AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition Video Card Review @ [H]

[Nuby1Canuby]

In HardwareCanucks review it shows the original 7970 over a 680 by 1%.

Read the chart in the conclusion again.
They are comparing the HD 7970 GHz Edition to a stock GTX 680, HD 7970 @ 1GHz/5.5Gbps memory and a reference HD 7970 3 GB.
The HD 7970 GE is 9% faster then the reference HD 7970 which would make the reference HD 7970 8% slower then the GTX 680.

 

[cannondale06]

I find it interesting that e GTX 680 is able to perform so well with less RAM and less memory bandwidth. Feels like AMD is either vastly under utilizing the hardware or something is not quite engineered correctly. In other words, if the GPU isn't powerful enough to tax the memory bandwidth, why spend the money on such an aggressive design?

I'd really like to see an article that attempts to dig into this a little further.

AMD has nothing to do with how much vram or bandwidth a game needs. and in games that do need lots of bandwidth such as AvP and Warhead, the 680 easily loses.

 

[flippin_waffles]

Here's something to consider:



http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/VTX3D/Radeon_HD_7970_X-Edition/26.html

Want my opinion? Probably not, but i'm going to give it anyway.
It's pretty clear that these chips are going directly to AMD's partners to produce their own ASIC's. The only intent AMD has by releasing these for review is to claim the fastest GPU in the world, which it does. The rest they leave to their partners for proper coolers and modified voltage/clocks. At the MSRP they set, they aren't canabalizing any of their partners current or future cards and it allows them to adjust the price accordingly. Saphire for example can drop a 1200 MHz card based on this GPU and the pricing for the rest of the stack is left intact. IOW it doesn't disrupt their partners ASICS in any way, only enhances them with more flexibility. It's actually a pretty clever move.

 

[BababooeyHTJ]

I agree, I came away from these reviews with a different opinion of 7970. It really does seem to at least perform more consistently than GTX680 at higher resolutions.

 

[TFchris]

I believe tomshardware did a review of it, and yeah the HD7970 GE did take the performance crown back as the fastest gpu on the planet by a whopping 2% average over the GTX680 lol

but then again the benchmarks these days cater to only the "newest" games which it should incorporate "moderately old" games as well (such as last/2 years games). and a good number of the benchies are the games that you open and see the "best played with nvidia" display/whisper lol

 

[flippin_waffles]

I believe tomshardware did a review of it, and yeah the HD7970 GE did take the performance crown back as the fastest gpu on the planet by a whopping 2% average over the GTX680 lol

but then again the benchmarks these days cater to only the "newest" games which it should incorporate "moderately old" games as well (such as last/2 years games). and a good number of the benchies are the games that you open and see the "best played with nvidia" display/whisper lol

It's enough to set and control prices.

[edit]

The newest games are what take advantage of the advanced features in the newest cards. It's what progress and advancing tech is all about. Utilizing things like Direct Compute for Forward+ Rendering, or AO, or transparency etc. is bleeding edge stuff, and that comes in the newest titles.

[edit2]

Reviews that focus on FPS and fail to explain the most impressive and advanced parts of GCN are doing the community a diservice IMO.

 

[BababooeyHTJ]

I believe tomshardware did a review of it, and yeah the HD7970 GE did take the performance crown back as the fastest gpu on the planet by a whopping 2% average over the GTX680 lol

but then again the benchmarks these days cater to only the "newest" games which it should incorporate "moderately old" games as well (such as last/2 years games). and a good number of the benchies are the games that you open and see the "best played with nvidia" display/whisper lol

Yeah but at 2560x1600 it beat the gtx680 by 8% in the TPU review. There are some games where it really beats the pants off of the GTX680 like Crysis, Crysis 2, Metro, and Serious Sam 3. When GTX680 does perform better than 7970 by any significant margin its in games like Skyrim where the 7970 isn't struggling anyways. If you look at the Anandtech review 7970 in one bench is beating out GTX680 by something like 40% with minimum framerates.

At higher resolutions in the games where it really needs it 7970 seems to be the faster card and as we all know the normal $430 7970 can pretty much hit the same speeds.

