# AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3 GB



## W1zzard (Jun 18, 2012)

Today AMD launches the HD 7970 GHz Edition, in a move to take away the performance crown from NVIDIA. The new card boasts clock speeds of 1050 MHz GPU and 1500 MHz memory. Price-wise the card is on the same level as the GTX 680, but is that enough to defeat NVIDIA's single GPU flagship?

*Show full review*


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## Vancha (Jun 22, 2012)

I thought the idea was to try and make a card more appealing than the 680?


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## DarkOCean (Jun 22, 2012)

So they overvolted and oc'ed the old 7970 and want more money just for this?
Increased power consumption by a lot ,gtx 670 is still a better option in my opinion.


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## cedrac18 (Jun 22, 2012)

Hey it looks good in the benchmarks and they get to make claims like "Fastest single GPU on the planet" that's all they care about. Reminds me of the GTX 480.


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## v12dock (Jun 22, 2012)

670 is easily still the most appealing card. Maybe "tahiti xt2" is not ready for prime time


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## punani (Jun 22, 2012)

DarkOCean said:


> So they overvolted and oc'ed the old 7970 and want more money just for this?
> Increased power consumption by a lot ,gtx 670 is still a better option in my opinion.



And added a "boost" feature that downclocks the card when overheating .. :shadedshu


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## Chaitanya (Jun 22, 2012)

Disappointing release from AMD.


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## DarkOCean (Jun 22, 2012)

punani said:


> And added a "boost" feature that downclocks the card when overheating .. :shadedshu



...to limit the maximum power consumption, without that this would go easily over 300w to catch with gtx 480.


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## Lionheart (Jun 22, 2012)

Good extra performance but I rather just buy a normal HD7970 and overclock it like crazy


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## babash*t (Jun 22, 2012)

This card was not made for efficiency or bang4buck...this was just made to reclaim gpu throne...


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## LTUGamer (Jun 22, 2012)

Cost same as GTX 680 but have little better performance. Looks good, but still too high TDP


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## atikkur (Jun 22, 2012)

nice performance jump. compared with 680 , 7970 GHZ has tons more resources, more vram, more mem-bw, more cores, looks cheaper now (altough $500 is not cheap). should 680 lower its price?


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## reverze (Jun 22, 2012)

the custom cooling will fix the temps. i dont see many buy those stock cooling cards anymore, and barely see them sold.


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## phanbuey (Jun 22, 2012)

reverze said:


> the custom cooling will fix the temps. i dont see many buy those stock cooling cards anymore, and barely see them sold.



At that point just buy a custom 7970 and clock it :/ ... plus you're still talking about a $500 card, or a $520-$550 custom cooled card, that is only about 10% faster than a 670, which sells for $100 bucks less.  This card is, as appropriately noted in the review, a bit of a meh.


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## silapakorn (Jun 22, 2012)

AMD Y U no make quiet card?


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## Vulpesveritas (Jun 22, 2012)

Looks okay.  Did what it was meant to do. 

Though AMD:  Y U no make better cooler?


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## claylomax (Jun 22, 2012)

DarkOCean said:


> So they overvolted and oc'ed the old 7970 and want more money just for this?



I thought the voltage was lower than on the standard 7970


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## Melvis (Jun 22, 2012)

claylomax said:


> I thought the voltage was lower than on the standard 7970



I also thought the same thing


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## ZoneDymo (Jun 22, 2012)

While the power consumption is disappointing, this card is a performance powerhouse.
For the enthusiasts a no-brainer to go with this over the GTX680.

I just hope the non reference cards will bring down fan noise with after-market coolers and hell, maybe even power consumption


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## entropy13 (Jun 22, 2012)

The review is obviously false, because of the fact that *only* Nvidia makes hot, power-hungry cards! Only Nvidia is capable of making great-performing but power-hungry and hot cards! Like the GTX 480! W1zzard lies!



This post is brought to you by an AMD-fanboy, who also believes that the supply problems of Nvidia's Kepler is solely Nvidia's fault too, and TSMC is blameless.


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## Nordic (Jun 22, 2012)

I'm glad to see a review. I am disappointed to not see the lower voltages though. I could handle the cooling of this card very quietly and it would be a beast for me without overclocking. But then I could also get a regular 7970 for $50 less and overclock it close. Meh not worth it like I hoped it would be.


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## arnoo1 (Jun 22, 2012)

I thoug they were improves gpu's  that would run a ghz on 1.02v instead of 1.2v so this 7970 is just overcloked and crappier on load witth noise and wattage, amd failed me hard big time


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## Over_Lord (Jun 22, 2012)

Pleasantly surprised at the huge performance gains.

Catalyst Drivers + Boost worked out pretty good huh.


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## treehouse (Jun 22, 2012)

thunderising said:


> Pleasantly surprised at the huge performance gains.
> 
> Catalyst Drivers + Boost worked out pretty good huh.



my thoughts


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## raptori (Jun 22, 2012)

50$ for OC without enhanced cooling and more power consume you failed big this time ATI.


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## kadeep (Jun 22, 2012)

why did Nvidia fanboy complain too much in AMD articles


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## VasyaRogov (Jun 22, 2012)

Waiting for review where GTX 680: 304.48 Beta / HD 7970 GHz: 12.7 Beta
Any non-reference 7970 looks much more interesting than this sht. For example Sapphire 11197-06-40G costs 460$ and has much lower temperature and fan noise.


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## sand_dune (Jun 22, 2012)

What a disappointing review.
Why 1280x800 scores affect anything? Who even has a monitor with this resolution yet runs $500 GPU's with them? That is pure inability to adapt testing conditions to reality.

Who needs testing in old titles like call of duty 4 and battlefield 2??? Any card shows lots of FPS there. Those games are not adequate measures for modern cards, because they are outdated. And any new card runs them fast by default.

What a wrong conclusion, that 7970Ghz edition is not a good value, while it outruns any competitor by 10-30% in high resolution and multi-monitor configurations. And outruns mentioned GTX 670 by 50% occasionally.

And what about complaining about noise, when it is clear that custom manufacturer's coolers can cool any hot card. While this card consumes a lot less power than GTX580!!

Review conclusions are plain ridiculous


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## qubit (Jun 22, 2012)

So, AMD have put some lipstick on the pig and called it "new and improved"?  The GTX 680 is still better, especially with all that noise and power this card consumes to get its performance.

nvidia is obviously gonna respond soon with an overclocked GTX 680 Ultra or something and then AMD are gonna go back to second place once  more.

The last line of the review really says it all:



> I find $499 is just too high to really draw away much attention from the GTX 680, if the HD 7970 GHz Edition was $450 I'd definitely consider it, until that happens I'll happily take a GTX 680, or even GTX 670, which offers better price/performance at not much lower performance.


Still, this is good for competition.


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## sand_dune (Jun 22, 2012)

For those who think this card is meant to compete with 7970, think again. It is meant to beat 680 and it comfortably does so. As well as trashing the 680 in 2560 resolution and multi-monitor configuration.

So those who bought 680 for the money it is sold, should be very sad now.

custom designs from other manufacturers will put noise and heat of the reviewed card to comfortable levels.


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## sand_dune (Jun 22, 2012)

qubit said:


> AMD are gonna go back to second place once more.



You must be joking. AMD had a fastest graphics card for the last 3 years and took half of market share of Nvidia which now has less than 20% of GPU market.

What heat and noise levels are you talking about? That is a reference card. Most people will not buy a reference card. And it still consumes a lot less than your GTX580

You make no sense.


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## entropy13 (Jun 22, 2012)

Am I correct in saying, that you, sand_dune, when the GTX 480 came out, said something to this effect: "So what if the GTX 480 is better than the HD 5870? The 5870 is more efficient! The 5870 is quieter! The 5870 runs cooler!" ?


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## phanbuey (Jun 22, 2012)

sand_dune said:


> For those who think this card is meant to compete with 7970, think again. It is meant to beat 680 and it comfortably does so. As well as trashing the 680 in 2560 resolution and multi-monitor configuration.
> 
> So those who bought 680 for the money it is sold, should be very sad now.
> 
> custom designs from other manufacturers will put noise and heat of the reviewed card to comfortable levels.



it is an overclocked 7970, don't kid yourself.  No one thinks its meant to compete with the 7970.  You can also overclock a 670 to beat this card, so by no means is it "comfortable" in its segment, considering a card $100 less can beat it with some tweaking.


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## qubit (Jun 22, 2012)

sand_dune said:


> You must be joking. AMD had a fastest graphics card for the last 3 years and took half of market share of Nvidia which now has less than 20% of GPU market.
> 
> What heat and noise levels are you talking about? That is a reference card. Most people will not buy a reference card. And it still consumes a lot less than your GTX580
> 
> You make no sense.



Why are you talking about my GTX 580? Was this overclocked 7970 built to compete with that or the 680? Don't answer.


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## entropy13 (Jun 22, 2012)

sand_dune said:


> You must be joking.* AMD had a fastest graphics card for the last 3 years and took half of market share of Nvidia which now has less than 20% of GPU market.*



http://jonpeddie.com/publications/add-in-board-report/

"AMD increased its  market share to 37.8%,  Nvidia’s market share slipped but still retains a large majority at 61.9%."

And the fastest *graphics card* is still the GTX 690, so I don't know where you get that first part. If you go with the fastest *single-GPU card*, then fair enough, the 7970 GHz Edition "wins". But then again the 6970 would lose to the GTX 580. Which would still make your statement *false*.

"You make no sense" indeed.


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## pantherx12 (Jun 22, 2012)

AMD, I am disappoint.

I was expecting more than just a binned chip, looking at the voltages used AMD could of just came out with this originally.

This card isn't design to compete with anything at all, it's purely for saying we're the fastest! 

Wouldn't be surprised if they didn't make that many of them lol


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## Aquinus (Jun 22, 2012)

Why? It's still a Tahiti core, It's not an XT2 which is supposed to run at lower voltages. AFAICT it's the same GPU clocked higher.


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## GC_PaNzerFIN (Jun 22, 2012)

"Not a single fuck was given when we designed the cooler"

Really, how hard can it be. Obviously not very hard when competitor is so far ahead AMD can't even hear it in terms of the reference coolers haha.


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## qubit (Jun 22, 2012)

GC_PaNzerFIN said:


> "Not a single fuck was given when we designed the cooler"



rofl  Well said. I'm sick of AMD's loud coolers. If nvidia can make reasonably quiet ones then so can they. This is the same stupid, noisy impeller that first appeared on that lemon, the 2900XT, five bloody years ago!


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## Crap Daddy (Jun 22, 2012)

sand_dune said:


> You must be joking. AMD had a fastest graphics card for the last 3 years and took half of market share of Nvidia which now has less than 20% of GPU market.



The last time when AMD had the fastest GPU in a generational matchup was in 2006 with the X1950 XTX so I don't know what you're talking about. Anyway, this is a pure marketing move. Pre OCed 7970 are already on the market with better cooling solutions so it's pretty pointless from a business POV. AMD should concentrate on the mid level market where they where doing fine and where they have the only card worth buying for that particular segment - the 7850


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## pantherx12 (Jun 22, 2012)

qubit said:


> rofl  Well said. I'm sick of AMD's loud coolers. If nvidia can make reasonably quiet ones then so can they. This is the same stupid, noisy impeller that first appeared in the 2900XT five bloody years ago!



I find it's how they ramp up the fan that is the issue.

If you create a custom profile you can keep temperatures pretty much the same without the wind tunnel noise.

That being said, this is why I go custom cooling, I get silence and great temperatures and that leads to great 24/7 overclocks


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## human_error (Jun 22, 2012)

Good review w1zz, there is one error in your article when looking at fan noise:



> In my opinion this is completely unacceptable, especially when custom, overclocked, dual-slot GTX 680s get 36 dBA



In the table below that the GTX680 gets 43dBA at load. It doesn't make the 7970 any quieter though...

I wouldn't buy this card anyway as we are what, 10 weeks away from when we should start seeing the 8k series pop up? For any real sales impact AMD should have launched this 2 months ago but I don't think that they want many sales of this card else they'd have paid more attention to that fan noise. This was only made to beat nVidia for the time being.


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## sergionography (Jun 22, 2012)

entropy13 said:


> Am I correct in saying, that you, sand_dune, when the GTX 480 came out, said something to this effect: "So what if the GTX 480 is better than the HD 5870? The 5870 is more efficient! The 5870 is quieter! The 5870 runs cooler!" ?



Apart from being like 6 month late to the show Gtx480 heat/noise was too close for comfort, and had almost no over clock headroom and the difference in efficiency between it and 5870 is far greater than that of 680/7970
Also in the next gen 6970/580 you had both cards supporting dp fp which afaik requires more diespace for a given performance. But now you have a Tahiti with full gpgpu capability versus a gk104 that's more 7870 territory in gpgpu. Its only normal the gk104/7870 is more efficient and has more performance/watt when gaming. Now if this was a gpgpu/compute review the tables would switch. And even tho 7970 consumes more power its still efficient and doesn't really cross the red line like gtx480 did so my point is ur almost comparing apples to oranges


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## HellasVagabond (Jun 22, 2012)

Guys i don' get it....If the 7970GHz is around 2-3% faster than a reference GTX 680 then why not overclock that and get like 5% a better card ? Isn't that common knowledge ? We Are talking about an OC'ed version of the normal 7970 so shouldn't we compare it with an OC'ed version of the GTX 680 ?


