AMD Radeon HD 7970 Video Card Review @ [H]

The pricing of 7970 is still a bit too much. Especially when I can get 6970 power for less than 240 (the 6950 unlocked to 6970 specs).

Very glad to see how efficient the 7970 is though, I hope this sets an example and maybe even starts a trend for other cards.

....

Where on earth do you get a 6970 for 240?

It's on average 60% faster than the 6970 why if it too much?
 
Continued off topic posting will get you banned for a month.
 
On topic: that was a great review. Thanks for sharing it. I'd be very interested in seeing the results of an overclocked 7970 vs. the same 580OC you used. I'd also like to see a massively crossfired setup running 6 (or more?) huge high def monitors. :)
 
After reviewing the temps during testing I believe these cards will hold up well in a Xfire solution even if butted next to each other.
 
I've been working overtime in production after the normal hours in my dept. solely to be able to pony up for the 7970 when it's available :D
 
AMD's commented recently - see Anand's review - that they plan to direct more budget to doing the same thing to cater to this new market expectation, people don't have the patience to wait a few weeks for some of the new games to work optimally, they want it NOW. It's expensive but may be worth it considering the new generation of PC gamers with less patience for patches than past ones, even a couple weeks is no longer tolerated.

So you have an issue waiting for a company for 1-4 weeks to iron out bugs with a new game, but no problem with a company that makes you wait 6-12 months to get a functioning current gen card on the market ? :rolleyes:

FragMagnet,

You are rolling your eyes but completely missing the point. I do not care how long it takes Nvidia to get a card to market. Why? Because I haven't paid for it yet. It's a theoretical product that I haven't spent a dime on so it doesn't affect me in anyway.

When I spent $300 on an AMD card and the thing doesn't work properly in newer games, thats when I get angry. And yes, I have an issue waiting 1-4 weeks for something to work after I had paid for it. My gaming PC is a rather large investment and I like it to work, not have to wait for fixes. There is a big difference between waiting for a new product that you "might" buy and waiting for something you paid for to work properly.
 
Maybe I don't understand... based on the benchmarks, considering that this card is only on average 15-20% better than a GTX580 (a card which is from the previous refresh cycle), given the price point of $550, how is this card amazing? :confused:

I guess power consumption and heat come into play for some, but most here probably don't care about saving a few dollars on their electricity bills when gaming...interested in seeing benchmarks stock vs OC'd since it seems this card has some headroom.

I think it would probably be better looking at $399.99-$449.99...
 
Maybe I don't understand... based on the benchmarks, considering that this card is only on average 15-20% better than a GTX580 (a card which is from the previous refresh cycle), given the price point of $550, how is this card amazing? :confused:

I guess power consumption and heat come into play for some, but most here probably don't care about saving a few dollars on their electricity bills when gaming...interested in seeing benchmarks stock vs OC'd since it seems this card has some headroom.

I think it would probably be better looking at $399.99-$449.99...

You mean 15%-20% better than the $600 GTX580 tested...........? $50 less sounds good to me.
 
Maybe I don't understand... based on the benchmarks, considering that this card is only on average 15-20% better than a GTX580 (a card which is from the previous refresh cycle), given the price point of $550, how is this card amazing? :confused:

I guess power consumption and heat come into play for some, but most here probably don't care about saving a few dollars on their electricity bills when gaming...interested in seeing benchmarks stock vs OC'd since it seems this card has some headroom.

I think it would probably be better looking at $399.99-$449.99...

If you are basing your judgement on this HardOCP review you should bear in mind that those 15-20% figures are compared to an overclocked GTX580 with a custom cooler. Anandtech and Hardwarecanucks show it to be around 25% faster than a stock GTX580. Though I do agree it is overpriced by around $50-$70 IMHO.

It is around 40% faster than the older HD 6970 that it is replacing, even faster with a good overclock. To be honest I was hoping but not really expecting more. But the one thig it isn't is a bad card, not amazing but certainly not a failure.
 
Quick question,

you tested on a mobo that is not PCI 3.0, I dont remember off hand if the WS mobo used in testing, its 2.0 PCI right ??

Any tests run on a 3.0 PCI board vs a older PCI 2.0/2.1 if makes much difference with these new kinda cards ??

Starting to see some mfg's make claims about being PCI 3.0 compliant lately, and what the real world scoop is now that a 3.0 card is supposed this on on
the market ?? How much difference can we really see / expect.
 