 

[phiberoptik]

I'll wait for the 7990

 

[TFchris]

don't hold your breathe, I have my suspicions that there won't be a dual-gpu release from the red team this series

 

[pelo]

don't hold your breathe, I have my suspicions that there won't be a dual-gpu release from the red team this series

We might ;P

Specs for new FirePro

1 GHz Southern Islands (28nm GCN Architecture) GPU
4 TFLOPS single precision
264.8-megapixel fill rate
1 TFLOPS double precision
6 GB GDDR5 Memory
384-bit memory bus
6 mini DisplayPorts
Dual-slot active fansink with vapor chamber (on stage version showed 3 cooling fans)
AMD PowerTune and ZeroCore Power technologies

While this might be an HPC/workstation-only SKU, there's a chance we'll see it in retail channels as a 7990 considering AMD pushes desktop GPUs as multipurpose compute/gaming cards, though I'm not sure what the hell anyone is going to do with 6GB of vRAM.

Just to reiterate, most of the reviews I've read show the 7970 1ghz retaking the performance crown, albeit by a very slight margin. Though most of the ground AMD lost to the GTX680 was made up by driver improvements rather than the slight bump in clock speed and that might sound disappointing, it actually means AMD's driver team isn't as worthless as we all thought they were and it was the drivers rather than the architecture that made the 7970 performance look underwhelming when compared to the 680/670.

 

[Dan_D]

We might ;P

Specs for new FirePro



While this might be an HPC/workstation-only SKU, there's a chance we'll see it in retail channels as a 7990 considering AMD pushes desktop GPUs as multipurpose compute/gaming cards, though I'm not sure what the hell anyone is going to do with 6GB of vRAM.

Just to reiterate, most of the reviews I've read show the 7970 1ghz retaking the performance crown, albeit by a very slight margin. Though most of the ground AMD lost to the GTX680 was made up by driver improvements rather than the slight bump in clock speed and that might sound disappointing, it actually means AMD's driver team isn't as worthless as we all thought they were.

With regard to drivers, I've been really pleased with AMD for the most part. Though it took them too long to get Crossfire working worth a damn on the 7970.

 

[pelo]

Yea, honestly having used both AMD and nVidia cards for the past few years and shuffling between one company and the other and working with quite a few rigs both laptop/desktop, I've noticed a wider array of issues in single card situations with nVidia than I have AMD. The issues AMD generally has are with respect to squeezing out that 10% performance from a game or crossfire and get blown out of proportion by a very vocal small minority. I'd put them on an even keel the last 2 years or so.

I'm really happy with this latest gen GCN architecture. I think it's up there with ATI's famous 9800PRO with regards to performance and the compute is great too.

edit - just to add, a lot of people are so damn impressed with the 7970s that they're replacing Quadros/Firepros in Maya and other workstation related programs. Kind of crazy to see that from a $500 gaming card.

 

[Meowws]

STAY AWAY FROM HD 7970 cards! MY HD 7970 DCII cards keep crashing into black screen with audio stuttering and Driver support is off the roof shit!

 

[Dan_D]

STAY AWAY FROM HD 7970 cards! MY HD 7970 DCII cards keep crashing into black screen with audio stuttering and Driver support is off the roof shit!

I've had a reference AMD Radeon HD 7970 since the week they launched and I've not had any problems of the sort. You are overreacting. If you've got problems maybe we can help you solve them. You may need to RMA one or more of your cards.

 

[TFchris]

my twin BE hd7970's from xfx hasn't cause me any troubles since day 1... but i never oc'd them either

 

[Lorien]

So, AMD always had the fastest card in the planet, they just didn't clock it properly. Thankfully they gave their customers the tools to do so. I've known this for more than half a year, thanks for reminding me though.

Gotta love how the power consumption card gets played by the other camp lol. Let me use a line they were fond of using in previous generations: "When did you all become tree hugging hippies?"

 

[demingo]

Adaptive V-Sync was one of the biggest features of the last 5 years... until AMD has something that can compete with that I don't think I will even consider a card from team red.

 

[Dan_D]

Adaptive V-Sync was one of the biggest features of the last 5 years... until AMD has something that can compete with that I don't think I will even consider a card from team red.