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## TheMailMan78 (Jun 22, 2012)

Anything above 35dBA is unacceptable. NVIDIA or ATI.


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## pantherx12 (Jun 22, 2012)

HellasVagabond said:


> Guys i don' get it....If the 7970GHz is around 2-3% faster than a reference GTX 680 then why not overclock that and get like 5% a better card ? Isn't that common knowledge ? We Are talking about an OC'ed version of the normal 7970 so shouldn't we compare it with an OC'ed version of the GTX 680 ?



Not until the 680 comes from Nvidia with that clock speed.


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## Mindweaver (Jun 22, 2012)

A buddy of mine bought his 7970 when they first came out, and he has his GPU on 1150mhz with stock voltage.  It can reach 1200mhz on stock voltage, but he has to turn the fan up to 100%. It's a kickass card and maxes out BF3 at 60fps and never drops. He only plays with V-Sync on for butter smooth play.


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## entropy13 (Jun 22, 2012)

sergionography said:


> Apart from being like 6 month late to the show Gtx480 heat/noise was too close for comfort, and had almost no over clock headroom and the difference in efficiency between it and 5870 is far greater than that of 680/7970
> Also in the next gen 6970/580 you had both cards supporting dp fp which afaik requires more diespace for a given performance. But now you have a Tahiti with full gpgpu capability versus a gk104 that's more 7870 territory in gpgpu. Its only normal the gk104/7870 is more efficient and has more performance/watt when gaming. Now if this was a gpgpu/compute review the tables would switch. And even tho 7970 consumes more power its still efficient and doesn't really cross the red line like gtx480 did so my point is ur almost comparing apples to oranges



Since you brought up GPGPU, I'm sure you know that until the 7000 series the ATi/AMD cards aren't exactly known for their GPGPU prowess...unless you count bitcoins. 




TheMailMan78 said:


> Anything above 35dBA is unacceptable. NVIDIA or ATI.



Good thing the fan behind me is neither Nvidia nor AMD.


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## TheMailMan78 (Jun 22, 2012)

entropy13 said:


> Good thing the fan behind me is neither Nvidia nor AMD.



My GPU peaks under load at 31dBA. I will not buy anything that goes over 35dBA UNLESS the deal is SUPER good.


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## HellasVagabond (Jun 22, 2012)

pantherx12 said:


> Not until the 680 comes from Nvidia with that clock speed.



Why should they ? Takes 1 minute to install an OC program (EVGA, MSI, GAINWARD) and use it so why charge you 50$ more for what you can do on your own ?


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## Mindweaver (Jun 22, 2012)

entropy13 said:


> Since you brought up GPGPU, I'm sure you know that until the 7000 series the ATi/AMD cards aren't exactly known for their GPGPU prowess...
> 
> 
> 
> ...



lol   that's funny! I have around 40x 40mm fans in 1u servers behind me.. lol Funny thing is I can't hear my noisy GTX480.. Oh and the air never cuts off @ 68f and it's pretty loud in it's self. If I have to power everything off and then power it back on it sounds like a Huey helicopter taking off!  My APC 3000XL is loud too... I guess over the years... I tune them out or I'm going deaf one.. My wife tells me I'm going deaf... but that's probably more of the tunning out.. lol


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## TheMailMan78 (Jun 22, 2012)

Mindweaver said:


> lol   that's funny! I have around 40x 40mm fans in 1u servers behind me.. lol Funny thing is I can't hear my noisy GTX480.. Oh and the air never cuts off @ 68f and it's pretty loud in it's self. If I have to power everything off and then power it back on it sounds like a Huey helicopter taking off!



I must be getting old. I can't stand noise. Moved to the woods just so I don't hear sirens anymore. Loud computer? Not in my house.


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## pantherx12 (Jun 22, 2012)

entropy13 said:


> Since you brought up GPGPU, I'm sure you know that until the 7000 series the ATi/AMD cards aren't exactly known for their GPGPU prowess...unless you count bitcoins.



That isn't true at all, the math compute power of the card is actually higher than that on the 680s.

Sure for most people won't ever see this performance but if your working with an app that uses opencl AMD are quite a head of Nvidia.

Hell I have a feeling that my 7850 outperforms the 680 in math.


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## Crap Daddy (Jun 22, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> My GPU peaks under load at 31dBA. I will not buy anything that goes over 35dBA UNLESS the deal is SUPER good.



So what you're saying is that from time to time you have to open your case to see if you still have a GPU in there?


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## Mindweaver (Jun 22, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> I must be getting old. I can't stand noise. Moved to the woods just so I don't hear sirens anymore. Loud computer? Not in my house.



Brotha don't talk about old.. I just turned *38*!    but if I had to say.. I really feel around 37 1/2... lol 

This is a great card, but I want them to release the 7970 x2... This feels like when AMD gave us new PII and not the Bulldozer we wanted... Which we never really got! So, by that standard they are having trouble with the 7970 x2 or 7990 or what ever the hell they are going to call it...


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## TheMailMan78 (Jun 22, 2012)

Crap Daddy said:


> So what you're saying is that from time to time you have to open your case to see if you still have a GPU in there?



Yes. I don't want to hear ANY fans if I can help it.


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## pantherx12 (Jun 22, 2012)

By the by, CL bench scores http://clbenchmark.com/result.jsp

GCN is very effective when it comes to CL.


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## razaron (Jun 22, 2012)

I got my 7970 a few weeks ago, so I'm happy that it sucks... 
I'm currently running 1125/1800 at stock volts, and can still go higher on both fronts (at stock volts)


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## raghu78 (Jun 22, 2012)

few suggestions to the reviewer.

1. Performance summary at 5760 x 1080 should be included while reviewing a USD 500 product which is intended for ultra high resolutions like 1600p and multi monitor configurations.

2. And resolutions like 1280 x 800 should definitely be removed for reviewing this class of product.

3. Also for this class of product the average performance across all resolutions should be a weighted average with  higher weights for 2560 x 1600 and 5760 x 1080 and lower weights for 1920 x 1200 and 1680 x 1050.

The way I see it the Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition is going to come with custom cooler designs. So anybody who chooses this card should stay away from the reference cooler design. With noise and heat taken care of with a good cooling solution what remains is performance, price and power. If you are gaming at 1600p and higher (which is the segment these products are intended for) the Radeon HD 7970 OC editions or Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition with custom coolers are the best option. If you want a cooler running setup with best perf/watt/price for a 1080p / 1200p monitor a custom GTX 670 is the best option.


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## entropy13 (Jun 22, 2012)

pantherx12 said:


> That isn't true at all, the math compute power of the card is actually higher than that on the 680s.
> 
> Sure for most people won't ever see this performance but if your working with an app that uses opencl AMD are quite a head of Nvidia.
> 
> Hell I have a feeling that my 7850 outperforms the 680 in math.



You obviously didn't read my post. Did you miss the "until the HD 7000 series" portion?


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## hardcore_gamer (Jun 22, 2012)

So the fastest single GPU Nvidia card is slower than fastest single GPU AMD/ATI card. It's been 6 long years since that happened.


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## W1zzard (Jun 22, 2012)

raghu78 said:


> few suggestions to the reviewer.
> 
> 1. Performance summary at 5760 x 1080 should be included while reviewing a USD 500 product which is intended for ultra high resolutions like 1600p and multi monitor configurations.
> 
> ...



1) nvidia cards can't run all tests at this resolution successfully, so they get a 0.0 score, which would greatly affect the summary score
2) close your eyes every time you see 1280x800 and scroll down
3) interesting idea. any suggestion for the weight values. how to define the classes each card is in, so the weights can be switched?

these cards need to be classified: 


Spoiler



GTX 590 3072M
HD 6990 4096M
GTX 690 4096M
HD 5570 1024M
GT 520 1024M
HD 6970 2048M
GTX 680 2048M
HD 5870 1024M
HD 6450 1024M
AMD HD 7970 GHz Edition 3072M
HD 7970 3072M
GTX 580 1536M
HD 7950 3072M
GTX 470 1280M
HD 7870 2048M
GTX 670 2048M
GTX 570 1280M
HD 6950 2048M
HD 7850 2048M
GTX 480 1536M
GTS 450 1024M
GTX 560 Ti 1024M
GT 430 1024M
GTX 550 Ti 1024M
GT 440 1024M
HD 7750 1024M
HD 5770 1024M
HD 6850 1024M
HD 7770 1024M
HD 6790 1024M
HD 6870 1024M
HD 6670 1024M


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## hardcore_gamer (Jun 22, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> 1) nvidia cards can't run all tests at this resolution successfully, so they get a 0.0 score, which would greatly affect the summary score
> 2) close your eyes every time you see 1280x800 and scroll down
> 3) interesting idea. any suggestion for the weight values. how to define the classes each card is in, so the weights can be switched?



I'd only recommend resolutions above 1600x900 for benching this kinda cards.


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## W1zzard (Jun 22, 2012)

hardcore_gamer said:


> I'd only recommend resolutions above 1600x900 for benching this kinda cards.



but you like to see performance per dollar for all cards, in every review, right? so i must bench 1280x800 on all cards.

so i choose to include all resolutions in all reviews as additional data points, they provide insight into more advanced topics like cpu limitations etc.


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## pantherx12 (Jun 22, 2012)

entropy13 said:


> You obviously didn't read my post. Did you miss the "until the HD 7000 series" portion?



That I did, my mistake


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## radrok (Jun 22, 2012)

Can't believe people are bitching about the best VGA review method we have online right now, I mean come on it's not like that the additional data hurts your eyes, just scroll down as w1zz said and call it a day.

Anyway, cherry picked Tahiti GPUs, nothing fancy/new on the red side and they made quite a compromise to get the performance crown again, if this is a mirror of what we will see on the 7990 then we'll have again a hot graphics card like the 6990.


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## pantherx12 (Jun 22, 2012)

radrok said:


> Can't believe people are bitching about the best VGA review method we have online right now, I mean come on it's not like that the additional data hurts your eyes, just scroll down as w1zz said and call it a day.
> 
> Anyway, cherry picked Tahiti GPUs, nothing fancy/new on the red side and they made quite a compromise to get the performance crown again, if this is a mirror of what we will see on the 7990 then we'll have again a hot gpu like the 6990.



Aye while I don't agree with all the scores he does and the pluses and minuses in the reviews his method of testing is far beyond what most reviewers do.


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## radrok (Jun 22, 2012)

pantherx12 said:


> Aye while I don't agree with all the scores he does and the pluses and minuses in the reviews his method of testing is far beyond what most reviewers do.



Yep I'm not talking about the scores, that's probably the most subjective thing in a review which I usually skip, what is important is the data provided, atleast in my opinion


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## Random Murderer (Jun 22, 2012)

Wow, extremely disappointing, but at the same time, reassuring(for me at least).
Right after I bought my 7970s, the announcement for the GHz edition came about and I thought "oh sh*t."
Now that this review has been posted, I'm one happy man. Both of my cards max out CCC Overdrive at 1125/1575 on stock voltage. One card is a 1112mV VID and the other 1125mV. The highest VID the vanilla 7970 came with was 1174mV, still well under the 1200mV the GHz edition uses.


So here's a Top Gear top tip:







If you're in the market for a 7970, buy a reference 7970. Higher clock speeds, lower voltage, and less heat.
And on that bombshell...


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## lZKoce (Jun 22, 2012)

When considering gaming performance there are places in which the differences are like hair. E.G Starcraft2- 0.4 FPS? I admire the perseverance to record this. I personally don't care. The guys with money, who like the card will buy it. It's that simple.


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## raghu78 (Jun 22, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> 1) nvidia cards can't run all tests at this resolution successfully, so they get a 0.0 score, which would greatly affect the summary score
> 2) close your eyes every time you see 1280x800 and scroll down
> 3) interesting idea. any suggestion for the weight values. how to define the classes each card is in, so the weights can be switched?



Given that a USD 500 card is intended for multi monitor configurations and single monitor with high resolutions like 1440p / 1600p some method needs to be worked out to include the 5760 X 1080 results into the performance average. Its extremely unfair while reviewing a card which people will look to use in multi monitor configurations to leave out the multi monitor performance. 

As for weights here are some suggestions. for cards which are in the USD 350 - USD 500 price point the 1280 x 800 chart does not need to be a part of the review and the performance average. For weight in this class I can give only what I feel is right given you are spending a lot of money. 

1600p - 0.3, 5760 x 1080 - 0.3, 1080p / 1200p - 0.2, 1680 x 1050 - 0.2 . 

For cards in USD 200 - USD 350 the 5760 x 1080 can be removed and weights can be as follows

1080p / 1200p - 0.4, 1680 x 1050 -0.3, 1600p - 0.2, 1280 x 800 - 0.1

For cards in USD 100 - USD 200 , 1600p can be removed and weights can be as follows

1080p / 1200p - 0.4, 1680 x 1050 - 0.3, 1280 x 800 - 0.3


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## alienstorexxx (Jun 22, 2012)

"cons: High price"

??? wtf?

fastest single gpu on earth. period, stop bitching on power consumption on a top end gpu. 
and pricing is right next to gtx680, even vulpurizes oced versions at 550usd.


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## dude12564 (Jun 22, 2012)

alienstorexxx said:


> "cons: High price"
> 
> ??? wtf?
> 
> ...



Factory o/c'd and overvolted for about 50 bucks more...


