# AMD Radeon HD 7970 3 GB



## W1zzard (Dec 21, 2011)

Today AMD launches their new Radeon HD 7970. The card is based on brand-new 28 nanometer silicon which promises reduced power consumption. Another important change is AMD's move to a new shader architecture, enabling increased performance, easier design of future products and more efficient rendering.

*Show full review*


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## v12dock (Dec 22, 2011)

Excellent review excellent card!


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## Darkleoco (Dec 22, 2011)

Loving the looks of this card, can't wait to see aftermarket versions and what overclocks will come standard.


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## Volkszorn88 (Dec 22, 2011)

The performance definitely justifies the price. God, can't even imagine two of these bad boys.

A GTX580 killer for sure. Not to mention with future drivers to increase the performance even more!


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## legends84 (Dec 22, 2011)

nice.. hope to see real performance if this card test on pciE 3.0 mobo..


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## Darkleoco (Dec 22, 2011)

Volkszorn88 said:


> The performance definitely justifies the price. God, can't even imagine two of these bad boys.
> 
> A GTX580 killer for sure. Not to mention with feature drivers to increase the performance even more!



Makes me want to go grab a job specifically to crossfire a pair of these and build a new rig for my 6950's


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## W1zzard (Dec 22, 2011)

legends84 said:


> nice.. hope to see real performance if this card test on pciE 3.0 mobo..



there wont be any significant performance increase from going pcie 3.0. i rather picked a platform for testing that people actually use. sb-e doesn't seem to be very popular so far.


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## v12dock (Dec 22, 2011)

aftermarket cooler >15% + matured chip manufacturing = performance increase >30% faster the 580 @ 1080p


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## bear jesus (Dec 22, 2011)

Great review as always wizz 

I think the 7970 looks like a pretty good option to replace my 6970 and give a nice FPS boost in eyefinity.

It seams odd to look at a blank GPU chip in a review, is this how all the 7970's will be or is this just something to do with being very early samples or any other reason?

Oh an holy crap at the almost 330gb/s overclocked memory bandwidth  I had no expectation for the memory to clock so high, even more so as the review pointed out the chips are only specified to run at 1500 MHz, is there any reason you know of that would have allowed for the really high clocks or is it just the usual luck of the draw?


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## W1zzard (Dec 22, 2011)

bear jesus said:


> the chips are only specified to run at 1500 MHz, is there any reason you know of that would have allowed for the really high clocks or is it just the usual luck of the draw?



not sure to be honest. will have to test more cards to get a clearer picture


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## christian27 (Dec 22, 2011)

Man, i cant wait to see factory overclocked cards with core clock beyond 1GHZ.


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## stinger608 (Dec 22, 2011)

bear jesus said:


> Great review as always wizz
> 
> the review pointed out the chips are only specified to run at 1500 MHz, is there any reason you know of that would have allowed for the really high clocks or is it just the usual luck of the draw?





W1zzard said:


> not sure to be honest. will have to test more cards to get a clearer picture



I sometimes think that the majority of the review samples, especially early samples, are more or less "golden" samples. Later on, once the cards have gone retail things many times change. If you look at sites that have gotten different review samples before something actually goes retail they will usually do better than after retail has gone live. 

Of course this is not always the case.


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## gorillagarrett (Dec 22, 2011)

It's 20%-30% faster than the gtx580/6970 in games.It does consume less power on both load and idle than the 6970 though, which isn't half bad..

Over 60 average fps in BF3 on ultra with that 4x MSAA is also nice.The Unigine heaven results are amazing; this thing is a geometry monster. 

Now, I can buy a 6950 for less than half the price, unlock it to 6970, and play Bf3 maxed out with SMAA instead of the heavy MSAA at +60fps, which makes this porduct half as atractive as the 6950.


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## alexsubri (Dec 22, 2011)

THANK YOU W1ZZ! BEEN WAITING FOR THIS!


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## DannibusX (Dec 22, 2011)

Ok, gonna need to grab a couple of these.

Thanks for the review, W1z!


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## Delta6326 (Dec 22, 2011)

Awesome review!! Sweet card! Can't beat that Performance/Power ratio! This is defiantly a worthy from my 2x 4850. 