It's a simple feature to implement as I understand it. I'd bet on AMD doing it very soon.

 

[SicKlown42012]

It's a simple feature to implement as I understand it. I'd bet on AMD doing it very soon.

Since it's a software issue, it'l be interesting to see if AMD enables it for all cards or uses it as a checkbox feature on their next release. But seeing how they made MLAA available for all, I'd bet on them enabling it for newer cards first and then enabling if for the rest in subsequent driver releases. I just hope they thoroughly test it to avoid some of the issues Nvidia has had with it when it was first enabled.

 

[xoleras]

Adaptive V-Sync was one of the biggest features of the last 5 years... until AMD has something that can compete with that I don't think I will even consider a card from team red.

Biggest in the past 5 years? Thats a bit of a stretch, I don't even use it on my 690. Basically the impression I get is that it turns vsync on and off for you, who cares?

 

[Cobalt35]

I don't get why people are getting so excited... all they've done is overclocked their card a bit so it scratches out a win over the 680 in some games. Woop Woop

 

[raghu78]

I don't get why people are getting so excited... all they've done is overclocked their card a bit so it scratches out a win over the 680 in some games. Woop Woop

scratches out a win. thats hardly true. If you look at max playable settings at 1600p and multi monitor gaming its significant.

http://translate.googleusercontent....n.html&usg=ALkJrhgFeONTEB__sgtxnpvLnTKbIpo4Sg

"This version of the Radeon HD 7970 should be available in early July for a price between € 470 and 500, a price / performance ratio similar to that of the original model and higher than the GeForce GTX 680, which is a good thing "

http://www./forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/54954-amd-radeon-hd-7970-3gb-ghz-edition-review-21.html

" In our opinion and with all other things being equal, the HD 7970 GHz Edition is the card to have for ultra high resolution gaming"

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6025/radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition-review-catching-up-to-gtx-680/19

"As an addendum to that however, while the 7970GE and GTX 680 are tied at 2560x1600 and other single-monitor resolutions the same cannot be said for multi-monitor configurations. The 7970GE and GTX 680 still trade blows on a game-by-game basis with Eyefinity/NVIDIA Surround, but there’s a clear 6% advantage on average for the 7970GE. Furthermore the 7970GE has 3GB of VRAM versus 2GB for the GTX 680, which makes the 7970GE all the better suited for multi-monitor gaming in the future. AMD may be tied for single-monitor gaming, but they have a clear winner on their hands for multi-monitor gaming."

Noise and heat aren't going to be a factor because AMD partners are going to come out with their own cooling designs. What needs to be seen is the the out of the box speeds of the custom designs like Sapphire HD 7970 Toxic and their overclockability. We will know that soon in a couple of weeks.

 

[Dan_D]

scratches out a win. thats hardly true. If you look at max playable settings at 1600p and multi monitor gaming its significant.

http://translate.googleusercontent....n.html&usg=ALkJrhgFeONTEB__sgtxnpvLnTKbIpo4Sg

"This version of the Radeon HD 7970 should be available in early July for a price between € 470 and 500, a price / performance ratio similar to that of the original model and higher than the GeForce GTX 680, which is a good thing "

http://www./forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/54954-amd-radeon-hd-7970-3gb-ghz-edition-review-21.html

" In our opinion and with all other things being equal, the HD 7970 GHz Edition is the card to have for ultra high resolution gaming"

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6025/radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition-review-catching-up-to-gtx-680/19

"As an addendum to that however, while the 7970GE and GTX 680 are tied at 2560x1600 and other single-monitor resolutions the same cannot be said for multi-monitor configurations. The 7970GE and GTX 680 still trade blows on a game-by-game basis with Eyefinity/NVIDIA Surround, but there’s a clear 6% advantage on average for the 7970GE. Furthermore the 7970GE has 3GB of VRAM versus 2GB for the GTX 680, which makes the 7970GE all the better suited for multi-monitor gaming in the future. AMD may be tied for single-monitor gaming, but they have a clear winner on their hands for multi-monitor gaming."