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## alienstorexxx (Jun 22, 2012)

dude12564 said:


> Factory o/c'd and overvolted for about 50 bucks more...



isn't that what you pay when you buy a custom gpu by an assembler ie. msi, sapphire, etc?
plus powertune boost. it rises the bar for the asseblers.

also "50 bucks more" is what cost a gtx680, if you have seen anyone around there, i'm begining to think is another informatic myth. so if you see from the other side, it isn't costs 50 bucks more, it costs the same than competition, and outperforms it


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## HellasVagabond (Jun 22, 2012)

alienstorexxx said:


> isn't that what you pay when you buy a custom gpu by an assembler ie. msi, sapphire, etc?
> plus powertune boost. it rises the bar for the asseblers.
> 
> also "50 bucks more" is what cost a gtx680, if you have seen anyone around there, i'm begining to think is another informatic myth. so if you see from the other side, it isn't costs 50 bucks more, it costs the same than competition, and outperforms it



1) Custom cards offer Factory OC coupled with Less Noise & Temperatures
2) Why not get the 680 and overclock it to get a more powerful card ? Makes no sense to choose the 7970GHz when you can outperform it and have a card with less power needs, noise and temperatures.

In any case i feel we are all going in circles. ATI/AMD fanboys will never admit what's right there (same goes for NV fanboys when NV releases something bad) so everyone can't be happy, ever.


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Jun 22, 2012)

I would just get a normal HD7970 maybe even the MSI lightning and then just clock the dog snot out of it.


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## alienstorexxx (Jun 22, 2012)

HellasVagabond said:


> 1) Custom cards offer Factory OC coupled with Less Noise & Temperatures
> 2) Why not get the 680 and overclock it to get a more powerful card ? Makes no sense to choose the 7970GHz when you can outperform it and have a card with less power needs, noise and temperatures.
> 
> In any case i feel we are all going in circles. ATI/AMD fanboys will never admit what's right there (same goes for NV fanboys when NV releases something bad) so everyone can't be happy, ever.



since when 680 overclocks scales better than a 7970? also read other reviews when putting 7970ghz edition vs oced gtx680 like !AMP from zotac. wich costs 550usd. thats what i call outperforming. not even overclocked gtx680 can against it, not to mention we haven't already seen custom of these new 7970.

7970 ghz ed = performance crown. deal with it, it can be noisy, hotter, or whatever you can think but "my logic is undeniable". 

pd. the card can also be overclocked, have you forgot it?


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## MxPhenom 216 (Jun 22, 2012)

alienstorexxx said:


> since when 680 overclocks scales better than a 7970? also read other reviews when putting 7970ghz edition vs oced gtx680 like !AMP from zotac. wich costs 550usd. thats what i call outperforming. not even overclocked gtx680 can against it, not to mention we haven't already seen custom of these new 7970.
> 
> 7970 ghz ed = performance crown. deal with it, it can be noisy, hotter, or whatever you can think but "my logic is undeniable".
> 
> pd. the card can also be overclocked, have you forgot it?



Im pretty sure if you take a reference $499 GTX680 and clock it it would beat the 7970 ghz edition. the 680/670 are still better options because they run cooler, quieter, and more efficient.


----------



## raghu78 (Jun 22, 2012)

HellasVagabond said:


> 1) Custom cards offer Factory OC coupled with Less Noise & Temperatures
> 2) Why not get the 680 and overclock it to get a more powerful card ? Makes no sense to choose the 7970GHz when you can outperform it and have a card with less power needs, noise and temperatures.
> 
> In any case i feel we are all going in circles. ATI/AMD fanboys will never admit what's right there (same goes for NV fanboys when NV releases something bad) so everyone can't be happy, ever.



If you can overclock a GTX 680 so can you do with a Radeon HD 7970, Radeon HD 7970 OC and Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition. Most Radeon HD 7970s did 1125 Mhz in AMD CCC at stock voltage from launch day. Custom HD 7970 models like Sapphire HD 7970 OC Dual X , Gigabyte HD 7970 OC Windforce have been shown to hit 1250+ Mhz. 

http://hardocp.com/article/2012/04/10/sapphire_hd_7970_oc_edition_video_card_review/
http://hardocp.com/article/2012/02/08/gigabyte_radeon_hd_7970_oc_video_card_review/

Lots of enthusiasts have even hit 1300 Mhz with watercooling setups without any problems associated with heat and noise. 

But that said overclocking might always differ from card to card . What AMD is doing with the Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition is giving better out of the box speeds. So this gives you guaranteed performance. This is an answer to GTX 680. AMD partners are definitely going to ship excellent Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition OC models with 1100 - 1150 Mhz speeds out of the box. 

And also the difference at 2560 x 1600 is significant even at stock comparison. So a GTX 680 OC will have a difficult if not impossible job of catching up a Radeon HD 7970 OC / Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition with voltage tweaking at this resolution and even more so at 5760 x 1080.


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## HellasVagabond (Jun 22, 2012)

raghu78 said:


> If you can overclock a GTX 680 so can you do with a Radeon HD 7970, Radeon HD 7970 OC and Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition. Most Radeon HD 7970s did 1125 Mhz in AMD CCC at stock voltage from launch day. Custom HD 7970 models like Sapphire HD 7970 OC Dual X , Gigabyte HD 7970 OC Windforce have been shown to hit 1250+ Mhz.
> 
> http://hardocp.com/article/2012/04/10/sapphire_hd_7970_oc_edition_video_card_review/
> http://hardocp.com/article/2012/02/08/gigabyte_radeon_hd_7970_oc_video_card_review/
> ...




We are talking about overclocking Without losing your warranty, thus without upping voltages (something 90% of people don't do). In that case there's simply no way for an 7970 to beat an 680. Even the GHz edition performs worse than the 680 in several games, something which at least for me looks really bad since the GHz edition even comes with increased voltages. And then you have noise, power and temperatures which are very important to some people (i wish one day ATI fanboys decided if they care about those things, they ignored it before the 5xxx series, then they considered them important it when NV released GTX4xxx series and now they ignore them again).


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## W1zzard (Jun 22, 2012)

raghu78 said:


> Given that a USD 500 card is intended for multi monitor configurations and single monitor with high resolutions like 1440p / 1600p some method needs to be worked out to include the 5760 X 1080 results into the performance average. Its extremely unfair while reviewing a card which people will look to use in multi monitor configurations to leave out the multi monitor performance.
> 
> As for weights here are some suggestions. for cards which are in the USD 350 - USD 500 price point the 1280 x 800 chart does not need to be a part of the review and the performance average. For weight in this class I can give only what I feel is right given you are spending a lot of money.
> 
> ...



using those methods for all cards tested, would you say our performance summary, performance per dollar and performance per watt will still be valid, if all the cards in there are subject to different weight factors?

How to solve the 0.0 score issue on 5760x1080?

nvidia's architecture is weak at higher resolutions, so going from $350 to $349 (for example) will increase each nvidia's card "performance summary", just by making the card cheaper, not faster in real life. it will also affect "performance per dollar" more than $1 alone. thoughts on this?


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## cadaveca (Jun 22, 2012)

I only see that working if you seperated cards into entry-level, mainstream, and high performance.


If entry to mainstream or entry card does well with higher resolutions, it gets a bonus for it. IF a high-end card fails, it gets a deficit because of it.

But, at the same time, I think 5760x1080 should be ranked on it's own, seperate from all other resolutions, as it's not exactly the same thing as running a single monitor. If this section was seperate, and had it's own ranking in perf/watt perf/dollar. It coudl be treated like OC, it's own section for teh high-end user, like OC section is for those that like to clock their cards.


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## Random Murderer (Jun 22, 2012)

Am I the only one that thinks w1z's testing methods are fine the way they are now?


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Jun 22, 2012)

Random Murderer said:


> Am I the only one that thinks w1z's testing methods are fine the way they are now?



No. They are fine. People just need a reason to live. Some peoples reason is to bitch on the Internet. W1zz is just giving these sad souls a reason to live. Hes like a saint. Saint W1zzard.


----------



## Random Murderer (Jun 22, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> No. They are fine. People just need a reason to live. Some peoples reason is to bitch on the Internet. W1zz is just giving these sad souls a reason to live. Hes like a saint. Saint W1zzard.



That's getting sigged.


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Jun 22, 2012)

I would like to see this card go head to head against the GTX680 Lightning!


----------



## radrok (Jun 22, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> I would like to see this card go head to head against the GTX680 Lightning!



Nah, you should compare the 680 lightning with the 7970 lightning, it makes more sense, especially because the lightning already uses cherry picked Tahiti which don't seem any different from the ones used in the "GHz" edition.


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## raghu78 (Jun 22, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> using those methods for all cards tested, would you say our performance summary, performance per dollar and performance per watt will still be valid, if all the cards in there are subject to different weight factors?
> 
> How to solve the 0.0 score issue on 5760x1080?
> 
> nvidia's architecture is weak at higher resolutions, so going from $350 to $349 (for example) will increase each nvidia's card "performance summary", just by making the card cheaper, not faster in real life. it will also affect "performance per dollar" more than $1 alone. thoughts on this?



              Nvidia Surround does work in most of the games in your test suite except Dirt 3, Civilization V and Hard Reset. Also I am surprised that Dirt 3 does not run at 5760 x 1080. I don't know the difference in test scenarios but quiet a few reviews have run Dirt 3 at 5760 x 1080. so definitely a average for 5760 x 1080 should be calculated. the games which fail do not contribute to the average and so average perf at 5760 x 1080 will and should be affected.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6025/radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition-review-catching-up-to-gtx-680/6

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...radeon-hd-7970-3gb-ghz-edition-review-17.html

As for the classes the problems pointed can be handled as follows. But most products are launched at fixed price points like USD 549, USD 499, USD 449, USD 399, USD 349. All of these cards fall under the high end class. A USD 349 card can't get into a smaller class given that its too close to the higher class. Only a USD 329 or a USD 319 card can fit in the second class. similarly for the lower classes. A USD 199 card is the second class or midrange class. a USD 179 card can get into the third class of USD 100 - 200.


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## entropy13 (Jun 22, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Hes like a saint. Saint W1zzard.



Blasphemy! A practitioner of magic, called a saint???


----------



## tacosRcool (Jun 22, 2012)

Why is everybody complaining about this card? Looks good to me! W1zzard should review a non reference one soon!


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## raghu78 (Jun 22, 2012)

HellasVagabond said:


> We are talking about overclocking Without losing your warranty, thus without upping voltages (something 90% of people don't do). In that case there's simply no way for an 7970 to beat an 680. Even the GHz edition performs worse than the 680 in several games, something which at least for me looks really bad since the GHz edition even comes with increased voltages. And then you have noise, power and temperatures which are very important to some people (i wish one day ATI fanboys decided if they care about those things, they ignored it before the 5xxx series, then they considered them important it when NV released GTX4xxx series and now they ignore them again).



Overclocking at stock voltage in AMD CCC is easy and straightforward. So there is no issue of warranty problems with that. Only overclocking using third party software allows above  1125 Mhz. And you have a choice to try and extract as much OC you can at stock voltage or go for extra voltage if you need. There are lots of users who hit 1150 Mhz - 1200 Mhz at stock volts, though thats not a guarantee.Here is an example of a very high OC (1220 Mhz) at stock voltage using MSI Afterburner.

http://hardocp.com/article/2012/02/08/gigabyte_radeon_hd_7970_oc_video_card_review/3


also custom cards are designed with good cooling solutions and maintain excellent temps with low noise. In the XFX HD 7970 DD Black edition review the XFX HD 7970 overclocked to 1125 Mhz increased temps by just 1c because all of that was at stock voltage.  

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5314/...ouble-dissipation-the-first-semicustom-7970/6

I think you are confusing the HD 7970 to be a power guzzler like GTX 480 which ran extremely hot at above 90c and very loud. sorry to say you are badly mistaken.


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## pantherx12 (Jun 22, 2012)

tacosRcool said:


> Why is everybody complaining about this card? Looks good to me! W1zzard should review a non reference one soon!



He already has.

See the 7970 lightning review.


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## Crap Daddy (Jun 22, 2012)

This launch has purely marketing reasons. It is the same 7970 that we had at the beginning of the year overclocked and overvolted. I really fail to see the logic behind this other than claim a performance crown by pimping a card that's already on the market. 

What next? Nvidia will continue this childish competition by releasing a voltage unlocked GTX680 with out of the box Ghz plus 200 Mhz edition which will get back the 2% it lost now?

Last generation we had three cards above the 300$ mark, 570/580 and the 6970. (not counting dual) Now we have six?! AMD has gone from one to four? I thought we're in stagnation, recession whatever. Crisis, what crisis? Or should I say Crysis?


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## D007 (Jun 22, 2012)

Nice review as always Wiz..
I was suprised to see ATI being more power hungry and running at above 80c.. Usually their trade mark to go for lower consumption and lower heat..
It's a dam good card, seems to tie up the top tier imo..
Wonder how it is in 3d apps/cuda, etc..
Would be nice to see the "Ultra" version of the 6 series against the "ultra" version of the 7 series though..
Can't really claim the crown when that test has yet to be taken..


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## Kaleid (Jun 22, 2012)

Too much fighting over cards few will actually buy.


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## TheMailMan78 (Jun 22, 2012)

Kaleid said:


> Too much fighting over cards few will actually buy.



People argue over sports teams, politics and religion. Few are rarely involved. Your point?


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## D007 (Jun 22, 2012)

Kaleid said:


> Too much fighting over cards few will actually buy.





