it resolved, the thing is you worded it as if its a universal issue with windows 7 and the 5970 which it is not and very likely your mobo with windows 7 and the 5970 is.
 
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Final8ty said:
7970 with an X79 issue is different as the OS made no difference to the issue, it was clearly early on for people who could work it out that there was a motherboard compatibility issue, i even said so myself weeks before conformation.

Drivers can have compatibility issues with specific set-ups and OS, yours is one of them, but if you are in the rare category then you have little chance of getting it resolved, the thing is you worded it as if its a universal issue with windows 7 and the 5970 which it is not and very likely your mobo with windows 7 and the 5970 is.
Click to expand...

That’s cool that you figured it out (7970+X79=crash) and all but others did not and AMD did not tell us. I just missed the coverage of it I guess. I only found it in some random forum at the time. I gave AMD and many others at the time my hardware specs and no one said anything but it must be your RAM or your MB or your PS or your CPU. I know I fell through the cracks but come on, I did nothing wrong. Even when they did fix it, they said it was only CF Eyefinity setups and at the time I had neither but thankfully no more random lockups after the fix.

Hardware software who knows. Sometimes they fix driver issues because the driver has a bug and sometimes they tweak drivers to band aid over bad hardware. Sometimes it’s bad runs of GPUs or poorly bined GPUs and they tweak drivers to fix them.

Agree to disagree as (to me) it is an AMD driver issue not a motherboard issue and don’t think it’s that rare. They even fixed it for at least one game and I can toggle on and off by switching driver versions for others games in Windows 7. We don’t know what the issue is or how many it affects. Only a chosen few at AMD do and they choose not to fix it or the guy that knew about it is gone or…

I also have the corrupt mouse pointer and the 7XXX DX9 graphics issue that many others have had but still many said that it was my hardware. Again no one and AMD support knew what I was on about and suggest things like “We (AMD) don’t need to support DX9 anymore.” Then AMD comes out with a fix for some DX9 (they say all) titles and just now the mouse pointer fix, did not fix it though. Again it fixed some games but not all. Again other folks say these games run fine, it’s your hardware. Again a new build with new HD, new MB, new PS, new RAM and two new 7970s with a new install of Windows. Again the title runs fine in XP but not Windows 7. I was even able to install it in an XP VMware session running on Windows 7 and not have the graphic bugs.

I know you are trying to help but I just feel gipped sometimes. They have your money but you must do large chunks of the support on your own. Like the 7970+X79=crash thing. The 7970 should not have been released with all the bugs it had, it should not have taken almost a year to fix it and they should have told people that contacted them with a 7970 and a X79 MB what was going on.

I just want to play man. After a few weekends of tweaking my friend and I played COH2 without a crash on either system yesterday. I just had to disable CF on the 7970 system but the 5970 don’t have that and I could not get it to run in a window. The last application profile was to disable it for you but it did not work on the 5970 until I installed the 13.6 driver. Then the last fix on the 5970 system was found in one of the COH2 forums were someone mentioned that folks with older AMD setups and random crashing were having better luck with the game replay turned off. You have to disable write access to the Replay folder as there is no in game setting but it seemed to work.
 
x3sphere said:
Never mind I read what you said wrong, thought you were saying CF was causing issues when running under windowed mode. Yes, they should add an option to disable it when in fullscreen. I think you can do it in Radeon Pro, though.
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Catalyst AI = crossfire control
 
x3sphere said:
That's not the same thing. Yes disabling Catalyst AI will effectively disable CF but it also switches off a bunch of other driver-level optimizations.
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You are right, I forgot about that setting but I think it was removed from the 13.X something and newer drivers. Can't find it anyway. Called something else now?
 