Noise and heat aren't going to be a factor because AMD partners are going to come out with their own cooling designs. What needs to be seen is the the out of the box speeds of the custom designs like Sapphire HD 7970 Toxic and their overclockability. We will know that soon in a couple of weeks.

And multimonitor gaming is exactly why I've stuck with the 7970. Dropping to 2GB cards just doesn't seem like a good call. AMD's drivers have really improved lately and with Crossfire now working, I'm seriously thinking about adding another HD 7970 to my rig.

 

[Blacklash]

Wish AMD would add an FPS limiter to the CCC. Vsync doesn't cut it in Skyrim. Limiting FPS with AB makes a noticeable difference. It eliminates almost all occasional skipping.

 

[Fooshnik]

Wish AMD would add an FPS limiter to the CCC. Vsync doesn't cut it in Skyrim. Limiting FPS with AB makes a noticeable difference. It eliminates almost all occasional skipping.

I have no clue why they don't do this either, just call it a bloody "compatibility mode" or some such crap. I've had to use AB to limit frames on a number of games to prevent stuttering. At the very least they should put it in the CAPs if they know a game has an issue.

 

[blandead]

Either way I'm pretty disappointed with this review, I usually expect good solid reviews from this site, but 3 games? No multi monitor tests? The conclusion is so biased towards the 680 they don't even say straightforward the new 7970 is better. And for some reason they don't care how much higher the min fps is in most cases? When 680 has 2-3 fps average higher, which provides no improved gameplay they are more than eager to say how much % wise it's better (even tho 7970 min frames are 5-10 fps higher). Even on bf2 it's plain better, but all they say is it makes no difference in fight scenes. No mention that gameplay is overall better and even higher min fps.

The bottom line?
I can care less if they don't "recommend" the card at same price as 680, but at least be straight that it's a better card compared to 680. That is what was tested no? Or does overclocked custom 680 have something to do with two stock card reviews?

 

[BababooeyHTJ]

IDK, GTX680 sort of chokes at higher resolutions. 7970 seems to perform more consistently.

 

[Yakk]

Review was okish, a bit short on benches though.

Valiant try by nvidia by releasing performance drivers to try to mitigate as much performance difference as possible also.

This "new" card shows me 2 things, how good the hardware really is, and how poor the software support has been upto this point.

 

[raghu78]

Either way I'm pretty disappointed with this review, I usually expect good solid reviews from this site, but 3 games? No multi monitor tests?

AMD's performance has also improved through software drivers. Some of the biggest improvements have come in popular titles like Skyrim, Batman Arkham city and Dirt 3. In Batman Arkham city AMD's performance is now much better with MSAA. In fact at 1600p with 8x MSAA AMD Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition is faster than Nvidia GTX 680.
This review does not talk about any of those improvements. I have to say its disappointing.

 

[raghu78]

Review was okish, a bit short on benches though.

Valiant try by nvidia by releasing performance drivers to try to mitigate as much performance difference as possible also.

This "new" card shows me 2 things, how good the hardware really is, and how poor the software support has been upto this point.

Yes the software drivers have only now started to show what the hardware is really capable of. There is a video at pcper where an AMD product rep talks about the Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition, improvements in hardware and software and other features like compute.

http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/Live-Review-Recap-AMD-Radeon-HD-7970-GHz-Edition

In the video at 0:35:30 the rep talks about

With GCN being a completely new architecture AMD has a had a lot of learning in the last 6 months and with new products being released like the HD 7800 and HD 7700 series they have got more experience with the architecture and wrt optimizing the shader compiler. So there have been significant improvements for the entire product stack through driver improvements.

 

[the_real_7]

I feel the review was a litte underwhelming but correct on the topics they picked to talk about the card , we've all been on these site talking how the 7970 was underclocked and that with a slight overclock 1050 it would beat a 680 which it does on most games , now i have two cards and they both do 1150 stock voltage with fan under 45 cooling at 60c , . and run very smooth under crossfire . . . hopefully I can use the new bios and try out for myself

 

[xoleras]

Have any reviewers commented on coil/choke whine on the GE7970 cards?

It was a huge problem on the original 7970.....