Some other sites tested it on PCIe 3.0 boards and didn't see a difference in gaming, but there were some differences in GPGPU use (encoding I think it was). Can't recall the links off-hand though.
 
Maybe I don't understand... based on the benchmarks, considering that this card is only on average 15-20% better than a GTX580 (a card which is from the previous refresh cycle), given the price point of $550, how is this card amazing? :confused:

I guess power consumption and heat come into play for some, but most here probably don't care about saving a few dollars on their electricity bills when gaming...interested in seeing benchmarks stock vs OC'd since it seems this card has some headroom.

I think it would probably be better looking at $399.99-$449.99...

Your post is very illustrative of the "problem" some people had with the [H] review.

Your post refers to the 580 card as simply "a GTX580". In reality, it's not even close to being a standard GTX580.

They took take the GTX580 reference card and completely re-designed it with expensive, high-end parts that not only allow it to push multiple monitors, but enabled it to be overclocked quite a bit, and then they sold it for $600.

That's $50 more than a stock 7970 with 1st generation drivers, and it still gets beaten, soundly in some cases.

Based on some of the other reviews, the 7970 overclocks great, meaning the scores you see here would have been even more skewed in favor of the 7970 over a custom-built GTX580. And the results would have been far more favorable if the card were compared to a stock GTX580.

I'm personally glad they ran stock clocks because, in my setups, I rarely overclock my video card anymore.

With my CPU at 4.7 and video card at stock, I can play my games just fine. The [H] review lets me know what I can expect to see if I get one, and I don't have to extrapolate scores and guesstimate FPS numbers.

I would have, however, liked to have seen overclocked scores (in addition to stock scores) because they may have meant the difference between me buying a single 7970 or two 7970s to replace the 6970s I corrently have.
 
Hmmm...I guess my problem is that this card is being trumped up for beating a 580 which should be a given considering it's last year's flagship product. But that's also nVidia's fault, not AMD's. :p

For those of us with a limited budget this is most likely a wait and see and compare to what nVidia releases in a reasonable timeframe.
 
Hmmm...I guess my problem is that this card is being trumped up for beating a 580 which should be a given considering it's last year's flagship product. But that's also nVidia's fault, not AMD's. :p

For those of us with a limited budget this is most likely a wait and see and compare to what nVidia releases in a reasonable timeframe.

I think that's part of the issue with 7970 due to no fault of it's own or AMDs. Yeah, it beats up a year old card on an old process. Not that the 7970 isn't a great card but that's the LEAST it needs to do. It also needs to be competitive against Kepler and there's just no way to know if that's the case or even if the high end Kepler will arrive in time to even be competing against the 7970.
 
there could be a stock OC'd aka 7970 refresh by the time kepler launches so that should be fun
 
I think that's part of the issue with 7970 due to no fault of it's own or AMDs. Yeah, it beats up a year old card on an old process. Not that the 7970 isn't a great card but that's the LEAST it needs to do. It also needs to be competitive against Kepler and there's just no way to know if that's the case or even if the high end Kepler will arrive in time to even be competing against the 7970.

...and the 7970 DOES beat up on it
i don't see your logic - you're saying that it needs to do X, and it does X

in fact, the performance gains are in line with almost every video card release in history
 
On topic: that was a great review. Thanks for sharing it. I'd be very interested in seeing the results of an overclocked 7970 vs. the same 580OC you used. I'd also like to see a massively crossfired setup running 6 (or more?) huge high def monitors. :)

Yes, this will be done for sure. I want to see the 7970 overclocked heavily against the OCed 580.

After reviewing the temps during testing I believe these cards will hold up well in a Xfire solution even if butted next to each other.

Yes these should. I am putting these in my own build, hopefully this week.

think im in for two 7970's... AMD did an amazing job, kudos.

YUP!

Some other sites tested it on PCIe 3.0 boards and didn't see a difference in gaming, but there were some differences in GPGPU use (encoding I think it was). Can't recall the links off-hand though.

Given our past research on PCIe bandwidth and gaming, I would GUESS that you MIGHT see some advantages at huge resolutions. GPGPU could very well benefit from it though depending on the application's needs.
 
...and the 7970 DOES beat up on it
i don't see your logic - you're saying that it needs to do X, and it does X

in fact, the performance gains are in line with almost every video card release in history

Because a year old card isn't the real competition.
 