Tanquen said:
That’s cool that you figured it out (7970+X79=crash) and all but others did not and AMD did not tell us. I just missed the coverage of it I guess. I only found it in some random forum at the time. I gave AMD and many others at the time my hardware specs and no one said anything but it must be your RAM or your MB or your PS or your CPU. I know I fell through the cracks but come on, I did nothing wrong. Even when they did fix it, they said it was only CF Eyefinity setups and at the time I had neither but thankfully no more random lockups after the fix.

Hardware software who knows. Sometimes they fix driver issues because the driver has a bug and sometimes they tweak drivers to band aid over bad hardware. Sometimes it’s bad runs of GPUs or poorly bined GPUs and they tweak drivers to fix them.

Agree to disagree as (to me) it is an AMD driver issue not a motherboard issue and don’t think it’s that rare. They even fixed it for at least one game and I can toggle on and off by switching driver versions for others games in Windows 7. We don’t know what the issue is or how many it affects. Only a chosen few at AMD do and they choose not to fix it or the guy that knew about it is gone or…

I also have the corrupt mouse pointer and the 7XXX DX9 graphics issue that many others have had but still many said that it was my hardware. Again no one and AMD support knew what I was on about and suggest things like “We (AMD) don’t need to support DX9 anymore.” Then AMD comes out with a fix for some DX9 (they say all) titles and just now the mouse pointer fix, did not fix it though. Again it fixed some games but not all. Again other folks say these games run fine, it’s your hardware. Again a new build with new HD, new MB, new PS, new RAM and two new 7970s with a new install of Windows. Again the title runs fine in XP but not Windows 7. I was even able to install it in an XP VMware session running on Windows 7 and not have the graphic bugs.

I know you are trying to help but I just feel gipped sometimes. They have your money but you must do large chunks of the support on your own. Like the 7970+X79=crash thing. The 7970 should not have been released with all the bugs it had, it should not have taken almost a year to fix it and they should have told people that contacted them with a 7970 and a X79 MB what was going on.

I just want to play man. After a few weekends of tweaking my friend and I played COH2 without a crash on either system yesterday. I just had to disable CF on the 7970 system but the 5970 don’t have that and I could not get it to run in a window. The last application profile was to disable it for you but it did not work on the 5970 until I installed the 13.6 driver. Then the last fix on the 5970 system was found in one of the COH2 forums were someone mentioned that folks with older AMD setups and random crashing were having better luck with the game replay turned off. You have to disable write access to the Replay folder as there is no in game setting but it seemed to work.
Click to expand...

With the 5 series i never had any such issue but then i dont play those games you mentioned, but i do have 450 other games.

The 7 series launch was a mess, i dont like jumping on totally new architecture and like to wait for the refresh, there was a group of us that started to see a pattern across forums with 7970+X79=crash, evefinity and trifire and quadfire and where others who were not using X79 were having more success, but most would not believe it at the time.
 
Tanquen said:
I don’t know what to tell you but Diablo 3, the new Age of Empires, a few others and now Company of Heroes 2 crash in Windows 7. It’s not right away is always like 20 minutes plus.

How is it my system? When:
The same PC booted into Windows XP with any of the new drivers works fine.
The same PC booted into Windows 7 with an old driver works fine.
The same PC booted into Windows 7 with a driver newer than 10.11 the games crash.

And it’s only some games. The system is only used when my friend comes over to play. We default to Windows 7 and many games run fine for hours and hours throughout the day we play. But some we find crash over and over. Sometimes it can be an hour or more into the game before a crash. Then we boot into XP and no more crashing. Both the XP and Windows 7 installs are clean and up to date just for playing games.

I talked to support numerous times way back when it was my main system and at the time I was playing Dead Rising 2 and Darksiders, both would carsh in Windows 7 with the newest driver. Dead Rising 2 would crash every time just before the menus. And changing to the older driver or booting into XP (With the new driver!) was like flipping a switch. A few drivers later they said in the release note that they fixed random lockups for Dead Rising 2 and it did work but other titles still have the same issue.
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I've had problems with overheating on my non-overclocked 5870, as well as a 7750 on a different computer.

