AMD Radeon HD 7970 Video Card Review @ [H]

ripken204 said:
it's on my top 5 list... I'm debating switching to nvidia just because of it.
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Runningflame570 said:
Yes, by all means continue to interject with unnecessary dickish commentary when someone is simply stating his own reasons for buying something.
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Just saying that this type of card is simply not target for the Linux market, don't see what the big deal is, clearly it's not.
 
Well, that's really the point I was trying to make. That this is not the typical pricing AMD customers are used to. This price is going to shock a lot of loyal AMD customers come Thursday morning when they wake up, get to school or arrive at work and start reading these 7970 reviews. And from what I read just recently, dram prices are falling for many reasons. All memory types, including DDR5. They are all enjoying these benefits. So yes, DDR5 dram chips for video cards is also much much cheaper than in times past. I can kinda already guess where the 7990 performance is going to be. I am assuming that card is going to cost around $699. I am now looking forward to what Nvidia has to offer here soon. I find it funny that I just got some Nvidia email in my mailbox. I'm guessing that with the 7970 reviews flooding the net right now, they just tapped into their several millions of customers mailing list and shot all of them an email off to try and sway potential customers to their online store or to wait for their next gen video card.
 
larkin said:
Technically it was 29% faster at Deus Ex at regular res and 38% faster with eyefinity res.

From a bang/buck standpoint why isn't 20% better for $50 cheaper something good for consumers? It's a good 50% better than its own previous best single card so it's a big step for them. I think the days of 2x performance increases are over. And don't cite that b.s. OMGzGTX780 slide from the internet department of fake slides department of the internet.

That said, I'm waiting for 7950 which should be the card that offers the best value.
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Yeah, but in some games it was only around 10% faster as well, so 20% seems like a reasonable average. Seems pretty decent to me. It may "only" be ~20% faster than a factory overclocked 580 on a custom PCB, but the 7970 as tested in this review is bone stock as well. Given a bit of time for drivers to mature and overclocking potential to be established, 50% faster than the GTX 580 doesn't seem completely unreasonable.

I'm really excited to see what we get with the 7950, and especially 7800 series cards. The low heat and power draw ought to be great for those of us who lean towards low noise computing over raw horse power.

I'm sure the high price is largely due to AMD having a favorable market position with the next gen cards from Nvidia reported to be quite a ways out. Hopefully Nvidia will have Kelper ready sooner than later so pricing will be more competitive.
 
heatlesssun said:
Sorry, the 7970 is CLEARLY the fastest single GPU and right now the yields probably blow chunks. This price is no surprise at all though I do understand it's not typically what AMD customers are used to.
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I think we should have seen a price increase last year on AMD cards. Remember Nvidia's GTX 580 sneak attack Nov 2010?
Nividia released a card with only two weeks notice and took the wind right out of AMDs sails.

There were many leaks the the 6970 was going to be priced around $450-500 since it did outperform the GTX 480, which still retailed around $480-499 then.
When the GTX $580 was released for $499, plans changed and AMD had to adjust their price to $379.

This was AMDs time to finally get a piece of premium pricing, since they've been making premium cards since the 4000 series.
AMDs first time in a while that they aren't behind the Nvidia 8 ball, being somewhat forced to discount their gpus. Bad for us consumers though.
 
I'm surprised that this card was not tested in a Sandy E rig. I am eager to see if there are any noticeable benefits of PCI-Express 3.0. Amy ideas?
 
Going back to the HD4000 series, I've always owned an ATI/AMD card in one PC or another. I intended on waiting for Kepler this generation, and it looks like I'll be staying the course. If AMD is content with just being faster than the competitor's last gen product, power to them. Yes, Kepler's performance is unknown at this time, but one thing I am going to assume is that it's going to be faster than Fermi (just like like the 7970). The question is how much.

If Kepler improves upon Fermi in a similar fashion to Tahiti over Cayman, it'll be worth the wait.
 
Johnny_Utah said:
I'm surprised that this card was not tested in a Sandy E rig. I am eager to see if there are any noticeable benefits of PCI-Express 3.0. Amy ideas?
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Doubt it because there should not be any bandwidth limitations with PCI-E 2.1.
 
mesasone said:
Yeah, but in some games it was only around 10% faster as well, so 20% seems like a reasonable average. Seems pretty decent to me. It may "only" be ~20% faster than a factory overclocked 580 on a custom PCB, but the 7970 as tested in this review is bone stock as well. Given a bit of time for drivers to mature and overclocking potential to be established, 50% faster than the GTX 580 doesn't seem completely unreasonable.

I'm really excited to see what we get with the 7950, and especially 7800 series cards. The low heat and power draw ought to be great for those of us who lean towards low noise computing over raw horse power.