To bad these are so loud, but this is just stock I always buy a custom GPU.

And it looks like I was right about it being $550



Delta6326 said:


> US pricing should be around$520-550


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## mad1394 (Dec 22, 2011)

Thank you for the review. Hopefully nvidia is strapped in tight cuz amd is taking them on one hell of a ride.


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## gorillagarrett (Dec 22, 2011)

DannibusX said:


> Ok, gonna need to grab a couple of these.
> 
> Thanks for the review, W1z!



A couple of these to play what mate? Honestly!!! If we had those sexy pixel-dense OLED monitors available, it would have made some sense.


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## alexsubri (Dec 22, 2011)

My 5850's are going on sale come Feb 2012


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## TheMailMan78 (Dec 22, 2011)

Great review. Not the kinda jump I wanted in performance but good enough I guess. Sucks about the price. Anyway how did you bench BF3?


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## entropy13 (Dec 22, 2011)

perf/$ it's -10%, -3%, -2%, 1% and 7% compared to the GTX 580. It's only "worth it" in 2560x1600.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Dec 22, 2011)

I am loving the power consumption to performance ratio. I want to see the HD7950!


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## Hayder_Master (Dec 22, 2011)

Ohh yeah first 7970 real review by TPU, that's great.

Cool to see it it's beat GTX580, but price should be less


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## theJesus (Dec 22, 2011)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Great review. *Not the kinda jump I wanted in performance but good enough I guess.* Sucks about the price. Anyway how did you bench BF3?


This.  It's only $50 more than the 580 though, but on some of those games it just barely beats it.  Certainly not worth upgrading if you already have a 580.  At least not yet.  Maybe with driver optimizations and nice factory overclocks, custom PCBs and coolers, etc.

Anyways, nice review as always.


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## TheMailMan78 (Dec 22, 2011)

theJesus said:


> This.  It's only $50 more than the 580 though, but on some of those games it just barely beats it.  Certainly not worth upgrading if you already have a 580.  At least not yet.  Maybe with driver optimizations and nice factory overclocks, custom PCBs and coolers, etc.
> 
> Anyways, nice review as always.



Ill tell ya I wanted a 4850 vs 5850 kinda jump over the 69xx series. To me the 7970 is over priced to play console ports and the performance is meh IMO. I guess I'm just hoping for to much anymore. I mean 550 bucks for a GPU is a lil steep in todays economy.

Anyways W1zz's review is top notch as always.


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## ViperXTR (Dec 22, 2011)

Nice review!
Would love to see some Compute performance figures, its supposed to be one of GCN's defining improvements over the VLIW architecture


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## DannibusX (Dec 22, 2011)

gorillagarrett said:


> A couple of these to play what mate? Honestly!!! If we had those sexy pixel-dense OLED monitors available, it would have made some sense.



Minecraft.


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## theJesus (Dec 22, 2011)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Ill tell ya I wanted a 4850 vs 5850 kinda jump over the 69xx series. To me the 7970 is over priced to play console ports and the performance is meh IMO. I guess I'm just hoping for to much anymore. I mean 550 bucks for a GPU is a lil steep in todays economy.
> 
> Anyways W1zz's review is top notch as always.


To be fair, all high-end GPUs are over-priced.  This one is priced exactly where it should be relative to the 580.  10% more $ for 10% more performance.


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## Damn_Smooth (Dec 22, 2011)

Nice review W1zz, but you forgot the obligatory "No support for CUDA / PhysX".


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## buggalugs (Dec 22, 2011)

Damn_Smooth said:


> Nice review W1zz, but you forgot the obligatory "No support for CUDA / PhysX".



 Now he can put "no support for GCN" on Nvidia card reviews. haha

 ANyway the card looks great, noise is a concern though for me. Load temps are good so there could be room to slow the fan a little. Or just wait for non reference models.


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## 15th Warlock (Dec 22, 2011)

Thanks for the review W1zz, as always excellent work! 

The card is a match for a GTX580, at 8% higher overall performance according to this review, but 10% higher MSRP price, or even more as you can find 580s for around $450 after rebates and I expect prices of 580s to fall further more after Jan 9. 