What happened is that somewhere, they introduced a bug that prevented the fan speed from ramping up, so anything GPU intensive would eventually crash. I fixed it by using MSI Afterburner to set the clock speed.
 
I've had a +/- 20 min crash issue on my system before...

It didn't show up on any burn-in tests I did, yet when I played certain games after +/- 20-30mins the system would crash & reboot.

After more testing, turns out my the OC on my CPU & my specific brand of memory modules was the issue. Everything was fine & stable as long as I didn't play certain games. I could run handbrake for days with no issue, bitcoin gpu mine for days without issue; both run handbrake & bitcoin gpu mine simultaneously with OC on everything without issue (warm though! :) ).

Play a couple games 30mins, crash. I thought it had to be a driver issue!

Nope, take the OC off, everything ran fine. Since that was REALLY not acceptable to me (obviously), I decided to change memory modules to another brand, and VOILA problem went away keeping my CPU OC. The RAM was good, memtest & ramdisks confirmed it, but for some reason 30mins into a couple games, crash.

I can only advise testing each component thoroughly!
 
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Well, I decided not to wait, although I still might pick up the 9000 series when it comes out. I was very unsatisfied with my GTX 770 SLI in terms of driver issues lately, and when I only play a select few games having issues in more than one is a bad time.

I picked up an MSI 7990 with the games bundle from Tigerdirect (no tax in CA), and I'll end up saving about $100 total since the 770's are already sold. Hoping for good performance on this card, I play at both 1600p and 120hz 1080p.
 
LigTasm said:
Well, I decided not to wait, although I still might pick up the 9000 series when it comes out. I was very unsatisfied with my GTX 770 SLI in terms of driver issues lately, and when I only play a select few games having issues in more than one is a bad time.

I picked up an MSI 7990 with the games bundle from Tigerdirect (no tax in CA), and I'll end up saving about $100 total since the 770's are already sold. Hoping for good performance on this card, I play at both 1600p and 120hz 1080p.
Click to expand...

Let us know how it goes with the 7990 and thse new beta amd drivers.
 
Yakk said:
I've had a +/- 20 min crash issue on my system before...

It didn't show up on any burn-in tests I did, yet when I played certain games after +/- 20-30mins the system would crash & reboot.

After more testing, turns out my the OC on my CPU & my specific brand of memory modules was the issue. Everything was fine & stable as long as I didn't play certain games. I could run handbrake for days with no issue, bitcoin gpu mine for days without issue; both run handbrake & bitcoin gpu mine simultaneously with OC on everything without issue (warm though! :) ).

Play a couple games 30mins, crash. I thought it had to be a driver issue!

Nope, take the OC off, everything ran fine. Since that was REALLY not acceptable to me (obviously), I decided to change memory modules to another brand, and VOILA problem went away keeping my CPU OC. The RAM was good, memtest & ramdisks confirmed it, but for some reason 30mins into a couple games, crash.

I can only advise testing each component thoroughly!
Click to expand...

deja vu

I had to sort out a customers PC.

Memtest does not rule out memory & motherboard compatibility issues that can lead to CTD, Blue screen, driver has stopped responding from 3 to 8 times a day while gaming for 3 weeks to nail this one down.

OCZ Gold 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 (OCZ3G1333LV4GK) (1333MHz)
Asus M4A79XTD Evo.
Passed memtest 12 hours, Passed Prime-95 8hours passed, Furmark passed, 3Dmark06 passed.
Changed the gfx card.
Drivers 10.4/ 10.5 hotfix/10.6.

Fire up WOW which is the only game the customer plays at the moment & instant multiple driver has stopped responding or sometimes hours or more would pass.

Put in some G.Skill RipJaw 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C8 & not had a single issue.

That was the first time that i had to deal with a problem like that where all the benching and stability programs passed but as soon as fired up that game, Driver has stopped responding and it was all down to the RAM not liking the motherboard which passed all the tests but crashed the driver when gaming.
 
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