TheMailMan78 said:


> People argue over sports teams, politics and religion. Few are rarely involved. Your point?



Hell I fight for being looked at wrong or even insinuations of it..lol.. What u wanna fight about it?!!


----------



## Random Murderer (Jun 22, 2012)

Kaleid said:


> Too much fighting over cards few will actually buy.





TheMailMan78 said:


> People argue over sports teams, politics and religion. Few are rarely involved. Your point?





D007 said:


> Hell I fight for being looked at wrong or even insinuations of it..lol.. What u wanna fight about it?!!









"Patty Tanager, the caddy manager. Yeah, it rhymes, big whoop! Wanna fight about it?"


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## OneCool (Jun 22, 2012)

yawn!!

Where is the damn XT2 or XTX or XT pe WHATEVER THE HELL


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## HellasVagabond (Jun 22, 2012)

raghu78 said:


> Overclocking at stock voltage in AMD CCC is easy and straightforward. So there is no issue of warranty problems with that. Only overclocking using third party software allows above  1125 Mhz. And you have a choice to try and extract as much OC you can at stock voltage or go for extra voltage if you need. There are lots of users who hit 1150 Mhz - 1200 Mhz at stock volts, though thats not a guarantee.Here is an example of a very high OC (1220 Mhz) at stock voltage using MSI Afterburner.
> 
> http://hardocp.com/article/2012/02/08/gigabyte_radeon_hd_7970_oc_video_card_review/3
> 
> ...



Again you miss the point that even the 7970GHz edition with overvoltage and OC loses to the GTX 680 in several games and where it comes on top we are talking about a 3% increase at most. So i really don't know what you are trying to say. That Some people have OCed the 7970 more ? So what ? Some will have also OCed and GTX 680 more, again so what ? We are not looking for the exceptions, we are looking for the rule and the rule is that the 7970 at stock is no match for the GTX 680 at stock and the 7970GHz edition still falls behind the stock GTX 680 in several games so if one was to slightly OC the GTX 680 it would certainly beat the 7970GHz.
I am not saying that the 7970Ghz is a bad card but it's just an OCed 7970 and nothing more, hardly something for people to get excited for.


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## Delta6326 (Jun 22, 2012)

Awesome Review like always W1zzard and I understand why you do the things you do. People just don't understand the multi monitor thing.

Meh, this card is just a normal 7970 with higher clocks and more voltage, while normal 7970's could do these clocks with no voltage change...

But this is what im most interested in.


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## tt_martin (Jun 22, 2012)

Delta6326 said:


> But this is what im most interested in.


But 670 (and 680 as well) is voltage limited, 7970 not (up to 1.3-1.38v), so it has more oc headroom.


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## Delta6326 (Jun 22, 2012)

tt_martin said:


> But 670 (and 680 as well) is voltage limited, 7970 not (up to 1.3-1.38v), so it has more oc headroom.



That is true, but you can still OC it a long ways


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## erocker (Jun 22, 2012)

Good review.. confusing card. I thought these were supposed to be running at a much lower stock voltage. Thanks for uploading the bios to the database!


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## okidna (Jun 22, 2012)

erocker said:


> Good review.. confusing card. *I thought these were supposed to be running at a much lower stock voltage.* Thanks for uploading the bios to the database!



It does running at a lower voltage............. 



Spoiler



.....in Blu-ray playback 

0.95v versus 1.18v.


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## Random Murderer (Jun 22, 2012)

erocker said:


> Good review.. confusing card. I thought these were supposed to be running at a much lower stock voltage. Thanks for uploading the bios to the database!



Didn't realize he uploaded it... considering the GHz edition is on the reference board, maybe I'll give this BIOS a try tonight. That will show for sure if the GHz edition is simply the same card with a different BIOS or there's something actually different about the card that we can't see.
If it works and temps don't go up much I'll just keep this BIOS on the cards, the stock clocks of this BIOS are 50MHz higher on both core and memory than the XFX Black Edition BIOS making it the fastest reference 7970 yet. VTX3D and Sapphire both released cards with even higher clocks that are on the same board but use different components, so *technically* they're not reference designs.
It'll also be interesting to see if this raises the max OC in CCC. It'd be pretty sad if Overdrive in CCC only allowed a 75MHz OC on memory, lol.


----------



## erocker (Jun 22, 2012)

okidna said:


> It does running at a lower voltage.............
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Haha! Actually, my card does that now using an early (7970 review) unlocked bios.


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## Random Murderer (Jun 22, 2012)

erocker said:


> Haha! Actually, my card does that now using an early (7970 review) unlocked bios.



I can confirm the Black Edition BIOS does the same thing, as does the MSI unlocked BIOS.


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## Casecutter (Jun 22, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> 1) nvidia cards can't run all tests at this resolution successfully, so they get a 0.0 score, which would greatly affect the summary score


Ouch!

Disappointed that it doesn’t appear to really be from a truly improve process that really enhanced the efficiency.  These are binned silicone from wafers that came after the TSMC shut-down that where better/matched what the 28Nm process was to be endowed with.  So yes nothing extra special as I’d had hoped, and even wonder if they are even change in the voltage as was reported last week?  
I think that voltage stuff was eluding to “PowerTune with Boost”, which is really how AMD got this to be what it is and what differentiates from previous custom OC cards. It’s a case of “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander”, although I think this review is just nothing more than “a reference show me”.  I want to see a 8 “custom” card roundup (Nvidia/AMD 4 on 4) all with the newest driver and really wring out everything on the resolutions and title that stress such cards to their limits. 
I will say I think AMD can supply more GHz units, and be more price conscience than Nvidia will be able to be with GTX680’s in the months to come.


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## W1zzard (Jun 22, 2012)

erocker said:


> Thanks for uploading the bios to the database!



i tried flashing a non-ghz hd 7970 with that bios, but the driver would not load anymore. let me know if you make any more progress with it


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## Random Murderer (Jun 22, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> i tried flashing a non-ghz hd 7970 with that bios, but the driver would not load anymore. let me know if you make any more progress with it



Will do. Planning on swapping heatsinks tonight. In the process I'll pull one of my 7970s and attempt the flash on the other and report back the findings.


----------



## librin.so.1 (Jun 22, 2012)

pantherx12 said:


> By the by, CL bench scores http://clbenchmark.com/result.jsp
> 
> GCN is very effective when it comes to CL.



> On the other hand...





_
Also, I wonder: vanilla 7970 overclocked to have the same clock speeds as 7970_GHz.E - would they generally use more power than 7970_GHz.E? (assuming many "card samples".)
In other words: is 7970_GHz.E actually that much power hungry as most of You are saying? Relatively.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 22, 2012)

I still don't see where the ghz card is power hungry, max wattage is 3w higher than a normal 7970, am I missing something? I just don't see huge wattage difference from the basic 7970 even in the other wattage tests.


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## Hilux SSRG (Jun 22, 2012)

Great review and your review process W1zzard is excellent the way it stands. Although I don't game at 1280 x 800 resolutions I want to see those charts because they are informative.  To those who don't want to see 1280 x 800 charts look to the next page and don't presume others' opinions. 

Even IF amd's single chip flagship is faster by 1%, nvidia will make another refresh of the gtx 680 to be 1% faster. Oh the cycle that never ends !  

The standout this generation is the gtx 670 hands down.


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## okidna (Jun 22, 2012)

1Kurgan1 said:


> I still don't see where the ghz card is power hungry, max wattage is 3w higher than a normal 7970, am I missing something? I just don't see huge wattage difference from the basic 7970 even in the other wattage tests.



3W higher is on Furmark. 
It means nothing unless you want your card to run Furmark 24/7. It gives F@H new meaning though, FurMark @ Home 

From W1zz review, 46W higher than 7970 vanilla on Average gaming scenario and 50W higher on Peak gaming scenario.

Yes, it's not a huge difference, but with 50W you can power 10 120mm or 140mm fans and made your case fly, a case-copter!


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 23, 2012)

okidna said:


> 3W higher is on Furmark.
> It means nothing unless you want your card to run Furmark 24/7. It gives F@H new meaning though, FurMark @ Home
> 
> From W1zz review, 46W higher than 7970 vanilla on Average gaming scenario and 50W higher on Peak gaming scenario.
> ...



An overclocked card taking more power seriously shouldn't surprising though, and like people have already said, those buying a $500 card probably aren't all too worried about a bit of extra wattage. And I speak from experience here since before I ever bought my first 7970 I picked up a 1250w PSU, then got my 7970 then later got another. And I run them far past any of the clocks used here, not even sure what wattage they use, and I don't really care either. If I was concerned about wattage I would have probably gone for something a bit more tame like a 7850 or 7870 and left the clocks alone.

Also I don't think 10 fans is really all that much, considering the picture you linked 2.5 rows = 10 fans, that has a lot more than 10. I think my case (with rads) has 7 right now, if I has the room I would run 12, but I don't have the room for push and pull fans on my rads in just a mid tower.


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## erocker (Jun 23, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> i tried flashing a non-ghz hd 7970 with that bios, but the driver would not load anymore. let me know if you make any more progress with it



Uninstalled drivers, booted into ATiFlash and flashed it. Installed drivers and upon restart I got a bluescreen. Before installing drivers I checked CPU-Z and the bios was indeed on the card. The Vram voltage was set to 1.5v instead of my stock 1.6v.

Are the 12.7 beta drivers required for the GHZ edition?


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## Boomstick777 (Jun 23, 2012)

kadeep said:


> why did Nvidia fanboy complain too much in AMD articles



Nvidia fanboys very insecure, 'Oooh AMD have performance crown again' 'Must flame 7970 Ghz threads !!'

7970 Ghz is the new king, hail to the king baby .


----------



## Boomstick777 (Jun 23, 2012)

tacosRcool said:


> Why is everybody complaining about this card? Looks good to me! W1zzard should review a non reference one soon!



Looks good to me aswell, the Nvidia fanboys just can't stand the fact that AMD have the best single GPU performance crown again, it's like they literally cannot fathom it, there brains just can't deal with it, they need a way to justify it to themselves, therefore the flaming and weird comments that make no sense whatsoever to a non fanboy start.. 

Expect to see the age old 'poor AMD drivers' line being thrown around a lot on the next few days while the Nvidia fanboys are coming to to terms with the news.


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Jun 23, 2012)

entropy13 said:


> You obviously didn't read my post. Did you miss the "until the HD 7000 series" portion?



As does my 5870 and 5850


----------



## raghu78 (Jun 23, 2012)

HellasVagabond said:


> Again you miss the point that even the 7970GHz edition with overvoltage and OC loses to the GTX 680 in several games and where it comes on top we are talking about a 3% increase at most. So i really don't know what you are trying to say. That Some people have OCed the 7970 more ? So what ? Some will have also OCed and GTX 680 more, again so what ? We are not looking for the exceptions, we are looking for the rule and the rule is that the 7970 at stock is no match for the GTX 680 at stock and the 7970GHz edition still falls behind the stock GTX 680 in several games so if one was to slightly OC the GTX 680 it would certainly beat the 7970GHz.
> I am not saying that the 7970Ghz is a bad card but it's just an OCed 7970 and nothing more, hardly something for people to get excited for.



What are you talking ? The Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition card comes with a stock voltage of 1.162 and boost voltage of 1.218. No overclocking has been done on this card for the review. I guess you did not see the performance summary. The GTX 680 is 2% slower at 1200p and 8% slower at 1600p. At 5760 x 1080 it gets even worse for GTX 680. GTX 680 loses to Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition. Plain and simple. clock for clock the HD 7970 is a faster chip than GTX 680 when compared across a wide range of games. The gap grows wider as the resolution goes up.
           For overclocked performance lets wait for custom Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition OC model reviews. Then you can compare 680 OC vs Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition OC. You are definitely trying your best to defend the GTX 680 when its proven that for ultra high resolution single monitor and multi monitor gaming the Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition is the clear winner.


----------



## qubit (Jun 23, 2012)

erocker said:


> Uninstalled drivers, booted into ATiFlash and flashed it. Installed drivers and upon restart I got a bluescreen. Before installing drivers I checked CPU-Z and the bios was indeed on the card. The Vram voltage was set to 1.5v instead of my stock 1.6v.
> 
> Are the 12.7 beta drivers required for the GHZ edition?



Sorry to ask a potentially dumb question, but have you managed to run the card at all with that bios? I take it the BIOS screen shows up at least?

If you keep getting bsods, then perhaps it might help to install a fresh copy of Windows on another partition or HDD and take it from there? It might not hurt to try installing Linux, to see if it can display any sort of graphics output with the new BIOS.

It wouldn't surprise me if AMD put something in that BIOS to stop it working with regular 7970's, as that would clearly reveal just what a pure marketing ploy this release is.


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## eidairaman1 (Jun 23, 2012)

Good Launch but for it to be 50 bux more for 100+ MHz Increase. Better off Just sticking with the original 7970 and overclocking it to the level this is or getting a Lightning


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## erocker (Jun 23, 2012)

qubit said:


> Sorry to ask a potentially dumb question, but have you managed to run the card at all with that bios? I take it the BIOS screen shows up at least?
> 
> If you keep getting bsods, then perhaps it might help to install a fresh copy of Windows on another partition or HDD and take it from there? It might not hurt to try installing Linux, to see if it can display any sort of graphics output with the new BIOS.
> 
> It wouldn't surprise me if AMD put something in that BIOS to stop it working with regular 7970's, as that would clearly reveal just what a pure marketing ploy this release is.