One thing I noticed is performance may have been bottlenecked by the test rig, particularly at lower resolutions giving the 580 an edge on price/performance, although people who get this card will game at high resolutions (5760x1080 in my particular case) so this card may make more sense. 

Another thing I noticed, but is totally unrelated to the review, is, the screenshot you used for Skyrim is almost the same as the one I submitted for your Skyrim screenshots thread, only yours was taken at a much better angle  I feel honored


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## dj-electric (Dec 22, 2011)

I'll go ahead and say that according to some benchmarks online the 11.12 software and the reviewer's software is one serious flop (look at BF3 25X16 result).In summery HD6990 from being the leader he switches place with GTX590. Hoping to see improvements over the next couple of months


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## Super XP (Dec 22, 2011)

Great review Wiz, thank you.
I was hoping for more performance over the HD 6900 series, but this is what we get with new tech. With driver performing updates and new games to take full advantage of this new card, I can see it being worth the price AMD is asking. But right now I believe its approx: $100 too expensive. This is definitely on my TO GET list once price goes down unless I can find a good deal on another HD 6970 for a Crossfire setup.


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## Vipeax (Dec 22, 2011)

W1zzard, I always use your performance summaries as a reference point, but you made a mistake this time.





The HD5970 has to be a "bit" off?


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## Jstn7477 (Dec 22, 2011)

ViperXTR said:


> Nice review!
> Would love to see some Compute performance figures, its supposed to be one of GCN's defining improvements over the VLIW architecture



F@H numbers, definitely. If this thing folds like a GTX 580 on steroids, I bet lots of people will be happy including myself.


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## Over_Lord (Dec 22, 2011)

awesome performance, at 499$ would make a perfect card. Even then, AMD wants to earn back all it risked with 28nm, and having come on top of nVidia again by atleast 1 Quarter, they deserve to price it high, and yet people will buy(somewhat like Intel with CPUs)

And CFx SCALING is AMAZING. It leaves the GTX580 Sli in the dust with 7600x resolution gaming.

Check hardwareheaven for the review.


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## R_1 (Dec 22, 2011)

Considering that Jen-Hsun Huang was pretending to hold in his hands 512 cores Tesla GPU back in September 2009, it doesn't look HD7970 to be some super-duper achievement.


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## krisna159 (Dec 22, 2011)

wow nice...great review like always Wizz
i cant wait to see this card coming to my country....its time to upgrade now...


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## Zubasa (Dec 22, 2011)

Is it me or does it looks like the 32ROPs is whats holding the card back?


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## 1Kurgan1 (Dec 22, 2011)

entropy13 said:


> perf/$ it's -10%, -3%, -2%, 1% and 7% compared to the GTX 580. It's only "worth it" in 2560x1600.



At $50 more, 10% performance gain when using 1920x1080 is a pretty large gap, I would easily pay $50 for that. So I got to disagree. I don't see where you are getting negative performance vs a 580 from though? The performance summary shows it's higher at every single resolution (except 1024 where its tied). I see 0%, +6%, +7%, +10, and +15%.


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## AsRock (Dec 22, 2011)

Nice review as always W1z..

Not worth the upgrade for me but expected that anyways.  Those with a 6970 may as well get another 6970.


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## DrunkenMafia (Dec 22, 2011)

Wow, great card, and you only gave it a 9.0 W1zz ..

Loving the power consumption but was surprised at how slow it is at lower res.  It is definitely tuned for 1920 and up.  

I guess it is roughly the same speed as my 5870 crossfire but with half the power consumption..

Great review, I have been waiting for ages for this!!

Maybe the bulldozer dept, should spend some time in the GFX dept. Lol


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## R_1 (Dec 22, 2011)

Man, some people just don't see any meaningful application for +500 Euro GPU, so it is useless for them. No matter how fast it is I will never buy Ferrari.


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## BlackOmega (Dec 22, 2011)

Nice review wiz, what was the actual P score in 3dm11?


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## 1Kurgan1 (Dec 22, 2011)

AsRock said:


> Nice review as always W1z..
> 
> Not worth the upgrade for me but expected that anyways.  Those with a 6970 may as well get another 6970.