I'm sure the high price is largely due to AMD having a favorable market position with the next gen cards from Nvidia reported to be quite a ways out. Hopefully Nvidia will have Kelper ready sooner than later so pricing will be more competitive.
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There haven't been 30% driver increases since the Geforce 4 days...
 
SixFootDuo said:
Well, that's really the point I was trying to make. That this is not the typical pricing AMD customers are used to. This price is going to shock a lot of loyal AMD customers come Thursday morning when they wake up, get to school or arrive at work and start reading these 7970 reviews. And from what I read just recently, dram prices are falling for many reasons.
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Memory prices aren't why the 7970 is expensive, its the yields of the GPU itself. AMD decided to gel the jump on nVidia on the 28 nm process and this what they had to do to do it
 
Sweet. Bravo AMD for these new Radeons. Though actually I'm more interested in the updated mobility GPUs. And yeah, can't wait for the yearly AMD vs Nvidia wars. Missed those so much.
 
vr-zone OC'd the card to the max that catalyst would let them with no voltage increase and got the 7970 to within 8.6% of the performance of a 6990 in BF3. The OC capability of this platform is not to be discounted. I'm psyched to see what partners can do pushing the 7950.
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Not to mention, within 6.3% of an SLI GTX580 3GB setup in Crysis 2! OC on this bitch owns and that's all there is to it.
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http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-rad...ocking-benchmarks-and-conclusion/14308-4.html
 
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SixFootDuo said:
Well, that's really the point I was trying to make. That this is not the typical pricing AMD customers are used to. This price is going to shock a lot of loyal AMD customers come Thursday morning when they wake up, get to school or arrive at work and start reading these 7970 reviews. And from what I read just recently, dram prices are falling for many reasons. All memory types, including DDR5. They are all enjoying these benefits. So yes, DDR5 dram chips for video cards is also much much cheaper than in times past. I can kinda already guess where the 7990 performance is going to be. I am assuming that card is going to cost around $699. I am now looking forward to what Nvidia has to offer here soon. I find it funny that I just got some Nvidia email in my mailbox. I'm guessing that with the 7970 reviews flooding the net right now, they just tapped into their several millions of customers mailing list and shot all of them an email off to try and sway potential customers to their online store or to wait for their next gen video card.
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Your paying for the process of a new die shrink and the fact that there has been multiple articles on problems with 28 nm process and/or bad yields. The 6 series was not a die shrink it was just and efficiency change, they didn't need to pass the R&D cost onto the consumer. Along with fact that they are holding crown and rumors that kepler could be a ways off still. At least that's what I think is reason over DDR.
 
heatlesssun said:
Memory prices aren't why the 7970 is expensive, its the yields of the GPU itself. AMD decided to gel the jump on nVidia on the 28 nm process and this what they had to do to do it
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Pretty much right. The jump from 40nm to 28nm couldn't come without price spikes.
 
heatlesssun said:
Memory prices aren't why the 7970 is expensive, its the yields of the GPU itself. AMD decided to gel the jump on nVidia on the 28 nm process and this what they had to do to do it
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larkin said:
vr-zone OC'd the card to the max that catalyst would let them with no voltage increase and got the 7970 to within 8.6% of the performance of a 6990 on BF3. The OC capability of this platform is not to be ignored. I'm psyched to see what partners can do pushing the 7950.
bf3.jpg.jpeg
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Holy freaking crap. You're right, once MSI brings in their Twin (possibly Tri) Frozr coolers, these red babies are gonna be heated up like hell. Note: the SLI cards kinda broke the momentum, I hate anti-climaxes.
 
Great review Brent. Can't wait for the Crossfire follow up.
I'll most likely get a pair of these to replace my dual 6970 eyefinity setup.

I must say though, fanboy logic is truly comical. On one hand it was ok to pay $500 for a gtx580 which was barely 10-15% faster than the $130 cheaper 6970. Now it is suddenly not ok to pay $50 more for a cooler running, less power consuming, 30%+ faster than an overclocked gtx580 card. It is even faster and cheaper than the 3GB gtx580, lol.


Even more funny is it matches and beats the gtx590 in many cases while again consuming less power and costing far less. I think it's time you people find something else to nitpick and complain about.

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Awesome card!!! I'm going to get one Since I just got Eyefinity for Xmas, Moving out a pair of 6870's, so it's a worthy upgrade for me.

My only question (and I know I'm going to get hazed for this one but...) what's this things Hashrate for us bitcoin users?
 
For $550, you can keep those cards amd. My 6970cf will hold me over nicely until Kepler, possibly even longer. My days of dealing with amd and their junk drivers is over once nv's next gen cards ship.
 
PRIME1 said:
Looked to be overall less that 20% faster than a 580 in some cases damn near even. I'm waiting for Kepler this is not what I would expect for a "next generation" card.
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That was kind of my feeling as well. I'm not looking to upgrade any time soon, but from all the hype surrounding this card I'm a little disappointed in the numbers.
 