First part of your question, yes. I can get into Windows fine without the driver installed. However, I'm wondering if I need to install the 12.7 beta driver in order for it to work. I suppose I could reflash and try.

No, I do not keep getting bsod's. I just get them with the bios flashed to my card, after I install the drivers (I was using 12.6 beta I believe). 

I don't bother with Linux and I was doing this on a fresh copy of windows that I have installed an a spare SSD. Either way, I know how to remove everything video driver related so it doesn't matter. 

I'm not sure if my card will benefit much from this bios either. The Ghz edition runs the VRAM at 1.5v while the stock versions use 1.6v. If the ram chips are binned I could imagine this causing some possible instability. With the "boost voltage" of 1.2v, my card can actually run 1200mhz stable. The problem may lay there, with the boost voltage. Perhaps the voltage controller has a different "firmware" apart from the bios that perhaps that allows this? Don't know really.


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## eidairaman1 (Jun 23, 2012)

Ya Know it might be worth a try but u already know the consequences i think



erocker said:


> First part of your question, yes. I can get into Windows fine without the driver installed. However, I'm wondering if I need to install the 12.7 beta driver in order for it to work. I suppose I could reflash and try.
> 
> No, I do not keep getting bsod's. I just get them with the bios flashed to my card, after I install the drivers (I was using 12.6 beta I believe).
> 
> ...


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## qubit (Jun 23, 2012)

erocker said:


> First part of your question, yes. I can get into Windows fine without the driver installed. However, I'm wondering if I need to install the 12.7 beta driver in order for it to work. I suppose I could reflash and try.
> 
> No, I do not keep getting bsod's. I just get them with the bios flashed to my card, after I install the drivers (I was using 12.6 beta I believe).
> 
> ...



It sounds to me like you might need that new driver to make it work properly, then. It looks to like the GHz cards and the regular cards are physically identical, with the extra performance simply being gained by software tuning with the BIOS and driver working together to make it happen - the 7970 is inherently very overclockable, after all. So, it sounds like enthusiasts will simply be able to "get" the GHz edition with a BIOS flash and a new driver. Nice.

Tom's Hardware tested this card and found that the regular 7970 actually consumed around 5W less than the GHz card too, among other things.


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## erocker (Jun 23, 2012)

qubit said:


> So, it sounds like enthusiasts will simply be able to "get" the GHz edition with a BIOS flash and a new driver. Nice.



Nope. Used the 12.7 beta and driver didn't want to load, same as W1zzard. No BSOD this time though.


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## fullinfusion (Jun 23, 2012)

erocker said:


> Nope. Used the 12.7 beta and driver didn't want to load, same as W1zzard. No BSOD this time though.


Same here, the drivers wouldn't load... Some problem with the unzipping


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## eidairaman1 (Jun 23, 2012)

fullinfusion said:


> Same here, the drivers wouldn't load... Some problem with the unzipping



probably a sku string... that cant be copied in the bios.


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## fullinfusion (Jun 23, 2012)

eidairaman1 said:


> probably a sku string... that cant be copied in the bios.


Yeah something was weird with the driver for sure.


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## cadaveca (Jun 23, 2012)

eidairaman1 said:


> probably a sku string... that cant be copied in the bios.



That's what I was gonna post. Same thing happens to some 6950 users with 6970 BIOS. Driver sees teh difference when loading up as the OS starts, and prevents OS boot.

Futuremark's hardware recognition stuff recognizes this difference as well.


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## eidairaman1 (Jun 23, 2012)

cadaveca said:


> That's what I was gonna post. Same thing happens to some 6950 users with 6970 BIOS. Driver sees teh difference when loading up as the OS starts, and prevents OS boot.



Well Wizzard and the RBE creator stated they added a few encryption schematics to the 7000 series to prevent major modification.

To extent it prevents them having to rma boards due to a improper bios being used since i hear many cases of bios flashes going bad because they were not done properly or because the code was modified.


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## dude12564 (Jun 23, 2012)

alienstorexxx said:


> isn't that what you pay when you buy a custom gpu by an assembler ie. msi, sapphire, etc?
> plus powertune boost. it rises the bar for the asseblers.
> 
> also "50 bucks more" is what cost a gtx680, if you have seen anyone around there, i'm begining to think is another informatic myth. so if you see from the other side, it isn't costs 50 bucks more, it costs the same than competition, and outperforms it



Yeah, basically. 
I'm not saying its bad, just saying to my quotee what justifies the "high price".

Sorry for the misunderstanding ^.^


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## entropy13 (Jun 23, 2012)

theoneandonlymrk said:


> As does my 5870 and 5850



If we're using just that CLBenchmark, I don't see how your 5870 and 5850 does better than the 480 and 470?

And based on this at least, the 480 is still better than the 5870.


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## alienstorexxx (Jun 23, 2012)

HellasVagabond said:


> Again you miss the point that even the 7970GHz edition with overvoltage and OC loses to the GTX 680 in several games and where it comes on top we are talking about a 3% increase at most. So i really don't know what you are trying to say. That Some people have OCed the 7970 more ? So what ? Some will have also OCed and GTX 680 more, again so what ? We are not looking for the exceptions, we are looking for the rule and the rule is that the 7970 at stock is no match for the GTX 680 at stock and the 7970GHz edition still falls behind the stock GTX 680 in several games so if one was to slightly OC the GTX 680 it would certainly beat the 7970GHz.
> I am not saying that the 7970Ghz is a bad card but it's just an OCed 7970 and nothing more, hardly something for people to get excited for.



you mean games like cod 4 or battleforge? do you really care to play WoW on 160fps or 120fps? stop joking. these are high end cards.

go see other reviews. tpu has got some good things but you have to adjust your sight if you don't want to be fooled.


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## cadaveca (Jun 23, 2012)

eidairaman1 said:


> Well Wizzard and the RBE creator stated they added a few encryption schematics to the 7000 series to prevent major modification.
> 
> To extent it prevents them having to rma boards due to a improper bios being used since i hear many cases of bios flashes going bad because they were not done properly or because the code was modified.



Sure, and it's not a bad thing, IMHO. It just means that in order to be able to pull off mods like this not only requires a BIOS mod, but also a driver mod. This shouldn't be that big of a deal, or perhaps a immensely huge undertaking, depending on how the driver works.


Frankly, I think it's rather brilliant. 

Usually these dual-BIOS cards have one BIOS that you just cannot flash. SO there's no surprise that they work this way. It might be easier with a non-reference, single-BIOS card.


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## Delta6326 (Jun 23, 2012)

...Instead of flashing wouldn't it just be as easy as putting the card at 1GHz and raising the vram to 1500MHz and say its a 1GHz edition, no need to flash the card.


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## W1zzard (Jun 23, 2012)

erocker said:


> Are the 12.7 beta drivers required for the GHZ edition?



no, it works fine with 12.4 (didn't test any other drivers)


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## Hockster (Jun 24, 2012)

NVM. Just realized page 2 is one sentence only.


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## HellasVagabond (Jun 24, 2012)

raghu78 said:


> What are you talking ? The Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition card comes with a stock voltage of 1.162 and boost voltage of 1.218. No overclocking has been done on this card for the review. I guess you did not see the performance summary. The GTX 680 is 2% slower at 1200p and 8% slower at 1600p. At 5760 x 1080 it gets even worse for GTX 680. GTX 680 loses to Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition. Plain and simple. clock for clock the HD 7970 is a faster chip than GTX 680 when compared across a wide range of games. The gap grows wider as the resolution goes up.
> For overclocked performance lets wait for custom Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition OC model reviews. Then you can compare 680 OC vs Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition OC. You are definitely trying your best to defend the GTX 680 when its proven that for ultra high resolution single monitor and multi monitor gaming the Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition is the clear winner.



What are you talking about ? This is just an Overclocked 7970, plain and simple, yet you all compared it to a Stock GTX 680. Do i need to continue ? Really ?

It's like getting two Stock cars...Car A (GTX 680) beats Car B (Radeon HD 7970)....Then Car B gets a tune (Overclock = 7970GHz) and beats Car A (GTX 680).....Tell me that you can see where I'm going with this.....

Personally i don't care who has the fastest card out there as long as we see New products and not the same ones "tuned".


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## atikkur (Jun 24, 2012)

yes.. this is AMD factory overclocked card, but without accoustic and temperature treatment.. .
just a hurry action to take back the king status, haill to new king.


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## kadeep (Jun 24, 2012)

HellasVagabond said:


> What are you talking about ? This is just an Overclocked 7970, plain and simple, yet you all compared it to a Stock GTX 680. Do i need to continue ? Really ?
> 
> It's like getting two Stock cars...Car A (GTX 680) beats Car B (Radeon HD 7970)....Then Car B gets a tune (Overclock = 7970GHz) and beats Car A (GTX 680).....Tell me that you can see where I'm going with this.....
> 
> Personally i don't care who has the fastest card out there as long as we see New products and not the same ones "tuned".




while car A (GTX 680) itself tune 100-250 automatically all the times, don't talk innocent


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## eidairaman1 (Jun 24, 2012)

"Personally i don't care who has the fastest card out there as long as we see New products and not the same ones "tuned". 

To me it sounds like you do hence why your posting here.


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## alienstorexxx (Jun 24, 2012)

kadeep said:


> while car A (GTX 680) itself tune 100-250 automatically all the times, don't talk innocent



don't waste your time probably he is just trolling you. or maybe he don't know anything he is talking about but thinks those stars are giving him some king of "truth power".


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## entropy13 (Jun 24, 2012)

kadeep said:


> while car A (GTX 680) itself tune 100-250 automatically all the times, don't talk innocent



And car B (HD 7970 GHz Edition) tries to tune itself as well, but all it can do was lower clocks in Blu-Ray playback.


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## eidairaman1 (Jun 24, 2012)

entropy13 said:


> And car B (HD 7970 GHz Edition) tries to tune itself as well, but all it can do was lower clocks in Blu-Ray playback.



honestly blue ray shouldnt require that many clocks to run.


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## entropy13 (Jun 24, 2012)

eidairaman1 said:


> honestly blue ray shouldnt require that many clocks to run.



You're missing the point though, the HD 7970 GHz Edition also has a feature similar to the GTX 600 cards where they should also overclock themselves a bit depending on the load, yet on any high-load it encounters it doesn't do so. Except for downclocking itself for Blu-Ray playback, which is really nothing new.


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## eidairaman1 (Jun 24, 2012)

entropy13 said:


> You're missing the point though, the HD 7970 GHz Edition also has a feature similar to the GTX 600 cards where they should also overclock themselves a bit depending on the load, yet on any high-load it encounters it doesn't do so. Except for downclocking itself for Blu-Ray playback, which is really nothing new.



you mean variable clock tuning


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## alexsubri (Jun 24, 2012)

[yt]3_gst-Ryh3g[/yt]

nice...i was hoping more of a boost for $50 on ATI's part.


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## Ravenas (Jun 24, 2012)

AMD is now under pressure to produce extreme preformance for the 7990.


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## HellasVagabond (Jun 24, 2012)

kadeep said:


> while car A (GTX 680) itself tune 100-250 automatically all the times, don't talk innocent



Both cards have similar boost/eco systems, that doesn't really matter. You can easily add more to those 100-250MHz you talk about with the GTX 680 but as i said before AMD/ATI fans (and perhaps NV ones i am not here to defend anyone) compare apples with oranges and call it fair. 
Compare OC versions with OC versions if you want to be fair and square, that's all there's to it.



alienstorexxx said:


> don't waste your time probably he is just trolling you. or maybe he don't know anything he is talking about but thinks those stars are giving him some king of "truth power".



Ignorance is bliss friend, but let's leave it at that.....


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## N3M3515 (Jun 25, 2012)

The real question is why didn't amd released it at 1100 Mhz?
Here this card costs less than the reference 7970 Ghz edition, it's faster, and has a way better cooler. It makes the Ghz edition irrelevant.


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## linoliveira (Jun 25, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> The real question is why didn't amd released it at 1100 Mhz?
> Here this card costs less than the reference 7970 Ghz edition, it's faster, and has a way better cooler. It makes the Ghz edition irrelevant.



we all know that this edition is irrelevant to compete in the price/performance/quality segment and is just a way AMD can say they got the fastest card in the overall tests and try to sell some more cards till next series.
the deal you pointed out is outstanding! really a must buy (if you got that much money)


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Jun 25, 2012)

alexsubri said:


> nice...i was hoping more of a boost for $50 on ATI's part.



true that.

if i were buying id probably go vanilla plus waterblock

no ones got one though and if they do clock better max then a vanilla then fair enough, nvidia didnt hold the crown for very long either way, well untill next months 685 or some such, nvidia can also improve their process init.

has and if not why , wizzard done a max oc on decent volts oc on his yet

Wizzard ,,,, sorry man but i now have a complaint,

your OCin review cards like a tart,,  stock volts doesnt equate to either my version of an OC or the max you could have got from your card, and That is the thing i most want to know from as many sources and trustworthy ones at that , when im buying/ reading up on a card.

sorry but i feels this, reviews are excellent though bar max oc attempt (stock coolings ok with me as its representative) maybe just a mention of max Oc achieved.


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## Andy77 (Jun 26, 2012)

HellasVagabond said:


> Compare OC versions with OC versions if you want to be fair and square, that's all there's to it.
> Ignorance is bliss friend, but let's leave it at that.....