Not really, with those still being over $300. I'd sell the 6970 for $275 - $300 and buy a 7970. Buying another 6970 will get you the performance increase now, but will screw you down the line on an upgrade path, as a 3rd 6970 won't give you a large gain, but a second 7970 would.


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## dj-electric (Dec 22, 2011)

Zubasa said:


> Is it me or does it looks like the 32ROPs is whats holding the card back?




To me it seems like currently those are the drivers who are holding the card back :\


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## Compelling (Dec 22, 2011)

It amazes me that you test this card with an intel cpu???? I personally would like to see new architecture with new architecture! Test the HD7970 with a Crosshair V Formula and a FX-8150 (Zambezi) and see what it does. I don't get it, the Bulldozer comes out and its tested mainly with an Invidia card and not an AMD which is totally backwards! Oh well, I guess your an Intel/invidia  fanboy (no offense meant at all) or are being paid to run test setups weird! Then again your not the only site testing this way... Weird! 

I'd like to see you put the new tech from AMD (8150 AM3/hd7970 and a AM3+ motherboard people actually use) together and then test or compare it to the old tech (1090T/HD6990/Motherboard people use) to see if the new tech is close to inline with the highest old tech from AMD! Don't include Invidia, reason is to see just how far AMD is taking off with the new architecture. I'f the new is inline or even close with the old from the get go, then AMD is taking off for sure! Test AMD with AMD and test Invidia with Intel, seams to be the way it should be! AMD's CPU, AMD's Chipset, AMD's Video card... That just makes sence...

As I mentioned, no offense with the Invidia Fanboy line but sites dogged the 8150-FX with mainly Invidia testing but if you read reviews with people who actually own them and paired it with the right stough the FX/Bulldozer/Zambezi etc... are great Cpu's!

AFTER that, take a matching Intel motherboard that people actually use, matching Intel cpu/Invidia gtx590 setup and get the true results! Then compare the prices between the 2 and see who's true'ly kickin who's butt atm! 



To me, it's kinda like taking a Chevy and Ford (V-8) Similar type pickups and the engines being the cpu's while the transmissions are the video cards, the rest of the trucks being the motherboards and chipsets. Switch the engines (cpu's) and transmissions (Video Cards) between the trucks (motherboards and chipsets) and your either gonna see an improvement or lack there of! Bottom line here is, some things are meant to go together, computers are no exception...  Again, just my opinion!

Thanks!


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## Damn_Smooth (Dec 22, 2011)

Compelling said:


> It amazes me that you test this card with an intel cpu???? I personally would like to see new architecture with new architecture! Test the HD7970 with a Crosshair V Formula and a FX-8150 (Zambezi) and see what it does. I don't get it, the Bulldozer comes out and its tested mainly with an Invidia card and not an AMD which is totally backwards! Oh well, I guess your an Intel/invidia  fanboy (no offense meant at all) or are being paid to run test setups weird! Then again your not the only site testing this way... Weird!
> 
> I'd like to see you put the new tech from AMD (8150 AM3/hd7970 and a AM3+ motherboard people actually use) together and then test or compare it to the old tech (1090T/HD6990/Motherboard people use) to see if the new tech is close to inline with the highest old tech from AMD! Don't include Invidia, reason is to see just how far AMD is taking off with the new architecture. I'f the new is inline or even close with the old from the get go, then AMD is taking off for sure! Test AMD with AMD and test Invidia with Intel, seams to be the way it should be! AMD's CPU, AMD's Chipset, AMD's Video card... That just makes sence...
> 
> ...


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## dieterd (Dec 22, 2011)

*new generation sux!*

well - this is 1.st generation upgraide that in price/preformance sux to previos one!
I mean every strongest single GPU from AMD did cost around 350$ (since hd 2xxx) and every new generation left previos one preformance in smoke - the price preformance was real jump and real reason to celebrate new generation! for this one - obviously not the case. I mean would you care and be pleased in 2010. december about new(that time) hd6970 wich would somke hd 5870, beat gtx 480 and costed more than gtx 480 - NO, that would SUCK!!!! (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/Radeon_HD_6970/)
then why now are you (moust of you) celebrating this price/preformance regress???
you whant this to happen to every new generation? well - if this would be like that then now hd 7970 should cost x4 times hd 4870 and that would be >1000$ and if it would start from hd 2xxx then ... - I would not be playing/paying PC anymore!