 

[Lord_Anselhelm]

In the style of the popular internet meme:

AMD, I am disappoint.

 

[LEVESQUE]

Either way I'm pretty disappointed with this review, I usually expect good solid reviews from this site, but 3 games? No multi monitor tests? The conclusion is so biased towards the 680 they don't even say straightforward the new 7970 is better.

This. To me it was more like advertisement for the Nvidia 680, then a 7970GE review...

-No talk about latest 12.6/12.7 beta that are working wonders for multi-monitors set-ups (remember how ''Hard'' the bitching here was about those in an article a couple of months ago?). But now that the ''problem'' is solved, there is no mention of it???????

-3 games = a review? LOL!

-No multi-monitors testing? When it's the strongest point of the 7970 vs 680????

Hard are always a reference for me usually. But that ''review'' (Nvidia advertising?) was really lack-luster...

 

[flippin_waffles]

Another card at 1070 MHz from an [H] review:

Curiously it was left out of the 680 review a day later. Looking forward to partner cards based on the Tahiti xt2 bins.

 

[Bullet500]

Either way I'm pretty disappointed with this review, I usually expect good solid reviews from this site, but 3 games? No multi monitor tests? The conclusion is so biased towards the 680 they don't even say straightforward the new 7970 is better. And for some reason they don't care how much higher the min fps is in most cases? When 680 has 2-3 fps average higher, which provides no improved gameplay they are more than eager to say how much % wise it's better (even tho 7970 min frames are 5-10 fps higher). Even on bf2 it's plain better, but all they say is it makes no difference in fight scenes. No mention that gameplay is overall better and even higher min fps.

The bottom line?
I can care less if they don't "recommend" the card at same price as 680, but at least be straight that it's a better card compared to 680. That is what was tested no? Or does overclocked custom 680 have something to do with two stock card reviews?

Testing more games would have positively affected the conclusion. May be [H] didn't get enough time. Techreport has done a good review. http://techreport.com/articles.x/23150/1 They've included factory OCed versions of HD 7950, GTX 670 and GTX 680 as well.

 

[0100]

Any word if there will be a GHz lightning?

 

[commodore]

Either way I'm pretty disappointed with this review, I usually expect good solid reviews from this site, but 3 games? No multi monitor tests? The conclusion is so biased towards the 680 they don't even say straightforward the new 7970 is better. And for some reason they don't care how much higher the min fps is in most cases? When 680 has 2-3 fps average higher, which provides no improved gameplay they are more than eager to say how much % wise it's better (even tho 7970 min frames are 5-10 fps higher). Even on bf2 it's plain better, but all they say is it makes no difference in fight scenes. No mention that gameplay is overall better and even higher min fps.

The bottom line?
I can care less if they don't "recommend" the card at same price as 680, but at least be straight that it's a better card compared to 680. That is what was tested no? Or does overclocked custom 680 have something to do with two stock card reviews?

This..

The 7970GE seems to me faster overall .. the only downside is the power-draw, 40watts higher, but compensates with better compute..

 

[{NG}Fidel]

All this card does is prove a point most 7970 owners have been saying. The cards his 1000/1100/1200 pretty damn easy and at those clocks they were making the GTX680 look like no big deal.
Now that drivers have matured a lot more as well the OCs are reaching their full potential.

 

[raghu78]

All this card does is prove a point most 7970 owners have been saying. The cards his 1000/1100/1200 pretty damn easy and at those clocks they were making the GTX680 look like no big deal.
Now that drivers have matured a lot more as well the OCs are reaching their full potential.

yeah. thats exactly the truth. People who purchased a HD 7970 in Jan don't need to bother at all. They were easily hitting 1100 Mhz at stock volts. and 1200 Mhz with voltage tweaking. The difference is with the latest drivers HD 7970 pretty much cleans up and wins the majority of the games. Previously GTX 680 won in skyrim and dirt 3 . Now even those games run faster on HD 7970. And the thrashing that the GTX 680 receives in games like Alan Wake, Dirt Showdown, Metro 2033, Crysis Warhead makes it look pretty ordinary and its bandwidth constraints are easily exposed.