Yes, but then lets also compare computational power and other sectors which involve a graphic card or two or four, not just games... I believe that if AMD made a pure gaming card that would compute like a turd (like nv did now) this thing would cost less and still smack nv around. Otherwise you'll have mandarins vs apples.

As others pointed out, this is only a reviewer's card to put the 7970 bar a tad higher than it is on the usual card, which you can still get cheaper and do more with it. Complaints aside, AMD managed to raise to the big green guy's level and that's not a small feat considering how much money nv throws at this game.


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## qubit (Jun 26, 2012)

Dammit, I'm no AMD fan and it has its caveats, but I think that this card is getting unfairly trashed here. :shadedshu It's pretty damned normal for companies to bring out faster cards after a while and to try to leapfrog each other on performance.

I think a little more appreciation that we have more competition in the graphics card market is in order. A card like this will end up bringing high end prices down and that alone is something to be glad about.


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## cedrac18 (Jun 26, 2012)

qubit said:


> Dammit, I'm no AMD fan and it has its caveats, but I think that this card is getting unfairly trashed here. :shadedshu It's pretty damned normal for companies to bring out faster cards after a while and to try to leapfrog each other on performance.
> 
> I think a little more appreciation that we have more competition in the graphics card market is in order. A card like this will end up bringing high end prices down and that alone is something to be glad about.



Plus you never know nvidia might counter with a better product then 680 in the end the customer wins


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## qubit (Jun 26, 2012)

cedrac18 said:


> Plus you never know nvidia might counter with a better product then 680 in the end the customer wins



Duh, exactly.


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## HellasVagabond (Jun 26, 2012)

@Andy77

Computational power ? Didn't NV up until this day hold the crown on computational power ? Do we expect miracles or do we "conveniently" forget the past because it suits us ?



qubit said:


> Dammit, I'm no AMD fan and it has its caveats, but I think that this card is getting unfairly trashed here. :shadedshu It's pretty damned normal for companies to bring out faster cards after a while and to try to leapfrog each other on performance.
> 
> I think a little more appreciation that we have more competition in the graphics card market is in order. A card like this will end up bringing high end prices down and that alone is something to be glad about.



It's not getting trashed for no reason at all. There are several "custom" 7970 cards out there that are faster than this and they have been out for months compared to this "new" product.

So what if NV was to release an 680 SE (Special Edition) and up the clocks like AMD did to score even higher and get the title for fastest Single Core Graphics card back ? I bet half of the people here would jump to trash it as well (and they would be right).

Such tactics are not good for the end user no matter how anyone sees it.


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## radrok (Jun 26, 2012)

It's just marketing, nothing more anyway, a sane person would never buy an overclocked 7970 with a stock cooler slapped on it, take it as "AMD has shown that Tahiti is very competitive (performance wise) with Kepler" even though many of us already knew that Tahiti XT is a very good clocker, heck if you are lucky enough to get a good chip you can even break 1300 Mhz.

I think we should all be happy in the end, ATI has never been so competitive (in absolute performance ofc) with NVIDIA lately.

No one really gains if one side is much stronger than the other, unless they are going to duopoly the market, which seemed so the first days after Kepler launch, no price drops were had, until some weeks later.


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## ISI300 (Jun 26, 2012)

I don't think that the main purpose of this card is to be "better" overall than nvidia's offering, nor outsell it. It is build to become the worlds fastest single gpu card, and I happily would take a 7970 over a GTX 680. Because they've managed to sh*t all over nvidia's  face with it and Ujesh Desai's with his smug face while holding the good boys card in the hand and harping on about how efficient it is. I want GPUs to be thirsty monsters and smell when you're gaming.
What AMD is doing, is putting up a fight. by the way GTX 680 is good for one very good reason. they've compromised on computational capabilities. AMD has much less cash to spare on it's whole business of CPUs, Chipsets, GPUs and so on than nvidia does in it's GPUs "only", Remember G80? 475 Million Dollars.
And also remember third party designs which "will" employ better cooling...


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## D007 (Jun 26, 2012)

lol The fangirl gheyness in here is so LOL.. People, get a life, relax and realize neither Nvidia or Amd pay your bills and they won't be running to the forums to cry and point the finger at you, or praise you for buying their products..


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## Hilux SSRG (Jun 26, 2012)

ISI300 said:


> I want GPUs to be thirsty monsters and smell when you're gaming.



The quote of the day!


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## librin.so.1 (Jun 26, 2012)

ISI300 said:


> I want GPUs to be thirsty monsters and smell when you're gaming.



This is a MANLY picnic! No glasses. No napkins. Whiskey only.
(i.e.: I approve!)


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Jun 26, 2012)

ISI300 said:


> I want GPUs to be thirsty monsters and smell when you're gaming.



Likewise, so can we get a max Oc result in review big guy.


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## sergionography (Jun 26, 2012)

ISI300 said:


> I don't think that the main purpose of this card is to be "better" overall than nvidia's offering, nor outsell it. It is build to become the worlds fastest single gpu card, and I happily would take a 7970 over a GTX 680. Because they've managed to sh*t all over nvidia's  face with it and Ujesh Desai's with his smug face while holding the good boys card in the hand and harping on about how efficient it is. I want GPUs to be thirsty monsters and smell when you're gaming.
> What AMD is doing, is putting up a fight. by the way GTX 680 is good for one very good reason. they've compromised on computational capabilities. AMD has much less cash to spare on it's whole business of CPUs, Chipsets, GPUs and so on than nvidia does in it's GPUs "only", Remember G80? 475 Million Dollars.
> And also remember third party designs which "will" employ better cooling...



agree 100%
However amd did this so they won't need to lower prices, now it is faster in both games and compute. However in my opinion even the hd7970 vanilla gave NVIDIA a run for the money, and one has to note that the review is a bit confusing because I'm not sure if they retested the old Tahiti with the new drivers, because alot of the performance came from there, before these dricl era speculations were that amd would need at least 1100mhz clock to start getting an edge over Keller but now that is no longer the case, and clock for clock Tahiti seems to be the better choice however you approach it. Except in consumption but then you are much better off on higher resolutions so there is a lesser need for multi gpus. And even in such case i think zerocore makes that up.


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## N3M3515 (Jun 26, 2012)

It is very weird for me, when people criticize a highend gpu for "consuming too much" i mean, if you're buying a 500 bucks card, sure as hell you can buy a 850W corsair/ocz/antec/enermax psu!

Seriously, WTF people?


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## HellasVagabond (Jun 26, 2012)

sergionography said:


> agree 100%
> However amd did this so they won't need to lower prices, now it is faster in both games and compute. However in my opinion even the hd7970 vanilla gave NVIDIA a run for the money, *and one has to note that the review is a bit confusing because I'm not sure if they retested the old Tahiti with the new drivers, because alot of the performance came from there,* before these dricl era speculations were that amd would need at least 1100mhz clock to start getting an edge over Keller but now that is no longer the case, and clock for clock Tahiti seems to be the better choice however you approach it. Except in consumption but then you are much better off on higher resolutions so there is a lesser need for multi gpus. And even in such case i think zerocore makes that up.




You do however realize that the same goes for GTX 680 cards right ? The latest drivers show quite a bit of improvement over the initial ones but on the other hand don't expect anyone to test every single card with every driver update. It's not an easy task.


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## ISI300 (Jun 27, 2012)

theoneandonlymrk said:


> Likewise, so can we get a max Oc result in review big guy.


Logically, the GTX 680 is the superior card at games up to about 2560x1600. Performance per watt in gaming is "Better" than 7970. but I meant excluding the numbers, I'd go with a 7970 and be happy with it.


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## ISI300 (Jun 27, 2012)

D007 said:


> lol The fangirl gheyness in here is so LOL.. People, get a life, relax and realize neither Nvidia or Amd pay your bills and they won't be running to the forums to cry and point the finger at you, or praise you for buying their products..


Don't be so sure... I own both nv and amd.and when it comes to choosing the right one, It's matter of what a person needs for what he pays. and I'm not being fanboyictic, It's the truth that AMD has much less cash to spend  on engineering and development than nv and yet they've built the larger GPU. If there were no GTX 680 and GK104, They'd still be selling those 7970 at 550+, and now they've cut the prices, they're making less money than nv however you cut it.
GTX 680: Small die, less memory chips (same rated speed as 7970), cheaper "to build" PCB.
7970: exact opposite.


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## N3M3515 (Jun 27, 2012)

ISI300 said:


> Don't be so sure... I own both nv and amd.and when it comes to choosing the right one, It's matter of what a person needs for what he pays. and I'm not being fanboyictic, It's the truth that AMD has much less cash to spend  on engineering and development than nv and yet they've built the larger GPU. If there were no GTX 680 and GK104, They'd still be selling those 7970 at 550+, and now they've cut the prices, they're making less money than nv however you cut it.
> GTX 680: Small die, less memory chips (same rated speed as 7970), cheaper "to build" PCB.
> 7970: exact opposite.



It's not like 7970 is a behemoth dude......LOL
it may be "bigger" relative to GTX 680, but it's still a efficient chip. it's still a great gpu, no matter how you cut it, it is *great enough* for some people not caring about GTX 680 being even more efficient per mm2, that's what a lot of people are triying to say.


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## ISI300 (Jun 27, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> It's not like 7970 is a behemoth dude......LOL
> it may be "bigger" relative to GTX 680, but it's still a efficient chip. it's still a great gpu, no matter how you cut it, it is *great enough* for _*some people*_ not caring about GTX 680 being even more efficient per mm2, that's what a lot of people are triying to say.


I think that includes me too, I didn't mean that Tahiti is inefficient, that's stupid. but in gaming situations compared to 680 it uses more juice per frame. other than the GPU die and transistor count, there's the 384-bit ddr5 memory and different PCB design. Just wanted to add balance to make someone's mind clear about I'm not fanatic. but the think that really bugging me is this: why Tahiti with 25% more shader processors comes just as fast as the 680 at nearly the same speed?


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## erocker (Jun 27, 2012)

ISI300 said:


> I think that includes me too, I didn't mean that Tahiti is inefficient, that's stupid. but in gaming situations compared to 680 it uses more juice per frame. other than the GPU die and transistor count, there's the 384-bit ddr5 memory and different PCB design. Just wanted to add balance to make someone's mind clear about I'm not fanatic. but the think that really bugging me is this: why Tahiti with 25% more shader processors comes just as fast as the 680 at nearly the same speed?



The architectures are different/the GPU's are designed differently.

If I were to choose between the GTX 680/670 and 7970 right now I would just find the best deal I could. Power consumption is low enough on either card for most not to worry about or be concerned with. Of course, since there is a difference between the two cards in terms of power consumption (regardless of the actual difference) it of course has to be a talking point, though in reality it is moot.


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## EarthDog (Jun 27, 2012)

+1 to all of that.

Personally, I cant believe AMD released this card with (any) fanfare considering at the time we published the press release (upon NDA release) there were SIX(6) cards on newegg with the same or higher clocks. 

AMD fail. Bring something more to the table already would ya? Let your performance do the talking  and not your marketing team.


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## raghu78 (Jun 28, 2012)

AMD has a very good gaming + compute chip in the HD 7970. Even when the inital reviews were out most reviewers appreciated the overclocking headroom and scalability in performance. With the launch of GTX 680 Nvidia beat the HD 7970 in a stock configuration. Everybody who has a HD 7970 card *which overclocked well * (1125 at stock volts and 1200+ with extra voltage) knows that HD 7970 OC performance is faster than GTX 680 OC. At 1080p/1200p its a contest, higher up there is only one card which can be called the fastest card - HD 7970. the launch of HD 7970 Ghz edition is just to beat the GTX 680 in stock and win the marketing battle. Also the latest drivers also have played a part in that win with siginificant improvements in Dirt 3, Skyrim, Batman AC (MSAA). So its actually not just hardware which has tilted the scales, but a mix of hardware and software. If people don't acknowledge that basic fact they are just in denial. 

           Some of the most demanding games clearly run better on HD 7970 especially at max settings. BF3, Crysis 2, Witcher 2 / Witcher 2 EE, Anno 2070, Shogun 2, Batman AC, Alan Wake, Dirt Showdown, Metro 2033, Crysis Warhead . Radeon HD 7970 wins most of the games except Shogun 2. BF3 is pretty much equal on both cards. Even Batman AC runs faster at 8X MSAA on HD 7970, though on FXAA its clearly faster on GTX 680. The rest run faster on HD 7970. the gap gets wider at 1600p and multi monitor, which is where a USD 500 flagship card's performance really matters. Even these most demanding games run at 60+ fps at 1080p. So I don't see any merit in judging them by 1080p performance when playabililty differences are going to difficult to tell because all these cards are giving more than sufficient performance. The gap in games like Alan Wake (25%), Metro 2033(20%), Crysis Warhead (25%), Witcher 2 (20%) especially at higher resolutions is very significant. The most important point is none of these games hit 60 fps at 1600p. And frankly these are the games which truly tell us about these high end cards. Games which do 100+ fps at 1600p aren't going to give any idea of the true capabilites of their architectures and performance. 

          Also overclocking does not have guarantees and the responsibility lies on the user to extract max possible performance. There are chances of getting a chip which is a dud at overclocking. So assuming that every chip will overclock reliably is a big mistake. With the AMD Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition the cards are guaranteed to run at those speeds. When the GTX 680 launched and HD 7970 users mentioned that a HD 7970 at similar clock speeds would beat the GTX 680 , lots of people said only stock configurations should be compared. Fair enough. Now that same theory should be applied.