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## hrvoje (Dec 22, 2011)

Great job Wizz as always, as for a card, it will need some price cuts (at least for me), as for performance i think its satisfactorily


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## Wyverex (Dec 22, 2011)

Nice card, awesome performance/consumption.
Now I'm waiting for the HD 7950 with its attractive price


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## mediasorcerer (Dec 22, 2011)

That picture scaring me^^^

bravo amd, thanx for review wiz


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## dj-electric (Dec 22, 2011)

I smell trolls
BEGONE evil cretures!


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## stefanels (Dec 22, 2011)

Very good review Wizz... Hope to see more good cards from AMD !!!


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## SonDa5 (Dec 22, 2011)

Nice card but $100 more than what I was hoping for.


The power draw and heat does seem higher than what I hoped for from 28nm GPU.



Would have liked to see how it compared in the UT3 category.  UT3 has been covered on most of the reviews.


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## HammerON (Dec 22, 2011)

Very nice! I might have to replace my 580's with two of these


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## cdawall (Dec 22, 2011)

nice review can't wait until the price drop take effect.


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## theJesus (Dec 22, 2011)

Compelling said:


> It amazes me that you test this card with an intel cpu???? I personally would like to see new architecture with new architecture! Test the HD7970 with a Crosshair V Formula and a FX-8150 (Zambezi) and see what it does. I don't get it, the Bulldozer comes out and its tested mainly with an Invidia card and not an AMD which is totally backwards! Oh well, I guess your an Intel/invidia  fanboy (no offense meant at all) or are being paid to run test setups weird! Then again your not the only site testing this way... Weird!


You don't _really_ expect him to go and re-run all those tests on all those other cards in a new system do you?  He can't test one card in one system and the other cards in a different system, because then it wouldn't be a fair comparison; it has to be the same setup across the board.


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## H82LUZ73 (Dec 22, 2011)

Very good review Wizz

I just wish AMD would send 2 cards when they come out with new ones,This would help see if the crossfire is the same (IE the performance that is great now)Though you do get a sense of it ,The One 7970 is between the Gtx590 and the 6990....So in theory with 2 it will be 10 to 15% more then them right ?

Also Wizz nice to see some new games Like BF3 and Hard Reset (link to the game page would have been nice  )


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## qubit (Dec 22, 2011)

I don't think the card offers enough of a performance increase. Yes, it beats the 580, as it doesn't trounce it, but it should do - after all the 580 has been out for a year now. I would have expected around 50% better performance than the 580 minimum in all benchmarks, but we don't get that.

Note that PCI-E 3.0 won't make much of a difference to performance, as W1zz stated in an earlier post.

Overclocking is good though and the dual BIOS is a very worthy feature for peace of mind.

Great review as ever, W1zz.


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## HellasVagabond (Dec 22, 2011)

1) Wiz from what i recall the GTX580 in the charts is with the first released drivers correct ? If so it's a fair comparison (for those who expect new drivers and new performance levels).

2) AMD still has the IQ optimizations to boost performance with their cards or did they remove it with the 7970 series ? (Don't think so but asking).

3) Rumor had it that the 7970 would be up to 50% faster than the GTX580 which is a prev. Gen card, still it's up to 20% faster so at least for me AMD saddly lost the train just like with the Bulldozer.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Dec 22, 2011)

qubit said:


> I don't think the card offers enough of a performance increase. Yes, it beats the 580, as it doesn't trounce it, but it should do - after all the 580 has been out for a year now. I would have expected around 50% better performance than the 580 minimum in all benchmarks, but we don't get that.
> 
> Overclocking is good though and the dual BIOS is a very worthy feature for peace of mind.
> 
> Great review as ever, W1zz.



50% is a lot to expect, I don't know if any generation gap has brought those kind of figures.


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## the54thvoid (Dec 22, 2011)

This is a very good card no doubt.  The GTX 580 is a very good card.  This is faster and far more power efficient (due to process i know).  So no grumbles - very, very good card.

But...