Because a year old card isn't the real competition.

actually, it always is
every new card competes with the previous gen
and in typical next-gen fashion, it's faster for cheaper

but no, you're right
we should pit this card against nVidia's next gen
oh wait...
 
actually, it always is
every new card competes with the previous gen
and in typical next-gen fashion, it's faster for cheaper

but no, you're right
we should pit this card against nVidia's next gen
oh wait...

He's been using any ignorant claim he could possibly make to justify his point, unfortunately his point is unjustifiable. It's getting old reading that shit...

I can't wait to see what these and the Keplers do to the prices of the 6xxx and 5xx cards. If they drop significantly then I may have to sell this rig off as a whole or piece by piece :D Some of those cards are already great bargains, but they should be even better bargains in a few months time. As with any enthusiast, the hardest part is the waiting game.
 
in fact, the performance gains are in line with almost every video card release in history

This is all I was saying, you said it yourself, in historical terms the 7970 isn't really a breakthrough in terms of performance gains over previous gen. To REALLY distinguish itself the 7970 would also need to look good against Kepler. However...

but no, you're right
we should pit this card against nVidia's next gen
oh wait...

And again I've pointed this out and it could be 3, 6, 10 months, who knows, before we see Kepler and the 7970 may receive a refresh. But it would suck for early Kepler buyers to see a stout Kepler release in April but that's the nature of being an early adopter, been there, done that myself and will no doubt do it again.
 
He's been using any ignorant claim he could possibly make to justify his point, unfortunately his point is unjustifiable. It's getting old reading that shit...

Yeah, it beats up a year old card on an old process. Not that the 7970 isn't a great card but that's the LEAST it needs to do.

in fact, the performance gains are in line with almost every video card release in history

It's getting old reading this? Interesting... :cool:
 
You're missing the point:

The 580 is the competition until Kepler is out. That's how it works. Unless Nvidia royally screws up, they'll likely make something that's competitive with the 7970, but until then the AMD card gets compared to the current Nvidia offerings.

It isn't a "breakthrough" in performance, but neither was the 480, the 5870, 580, the 6970, the 590 nor the 6990, despite the latter being the fastest mainstream GPU ever made. What is incredibly impressive is that we've seen incremental increases in performance for generations now without having to fork over a massive amount of cash, and these new AMD cards are no exception.

For the record, if you overclock this card, which it seems to handle incredibly well, it can almost match the performance of the 590. Now that's amazing.
 
What is incredibly impressive is that we've seen incremental increases in performance for generations now without having to fork over a massive amount of cash, and these new AMD cards are no exception.

For the record, if you overclock this card, which it seems to handle incredibly well, it can almost match the performance of the 590. Now that's amazing.

The massive amounts of cash thing really depends on what you currently have. Two oc'd 7970s would probably trade blows with my 3 580s, to get a consistent leap in performance I still need to swap three cards with three, not exactly a small chunk of change. If you've spent a lot of money on the best last gen next gen isn't any cheaper to get more performance though yes it is a lot more power efficient.

And again as for what the 7970 is really competing against, for now sure it's the 580, but it's possible that for most of the 7970 lifespan the 580 won't be it's competition. If you buy these cards on January 9th you simply need to keep that in the back of your head is all I'm saying. If it doesn't matter to you, fine. But if the high-end Kepler comes out in the spring with the same performance advantage over the 580 that the 7970 has over the 6970 at the same price as the 7970 I sure a number 7970 buyers will be less than thrilled. But the 7970 may have most of 2011 to itself as the performance crown holder.

I'm simply listing the possibilities of things to consider when buying the 7970. It's better to have the possibilities in mind than not, it's a GREAT way to prevent buyers remorse.
 
Well I wont have to worry about it too much, since nVidia is releasing they low end first, and high end later.
 
The massive amounts of cash thing really depends on what you currently have. Two oc'd 7970s would probably trade blows with my 3 580s, to get a consistent leap in performance I still need to swap three cards with three, not exactly a small chunk of change. If you've spent a lot of money on the best last gen next gen isn't any cheaper to get more performance though yes it is a lot more power efficient.

And again as for what the 7970 is really competing against, for now sure it's the 580, but it's possible that for most of the 7970 lifespan the 580 won't be it's competition. If you buy these cards on January 9th you simply need to keep that in the back of your head is all I'm saying. If it doesn't matter to you, fine. But if the high-end Kepler comes out in the spring with the same performance advantage over the 580 that the 7970 has over the 6970 at the same price as the 7970 I sure a number 7970 buyers will be less than thrilled. But the 7970 may have most of 2011 to itself as the performance crown holder.