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## librin.so.1 (Jun 28, 2012)

Normally, if I would to choose between GTX 680 and HD 7970, I'd go for the 7970.
Too bad various circumstances keep me tied to using Nvidia GPUs 

EDIT: Talking about overclocking duds, I had a GeForce 7600 GT, that only went up by 8 Mhz on stock voltage


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## cedrac18 (Jun 29, 2012)

raghu78 said:


> AMD has a very good gaming + compute chip in the HD 7970. Even when the inital reviews were out most reviewers appreciated the overclocking headroom and scalability in performance. With the launch of GTX 680 Nvidia beat the HD 7970 in a stock configuration. Everybody who has a HD 7970 card *which overclocked well * (1125 at stock volts and 1200+ with extra voltage) knows that HD 7970 OC performance is faster than GTX 680 OC. At 1080p/1200p its a contest, higher up there is only one card which can be called the fastest card - HD 7970. the launch of HD 7970 Ghz edition is just to beat the GTX 680 in stock and win the marketing battle. Also the latest drivers also have played a part in that win with siginificant improvements in Dirt 3, Skyrim, Batman AC (MSAA). So its actually not just hardware which has titlted the scales, but a mix of hardware and software. If people don't acknowledge that basic fact they are just in denial.
> 
> Some of the most demanding games clearly run better on HD 7970 especially at max settings. BF3, Crysis 2, Witcher 2 / Witcher 2 EE, Anno 2070, Shogun 2, Batman AC, Alan Wake, Dirt Showdown, Metro 2033, Crysis Warhead . Radeon HD 7970 wins most of the games except Shogun 2. BF3 is pretty much equal on both cards. Even Batman AC runs faster at 8X MSAA on HD 7970, though on FXAA its clearly faster on GTX 680. The rest run faster on HD 7970. the gap gets wider at 1600p and multi monitor, which is where a USD 500 flagship card's performance really matters. Even these most demanding games run at 60+ fps at 1080p. So I don't see any merit in judging them by 1080p performance when playabililty differences are going to difficult to tell because all these cards are giving more than sufficient performance. The gap in games like Alan Wake (25%), Metro 2033(20%), Crysis Warhead (25%), Witcher 2 (20%) especially at higher resolutions is very significant. The most important point is none of these games hit 60 fps at 1600p. And frankly these are the games which truly tell us about these high end cards. Games which do 100+ fps at 1600p aren't going to give any idea of the true capabilites of their architectures and performance.
> 
> Also overclocking does not have guarantees and the responsibility lies on the user to extract max possible performance. There are chances of getting a chip which is a dud at overclocking. So assuming that every chip will overclock reliably is a big mistake. With the AMD Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition the cards are guaranteed to run at those speeds. When the GTX 680 launched and HD 7970 users mentioned that a HD 7970 at similar clock speeds would beat the GTX 680 , lots of people said only stock configurations should be compared. Fair enough. Now that same theory should be applied.



Amen brother you nailed perfectly what i have been thinking thinking the whole time.


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## Super XP (Jun 29, 2012)

This GHz Edition card looks like a marketing move. As a whole the HD 7970 is a great card, but I don't think I would pay more money for the GHz edition personally. Anyhow I'll be waiting for the HD 8000 series seeing how I always skip a generation.


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## rvalencia (Jul 2, 2012)

HellasVagabond said:


> Guys i don' get it....If the 7970GHz is around 2-3% faster than a reference GTX 680 then why not overclock that and get like 5% a better card ? Isn't that common knowledge ? We Are talking about an OC'ed version of the normal 7970 so shouldn't we compare it with an OC'ed version of the GTX 680 ?



Techpowerup haven't included Dirt Showdown with it's latest patch.




ISI300 said:


> Don't be so sure... I own both nv and amd.and when it comes to choosing the right one, It's matter of what a person needs for what he pays. and I'm not being fanboyictic, It's the truth that AMD has much less cash to spend  on engineering and development than nv and yet they've built the larger GPU. If there were no GTX 680 and GK104, They'd still be selling those 7970 at 550+, and now they've cut the prices, they're making less money than nv however you cut it.
> GTX 680: Small die, less memory chips (same rated speed as 7970), cheaper "to build" PCB.
> 7970: exact opposite.


79x0's haven't gimped 64bit DP FP and allocated enough transistors for it.


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## N3M3515 (Jul 2, 2012)

HellasVagabond said:


> We Are talking about an OC'ed version of the normal 7970 so shouldn't we compare it with an OC'ed version of the GTX 680 ?



Because Ghz Edition is the direct rival pricewise?


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## HellasVagabond (Jul 2, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> Because Ghz Edition is the direct rival pricewise?



When we compare high end cards we don't really group cards every 50$ so $500,550 and 600 cards belong more or less in the same league. 
That aside however there are many factory OCed GTX 680's going for $520-540 (check pricegrabber) while the 7970 GHz edition (reference design) goes for around $490-510 so personally i can't figure out why people keep talking about prices when you can get a faster card, with less noise and temperatures for around the same cash.


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## Athlon2K15 (Jul 2, 2012)

HellasVagabond said:


> When we compare high end cards we don't really group cards every 50$ so $500,550 and 600 cards belong more or less in the same league.
> That aside however there are many factory OCed GTX 680's going for $520-540 (check pricegrabber) while the 7970 GHz edition (reference design) goes for around $490-510 so personally i can't figure out why people keep talking about prices when you can get a faster card, with less noise and temperatures for around the same cash.



Who is we?


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## HellasVagabond (Jul 2, 2012)

Last time i checked anyone who can give over $500 for a card....Unless you are telling me that you would give $500 and not $550 for example....Still if you read my Entire post you will see that there's really no price difference.


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## radrok (Jul 2, 2012)

You really think that AMD would have clocked Tahiti as low as 925MHz if Kepler was already out? I don't think so.

The most fair comparison is the one made between the GTX 680 and HD 7970 GHz edition.


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## Athlon2K15 (Jul 2, 2012)

well there is certainly a point where you can no longer justify the price to performance you receive. for instance i purchased a 470 on launch day a few years back for 329 but for 75 more i could have gotten a low end 480 vanilla but the performance difference wasnt that much better


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## HellasVagabond (Jul 2, 2012)

True, you can get an factory OCed 670 which costs less and is not much slower than the 7970GHz edition nor the 680 but we are not talking about that.

What we are talking about is which is the best card at around the $500 mark and i simply can't agree that it's the 7970 GHz which is just an OCed version of the normal 7970, not when you can get a Factory OCed GTX 680 at around the same price, with better performance and less noise/temperature levels. It's simple logic actually, nothing more, nothing less.


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## radrok (Jul 2, 2012)

I was just talking about reference vs reference, of course custom models are better there is no doubt about it , especially when there are Lightnings and Classified out which imo are the best custom cards on the market.


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## N3M3515 (Jul 2, 2012)

HellasVagabond said:


> True, you can get an factory OCed 670 which costs less and is not much slower than the 7970GHz edition nor the 680 but we are not talking about that.
> 
> What we are talking about is which is the best card at around the $500 mark and i simply can't agree that it's *the 7970 GHz which is just an OCed version of the normal 7970*, not when you can get a Factory OCed GTX 680 at around the same price, with better performance and less noise/temperature levels. It's simple logic actually, nothing more, nothing less.



For all intends and purpouses Ghz is a reference card 
reference vs reference

oc vs oc:
This and this settles it then?
Still, imho best deal of those two is the 7970, same perf, 80 bucks less


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## HellasVagabond (Jul 2, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> For all intends and purpouses Ghz is a reference card
> reference vs reference
> 
> oc vs oc:
> ...



Reference cooler or not the card is just an OCed 7970, that's all that really matters. And then we also have the price which is almost identical with the ones for custom GTX 680's. 

Why not vs this for example ?
ASUS GTX680-DC2T-2GD5 GeForce GTX 680 2GB 256-bit ...

And again you are not talking about the GHz edition so it's off-topic. Custom 7970's have been around for months and still can't surpass custom GTX 680's (just like with reference vs reference).


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## Athlon2K15 (Jul 2, 2012)

depends on the benchmark no?


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## HellasVagabond (Jul 3, 2012)

Well if you use DIRT for example and generally games that are "sponsored" by either camp yes but generally with "neutral" games NV is slightly faster. That's also why AMD rushed to release the GHz edition, let's not forget that.


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## N3M3515 (Jul 3, 2012)

HellasVagabond said:


> Reference cooler or not the card is just an OCed 7970, that's all that really matters. And then we also have the price which is almost identical with the ones for custom GTX 680's.
> 
> Why not vs this for example ?
> ASUS GTX680-DC2T-2GD5 GeForce GTX 680 2GB 256-bit ...
> ...



That asus costs 70 bucks more, perf wise the same and don't forget Ghz edition is reference, it's not about you opinion if it is or not man....


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## HellasVagabond (Jul 3, 2012)

It's a reference OCed edition. If you are so concerned about custom coolers go ahead and compare it to the link you gave of the EVGA SC which is also a reference OCed GTX 680. It's still a no-win situation performance-wise and the reference cooler of the GTX 680 is still a lot quieter.
Like i said simple logic, nothing more.


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## rvalencia (Jul 4, 2012)

HellasVagabond said:


> Well if you use DIRT for example and generally games that are "sponsored" by either camp yes but generally with "neutral" games NV is slightly faster. That's also why AMD rushed to release the GHz edition, let's not forget that.



On GK104's SMX unit, 192 cores shares 256KB register storage and 64KB cache/buffer.

On AMD GCN's CU (compute unit), 64 cores shares 64KB local data storage(LDS) + 16KB cache. Each CU has a total of 256KB register storage.

AMD Radeon HD 7970 has better support for GpGPU(compute shader) i.e. less cores for a given storage.


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## HellasVagabond (Jul 5, 2012)

You can never compare different architectures just by looking at the specifications sheet. It's like when someone compares GPU clocks and thinks they matter.

As for compute power i said it before, you can purchase a prev. generation with more power compared to the new gen cards by both camps.


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## pantherx12 (Jul 5, 2012)

HellasVagabond;2668936
As for compute power i said it before said:
			
		

> Not for AMD the 7xxxx cards absolutely wipe the floor with their older cards.
> 
> Unless I've misread what your trying to say.


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## HellasVagabond (Jul 5, 2012)

Well i have yet to see a full comparison including the latest GTX 6xx / 7xxx series in terms of compute power but last time i checked it myself the GTX 570/580/590 wiped the floor with the HD 6xxx series so i think they would also do the same with the 7xxx series, unless AMD managed to increase their performance by 200-400%.


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## raghu78 (Jul 5, 2012)

HellasVagabond said:


> Well i have yet to see a full comparison including the latest GTX 6xx / 7xxx series in terms of compute power but last time i checked it myself the GTX 570/580/590 wiped the floor with the HD 6xxx series so i think they would also do the same with the 7xxx series, unless AMD managed to increase their performance by 200-400%.



lets just say Nvidia doesn't stand a chance if you are talking about compute performance. AMD is the only high end compute + gaming chip in town. 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6025/radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition-review-catching-up-to-gtx-680/14

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition-review-benchmark,3232-14.html


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## atikkur (Jul 5, 2012)

raghu78 said:


> lets just say Nvidia doesn't stand a chance if you are talking about compute performance. AMD is the only high end compute + gaming chip in town.
> 
> http://www.anandtech.com/show/6025/radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition-review-catching-up-to-gtx-680/14
> 
> http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition-review-benchmark,3232-14.html



that's true.. but please remember, in gaming compute it only utilizes fp32 or hardly uses fp64,, which is nvidias fp32 compute performance is still not way too behind of radeons. so i guess, there is nothing too lose of kepplers or any nvidias compute gaming. it is just how nvidia has big advantage in tesselation, and radeon (now) has big advantage in compute... it is draw.


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## HellasVagabond (Jul 5, 2012)

raghu78 said:


> lets just say Nvidia doesn't stand a chance if you are talking about compute performance. *AMD is the only high end compute + gaming chip in town*.
> 
> http://www.anandtech.com/show/6025/radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition-review-catching-up-to-gtx-680/14
> 
> http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition-review-benchmark,3232-14.html



You do realize that the "comparison" you are showing here is flawed in many ways right ?
1st I doubt they used the latest drivers for the GTX5xx series, naturally that is since there's no way they still have the samples and even if they did it would take too much time to do benchmarks all over again.
2nd In some charts we see the GTX570/580 but in None do we see the GTX590.
3rd In other charts we don't even see the GTX5xx series.

Aside these flaws however it seems to me that even the GTX580 is doing extremely well even against the 7970GHz Edition and we are talking about a card with already almost 2 years in the market.
Regardless i really doubt there's a faster compute card than the GTX590 right now so i can't understand your last statement. Unless of course you speak about a single chip card.


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## pantherx12 (Jul 5, 2012)

HellasVagabond said:


> Well i have yet to see a full comparison including the latest GTX 6xx / 7xxx series in terms of compute power but last time i checked it myself the GTX 570/580/590 wiped the floor with the HD 6xxx series so i think they would also do the same with the 7xxx series, unless AMD managed to increase their performance by 200-400%.



They increased performance by 400% 

They are monstrous when it comes to compute 

my 7850 beats all the 6xxx series at math including dual gpu cards.

OpenCL performance is especially epic and 7xxxx cards smash All of nvidias cards right now.