SulSeeker said:
My only question (and I know I'm going to get hazed for this one but...) what's this things Hashrate for us bitcoin users?
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I plan on testing that once I get my pair. Leaked slides showed it was at least 50% faster running SHA256 code.

Edit: Ohh, it looks like Tom's review included mining benchmarks.

It is obvious he used the default client without any tweaks. A 5870 can easily break 400Mhash/s with kernel tweaks so a properly tweaked 7970 should scale quite nicely above that.
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Lorien said:
I must say though, fanboy logic is truly comical. On one hand it was ok to pay $500 for a gtx580 which was barely 10-15% faster than the $130 cheaper 6970. Now it is suddenly not ok to pay $50 more for a cooler running, less power consuming, 30%+ faster than an overclocked gtx580 card. It is even faster and cheaper than the 3GB gtx580, lol.
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Seems to me that AMD customers are more upset at the pricing than anyone else. I think the price is fine for the performance level. It's simply that AMD hasn't pried their cards like this for some time and going for the absolute top end, nVidia customers have been willing to pay the top dollar for various reasons like theoretically better drivers or better S3D support.
 
heatlesssun said:
Just saying that this type of card is simply not target for the Linux market, don't see what the big deal is, clearly it's not.
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I'm not expecting awesome game performance or anything, but when with the latest catalyst driver xcompmgr can't run with shadows on, and everything being glitchy is just kind of stupid.

The open source drivers aren't much better no glitches with those but I can't even have a stable composite desktop with an ATI card.
 
If these were cheaper, say $399 to $449, I might consider selling my 580s and upgrading. But at $549, and currently a fairly meager performance increase, I'll wait and see what Kepler brings I guess. I know AMD is just charging what the market will bear, and I am sure the 28nm yields are not great yet, but this would be a lot more exciting if the cards were priced a noticeable amount cheaper than NVIDIA.

Going off the 5870/5850 and 6970/6950 performance though, the 7950 should be right alongside the 580 and they could sell it for a lot less, which would be interesting.
 
I don't get those who're mad at AMD's pricing.
AMD is not a charity. They have a card that performs 24% faster, for 10% more than the competition. Where's the problem?
 
$550 aside, this is impressive performance out of a single GPU/single card. As someone mentioned before, the new 28 nm process and the performance-price ratio is pretty justifiable.

Looks like I'm getting a new card come January, then it's a long wait until March for Ivy Bridge.:)
 
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.
 
Johnny_Utah said:
I'm surprised that this card was not tested in a Sandy E rig. I am eager to see if there are any noticeable benefits of PCI-Express 3.0. Amy ideas?
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Highly unlikely. I don't believe a single GTX580 will saturate a PCI-E 2.0 x16 slot, and this is only about 20% faster.
 
Too expensive.
I thought video cards were supposed to get progressively cheaper over the years? This card is about 20% faster than the 580 yet is priced similarly. It's been over a year.

Unacceptable, very disappointed.
 
Rizen said:
Highly unlikely. I don't believe a single GTX580 will saturate a PCI-E 2.0 x16 slot, and this is only about 20% faster.
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From the looking I've done, no single card comes close to saturating a x16 slot.

I want to see how they'll perform in a Crossfire set up.

Though I'm not sure how many card each reviewer was given, I doubt they gave them two let alone three.
 
great review thanks, any over locking comments Brent? Looking forward to the 7950 review and how it compares coupled with price.
 
UtopiA said:
Too expensive.
I thought video cards were supposed to get progressively cheaper over the years? This card is about 20% faster than the 580 yet is priced similarly. It's been over a year.

Unacceptable, very disappointed.
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The price is higher than their previous video cards but I'm still not sure why you are complaining. The 7970 is cheaper than the 3GB 580s while being faster and more efficient, and only slightly more expensive than vanilla 1.5GB 580s, while being 15-25% faster. It's priced very competitively to what is on the market.

I would have liked to see them a bit cheaper - but their pricing makes sense.
 
Rizen said:
The price is higher than their previous video cards but I'm still not sure why you are complaining. The 7970 is cheaper than the 3GB 580s while being faster and more efficient, and only slightly more expensive than vanilla 1.5GB 580s, while being 15-25% faster. It's priced very competitively to what is on the market.

I would have liked to see them a bit cheaper - but their pricing makes sense.
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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, 36% increase, MSRP $549.

Prices, dates via Anandtech/TPU.
7970 should be around... $400 MSRP maximum? Give or take. Even that's a ripoff, looking at AMD's past history of gains.
In my opinion they're just getting cocky.

Nvidia used to be famous for their insanely over-priced flagships and it looks like AMD is boarding that train. Like I said, very disappointed. This is the most disappointed I've been for AMD in my life.
 
Will there be any further perfomance increase when these cards are tested in next generation PCI-E 3 mobos?
 
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