I'm simply listing the possibilities of things to consider when buying the 7970. It's better to have the possibilities in mind than not, it's a GREAT way to prevent buyers remorse.

2 7920's - $1100
3 580's - $1410

Add in the fact the 7970's run much cooler and will draw quite a bit less power, and you end up with the simple fact that anyone who goes with the 580's is a fanboi.
 
2 7920's - $1100
3 580's - $1410

Add in the fact the 7970's run much cooler and will draw quite a bit less power, and you end up with the simple fact that anyone who goes with the 580's is a fanboi.

Who would recommend buying the 580 NOW? Certainly not me, mine are 13 months old. And sure the 7970s run cooler but 2 7970s aren't going to consistently beat 3 580s, even overclocked I doubt, for a true across the board performance upgrade you're really looking at a 3 for 3 swap. I was just addressing pelo's point that a whole lot of cash IS involved depending where you're coming from.
 
Well I wont have to worry about it too much, since nVidia is releasing they low end first, and high end later.

And this might be very interesting. Just how good will the low and mid range parts be? We could be looking at nVidia and AMD swapping roles a bit here with nVidia having the performance/price ratio advantage.
 
And this might be very interesting. Just how good will the low and mid range parts be? We could be looking at nVidia and AMD swapping roles a bit here with nVidia having the performance/price ratio advantage.
This was always an ambiguous spot, when they release them we could very well get insane performance at the mid level for a decent chunk of time, depending when amd gets their product out.

I only say this because nvidia is scarily quiet about their next gen part.
 
And sure the 7970s run cooler but 2 7970s aren't going to consistently beat 3 580s, even overclocked I doubt, for a true across the board performance upgrade you're really looking at a 3 for 3 swap. I was just addressing pelo's point that a whole lot of cash IS involved depending where you're coming from.

Well, if 3x580 cost 1400 vs 2x7970 for 1100, the difference is 21.4% less for 10% less performance difference at most?

And remember that 7900 drivers aren't final and will take some time to be as polished as 580 drivers. Better performance from what was reviewed recently is expected for the new Radeons.

It wouldn't surprise me if AMD launched a refresh with higher clocks and minor tweaks when the 28nm process is more mature. There is margin for improvement (and being all the chips with the same 900 Mhz clocks should be a testament of it), just in time for when high end Kepler launches, something like when GeForce 500 launched, it was an improvement over GeForce 400 using same process technology but with some minor tweaks and higher clocks.
 
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Well, if 3x580 cost 1400 vs 2x7970 for 1100, the difference is 21.4% less for 10% less performance difference at most?

I have no idea why anyone is thinking that I'm talking about buying 580s TODAY. Of course not unless you're into 3D or have some other want for need for nVidia hardware. I'm simply saying that this level of performance STILL isn't cheap. And even if the difference between 2 7970s and 3 580s is only 10% why would anyone spend a dime for less performance? The only real advantage there power efficiency.
 
i'll take that bet actually, even with 3GB 580's

oh, and 3GB tri-SLI is damn close to $1,800 with 7970 crossfire at $1,100:
60% less expensive

so even if they tie...

For $1100 there's just no way the performance gains are that substantial consistently to make it a meaningful upgrade for that price drivers and overclocking counted. More power efficient sure.

And again I have no idea why everyone is comparing the cost of 3 580s with 2 7970s when I've NEVER said that 3 580s something one should buy TODAY. Again my point had to do with pelo saying that tons of cash aren't involved in UPGRADING and I said that all depends where you're coming from. I still say that for someone coming from 3 580s you'd need 3 7970s to have a MEANINGFUL upgrade performance wise.

In any case I would LOVE to see benches of 2 7970s and 3 580s.
 
All of you planning to buy the 7970, enjoy playing your console port games designed for 5 year old hardware on your shiny new glorified doorstop. :)
 
All of you planning to buy the 7970, enjoy playing your console port games designed for 5 year old hardware on your shiny new glorified doorstop. :)

The PC does support things like super high resolutions with multi-monitor technologies like Eyefinity, yes even some of those console ports work well with it like Skyrim and Batman AC that can easily use this kind of GPU power.
 
All of you planning to buy the 7970, enjoy playing your console port games designed for 5 year old hardware on your shiny new glorified doorstop. :)

They will, while you play on your console because it is more powerful than your PC :p
 
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