Can download clbenchmark to test 

I think vs my card 680 wins 50% of the benchmarks so the cards definitely have different strengths.

My scores are attached.
GPU is @ stock speeds for the test.


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## raghu78 (Jul 5, 2012)

atikkur said:


> that's true.. but please remember, in gaming compute it only utilizes fp32 or hardly uses fp64,, which is nvidias fp32 compute performance is still not way too behind of radeons. so i guess, there is nothing too lose of kepplers or any nvidias compute gaming. it is just how nvidia has big advantage in tesselation, and radeon (now) has big advantage in compute... it is draw.





HellasVagabond said:


> You do realize that the "comparison" you are showing here is flawed in many ways right ?
> 1st I doubt they used the latest drivers for the GTX5xx series, naturally that is since there's no way they still have the samples and even if they did it would take too much time to do benchmarks all over again.
> 2nd In some charts we see the GTX570/580 but in None do we see the GTX590.
> 3rd In other charts we don't even see the GTX5xx series.
> ...



Please read carefully

"Our first compute benchmark comes from Civilization V, which uses DirectCompute to decompress textures on the fly. Civ V includes a sub-benchmark that exclusively tests the speed of their texture decompression algorithm by repeatedly decompressing the textures required for one of the game’s leader scenes. Note that this is a DX11 DirectCompute benchmark"

Thats just a standard DirectCompute benchmark using compute shaders. no fancy fp64 stuff. GTX 680 is slower than GTX 580. Thats not so good looking . If you can't beat your last gen flagship product with the current gen flagship that really is pathetic. 


Even in SmallLuxGPU the GTX 680 loses to GTX 580. its not really inspiring stuff. The DX11 Compute shader based fluid simulation benchmark is respectable for GTX 680 as it beats GTX 580 easily by 50% margin. But still its on par with HD 7970 Ghz edition.

           As far as tesselation performance is concerned Nvidia's lead is not very big. Also with extreme tesselation Unigine Heaven 3.0 is only slightly faster at 1080p on GTX 680 (1006 core/ 1058 - 1110 Mhz boost) wrt Sapphire HD 7970 (1 Ghz) while slightly slower at 1600p.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1962/12/

Simply put GTX 680's major advantage is perf/watt. So for 1080p if you want best perf/watt GTX 680 is the better option. But for ultra high res single monitor (1600p) and multi monitor gaming and compute HD 7970 is the card.


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## HellasVagabond (Jul 5, 2012)

Did you even read what i said ? Really ? I don't see you saying something else. The GTX 6xx is worse in compute power than the GTX 5xx series so what ?
Up until today NV has been better in Tessellation from AMD, noone can deny that, sure one day AMD May take the lead, again so what ? You can't always be best. Same goes for computing power since NV was better as well from AMD up until the GTX 5xx series. Again right now whoever wants the best computing power should get an GTX 590, are you against that ?


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## atikkur (Jul 5, 2012)

raghu78 said:


> Please read carefully
> 
> "Our first compute benchmark comes from Civilization V, which uses DirectCompute to decompress textures on the fly. Civ V includes a sub-benchmark that exclusively tests the speed of their texture decompression algorithm by repeatedly decompressing the textures required for one of the game’s leader scenes. Note that this is a DX11 DirectCompute benchmark"
> 
> ...



that was really what i meant.. the major representative benchmark of compute for gaming here is CIV V and Fluid Sim, no fancy fp64 will be used for gaming, only fp32. so nothing to worry about of nvidia 6xx compute in gaming, still can on par with radeon.

what do you expect of ocl smallux implementation in gaming? realtime raytracing quality gaming? not a chance with todays technology.

for tesseleation, lets have a look at this data too:
http://www.geeks3d.com/20120702/asu...ew-gk104-overclocking-opengl-direct3d-test/4/

scroll down to tessmark section, this is pure tesselation benchmark. nvidias tesselation starting to fly off radeons at their extreme setting:


moderate__evga 680 : msi 7970 - 1097 : 1032 fps___6,29%
normal____evga 680 : msi 7970 - _776  : _643 fps___20,68%
extreme___evga 680 : msi 7970 - _411  : _247 fps___66,39%
insane____evga 680 : msi 7970 - _174  : __73 fps___138,35%


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## raghu78 (Jul 7, 2012)

atikkur said:


> scroll down to tessmark section, this is pure tesselation benchmark. nvidias tesselation starting to fly off radeons at their extreme setting:



You can't just be doing tesselate alone in game. In a game you have lots of work to do in rendering.  Tesselation in a more generic benchmark like unigine heaven stresses all aspects of the card - shader power, tesselation, ROP, bandwidth. 

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1962/12/

Sapphire HD 7970 (1Ghz ) with the latest drivers is slightly behind at 1080p and slightly ahead at 1600p wrt GTX 680 in Unigine heaven with extreme tesselation, 8xAA, 16xAF. So you are not going to see huge differences in games.

As for compute performance here is Dirt Showdown which uses Direct Compute shaders for advanced lighting and global illumination.

http://www.rwlabs.com/article.php?cat=&id=636&pagenumber=2

you can read the explanation for advanced lighting and global illumination

http://www.rwlabs.com/article.php?cat=&id=636&pagenumber=3

the performance at ultra settings is close to 50% faster on HD 7970 wrt GTX 680.

few other sites which have tested Dirt Showdown

http://techreport.com/articles.x/23150/6
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/869-14/benchmark-dirt-showdown.html


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## onthemour (Aug 10, 2012)

With all 7970s reference flashed to ghz bios amd is on throne for sure

I can't believe the massive oc boost i get with this bios on my sapphire 7970 reference. i wa at 1235/1700 before now i hit 1325/1785!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I CAN PLAY BF3 5760*1080 WITH ULTRA

So I guess I can max all games out on 3 screens with one 7970. I think its time for developers to make more demanding games


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## radrok (Aug 10, 2012)

onthemour said:


> I think its time for developers to make more demanding games



Or it is time for Display manufacturers to increase the Pixel count?


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## Steevo (Aug 11, 2012)

So purchasing a 7970 and overclocking it for less money is just as good of an idea. Amazing.


AMD, when you gonna take the next step, you  know, and actually work with software devs and push along the standards you have been crying for?


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## Aquinus (Aug 11, 2012)

Steevo said:


> So purchasing a 7970 and overclocking it for less money is just as good of an idea. Amazing.



So is waiting for Sea Islands. I'm sure AMD will turn up something interesting.



Steevo said:


> AMD, when you gonna take the next step, you know, and actually work with software devs and push along the standards you have been crying for?



I think they do this already, but they should expand upon it. It's not easy to design GPUs to be as complex as they are these days. We have more capability on what we can do as far as what kinds of circuity we make and how it is made, but every GPU manufacturer will still have to figure out the best way to do it and as those tools become more advanced, what they make changes with how GPUs are designed to scale with that.


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## radrok (Aug 11, 2012)

Aquinus said:


> So is waiting for Sea Islands. I'm sure AMD will turn up something interesting.



Do you think that the Sea Islands launch is near?


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## Aquinus (Aug 11, 2012)

radrok said:


> Do you think that the Sea Islands launch is near?



No, but I'm also satisfied with my 6870s, so why upgrade. I'm not expecting to see Sea Islands until Q4 2012 or Q1 2013 and even then it really depends on how much improvement AMD has made from GCN to GCN2 that will determine if I want to upgrade or not, money aside.


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## Nordic (Aug 12, 2012)

I think all this sea island stuff coming very very soon is all fud. People were saying in august initially... and... was fud. Sea islands will come just not as soon as some people say. Aquinus's assessment seems sound.

I got a 7970 recently. At stock it is much more powerful than I need. My hope is for it last a few years at my resolution of 1080p. Maybe if I ever do get a 1440p or higher monitor I will upgrade.


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## radrok (Aug 12, 2012)

Aquinus said:


> No, but I'm also satisfied with my 6870s, so why upgrade. I'm not expecting to see Sea Islands until Q4 2012 or Q1 2013 and even then it really depends on how much improvement AMD has made from GCN to GCN2 that will determine if I want to upgrade or not, money aside.



Agreed, I think we are fine with graphics power offered by new graphics cards, we need faster CPUs in the IPC front, and an eight-ten core LGA 2011 :|


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## Steevo (Aug 12, 2012)

Fewer cores more gigahertz is my need. I dont need 8 cores or threads right now, but 4or 6 that run 5 or 6.


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## radrok (Aug 12, 2012)

That would be ideal for gaming but I could use more SB/IB cores honestly, 20 threads would be awesome


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## Nordic (Aug 12, 2012)

radrok said:


> That would be ideal for gaming but I could use more SB/IB cores honestly, 20 threads would be awesome



For my needs right now I want less cores and higher clocks. I am thinking about disabling 2 cores of my 2500k and seeing if I can overclock it a good bit higher. I can do 4.5ghz now and 1.37 volts.


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## radrok (Aug 12, 2012)

james888 said:


> For my needs right now I want less cores and higher clocks. I am thinking about disabling 2 cores of my 2500k and seeing if I can overclock it a good bit higher. I can do 4.5ghz now and 1.37 volts.



I don't know if it is worth it, you won't get much higher clocks at same voltage with 2 disabled cores, but you'll get lower temps at same voltage for sure.


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## Nordic (Aug 12, 2012)

radrok said:


> I don't know if it is worth it, you won't get much higher clocks at same voltage with 2 disabled cores, but you'll get lower temps at same voltage for sure.



I'll start another thread if I do it. Show my results


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## rvalencia (Aug 16, 2012)

pantherx12 said:


> They increased performance by 400%
> 
> They are monstrous when it comes to compute
> 
> ...




With NVIDIA Kelper's SMX unit, 192 core shares 64 KB cache/buffer and 256 KB register storage. 

With AMD's GCN's compute unit(CU), 64 cores shares 64 KB local data store (LDS) and 256 KB register storage. That's not including 16 KB L1 cache, 8KB branch cache and 16KB read only/32 KB shared cache (for quad CUs).

In relation to local storage and registers, AMD GCN's cores has less contention compared to the NVIDIA Kelper i.e. AMD GCN has higher stamina before it spills over the external VRAM. When it hits external VRAM, 79x0 has a higher memory bandwidth.

Fermi's SM unit has 32 cores sharing 64 KB cache/buffer and 128 KB register storage. Fermi has less contention compared to Kelper.


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## rvalencia (Aug 16, 2012)

Aquinus said:


> No, but I'm also satisfied with my 6870s, so why upgrade. I'm not expecting to see Sea Islands until Q4 2012 or Q1 2013 and even then it really depends on how much improvement AMD has made from GCN to GCN2 that will determine if I want to upgrade or not, money aside.


7970 doesn't follow 7770-to-7878 scaling. 8970 could scale from 7770-to-7870 i.e. 48 ROPs powered GPU with matching 384bit wide external bus.

There's a Tahiti GPU with 256 bit VRAM i.e. FirePro W8000. http://www.amd.com/us/products/workstation/graphics/ati-firepro-3d/w8000/Pages/w8000.aspx#3


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## onthemour (Aug 16, 2012)

I bet we will see 8000 series in a couple of months. Single screen users won't need then but high  resolutions will.  Games will not push the graphics until the consoles come out so single screeners have no point to upgrade anymore. Sea islands will be expensive because they know only a small part y of the e m arket will bbuying them


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## amc77 (Sep 27, 2012)

*Facts*



HellasVagabond said:


> Again you miss the point that even the 7970GHz edition with overvoltage and OC loses to the GTX 680 in several games and where it comes on top we are talking about a 3% increase at most. So i really don't know what you are trying to say. That Some people have OCed the 7970 more ? So what ? Some will have also OCed and GTX 680 more, again so what ? We are not looking for the exceptions, we are looking for the rule and the rule is that the 7970 at stock is no match for the GTX 680 at stock and the 7970GHz edition still falls behind the stock GTX 680 in several games so if one was to slightly OC the GTX 680 it would certainly beat the 7970GHz.
> I am not saying that the 7970Ghz is a bad card but it's just an OCed 7970 and nothing more, hardly something for people to get excited for.




'We've known since May, the existence of a new high-end single-GPU graphics card SKU in the works, at AMD. Called the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, the SKU is being designed to regain AMD's competitiveness against NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680. We're hearing a few additional details about the SKU. To begin with, AMD has worked with TSMC to refine the chip design. The Tahiti XT2 will be able to facilitate significantly higher clock speeds, at significantly lower voltages, than the current breed of Tahiti XT chips.

Tahiti XT2, or Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, will ship with a core clock speed of 1100 MHz, 175 MHz faster than the HD 7970. The GPU core voltage of Tahiti XT2 will be lower, at 1.020V, compared to 1.175V of the Tahiti XT.'

Just sayin...


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## Nordic (Sep 27, 2012)

amc77 said:


> 'We've known since May, the existence of a new high-end single-GPU graphics card SKU in the works, at AMD. Called the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, the SKU is being designed to regain AMD's competitiveness against NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680. We're hearing a few additional details about the SKU. To begin with, AMD has worked with TSMC to refine the chip design. The Tahiti XT2 will be able to facilitate significantly higher clock speeds, at significantly lower voltages, than the current breed of Tahiti XT chips.
> 
> Tahiti XT2, or Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, will ship with a core clock speed of 1100 MHz, 175 MHz faster than the HD 7970. The GPU core voltage of Tahiti XT2 will be lower, at 1.020V, compared to 1.175V of the Tahiti XT.'
> 
> Just sayin...



Source?


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