Why the flip (too early for swearing) can't AMD spend some time making a proper damn cooler? If you're going to release a new kick ass card that I 'was' tempted to go for (for the Pci-e x3 novelty), why don't you make sure the cooler is quiet at load?  It's not like it draws huge power and creates lots of heat.

So for this simple fact - for me the stock card is fail - I wouldn't put it in my rig.  But if Powercolor release an LCS model, that's a diff story.

Oh, and maths - it is 161% the cost of a 6970 without the 161% performance (best result is 6970 having 73% to the 7970's 100% at max res).

On price it is correct for Nvidia placing but not against the previous gen.  (IMO).


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## DZZRtt (Dec 22, 2011)

Awesome. Now I'm wating for 7950. I wonder if aftermarket coolers will fit with these


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## the54thvoid (Dec 22, 2011)

Just checked - if the euro price is correct it makes it £416 which is very good for 580 competition (all things considered).  But I'm sure it'll come in higher 

Still too loud.  C'mon after market coolers.

And in a related topic - the absolute famine of any 'concrete' Kepler rumours makes it quite plausible that NV are in no fit state to reply.  It's unlike them to stay so quiet when their cards are being trumped....


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## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Dec 22, 2011)

very nice.


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## SK-1 (Dec 22, 2011)

Thanks for a good review....as always.


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## Roph (Dec 22, 2011)

Loving the efficiency 

When <75w 28nm Radeon 77xx/76xx cards are available maybe I'll get one


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## qubit (Dec 22, 2011)

1Kurgan1 said:


> 50% is a lot to expect, I don't know if any generation gap has brought those kind of figures.



I'm sure I've seen 50% before, but it was a while back. As the next gen nvidia card is several months away, it should be around 80-100% faster than the 580 in my book, but I have a feeling it won't be.


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## AsRock (Dec 22, 2011)

1Kurgan1 said:


> Not really, with those still being over $300. I'd sell the 6970 for $275 - $300 and buy a 7970. Buying another 6970 will get you the performance increase now, but will screw you down the line on an upgrade path, as a 3rd 6970 won't give you a large gain, but a second 7970 would.



Well main issue is games only 1 of those games i play which is Skyrim and shit it's what 3fps was it at 1920x1080. 

You have a good point. With Skyrim sucking with CF ( unless thats fixed now ). Although if i did play 1/2 of those games i don't believe  the upgrade is worth it as that's another $275 blown on what ? 3-15fps extra.

Real problem here is demanding games don't seem to be pushing hardware enough.


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## W1zzard (Dec 22, 2011)

not sure about those HD 5970 numbers, maybe CF didnt get enabled. I'll rebench.



HellasVagabond said:


> 1) Wiz from what i recall the GTX580 in the charts is with the first released drivers correct ?



no, i rebenched all cards with the latest drivers, check the test setup page


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## the54thvoid (Dec 22, 2011)

Hexus review is up and it's saying it'll be £450.  

Again - correct price to go against Nvidia but throws the Red School's wallet friendly pricing 'culture' into the history bin.


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## Nesters (Dec 22, 2011)

1Kurgan1 said:


> At $50 more, 10% performance gain when using 1920x1080 is a pretty large gap, I would easily pay $50 for that. So I got to disagree. I don't see where you are getting negative performance vs a 580 from though? The performance summary shows it's higher at every single resolution (except 1024 where its tied). I see 0%,  6%,  7%,  10, and  15%.



Well, those were his "cherry-picked" benchmarks (not overall) where 580 was actually ahead of HD7970. As you can see, he has 570 in his rig so there might be some nVidia fanboism coming out.

Card is great, price is not. New architecture seems to take away those benchmarks where nvidia cards used to lead by a great margin.


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## HellasVagabond (Dec 22, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> not sure about those HD 5970 numbers, maybe CF didnt get enabled. I'll rebench.
> 
> 
> 
> no, i rebenched all cards with the latest drivers, check the test setup page



What about the IQ optimizations ? Any chance you had time to check that ?


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## W1zzard (Dec 22, 2011)

HellasVagabond said:


> What about the IQ optimizations ? Any chance you had time to check that ?



i use an out of the box install of the drivers without any change to settings


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## Trackr (Dec 22, 2011)

Am I the only one who's disappointed here?

It's 8-15% more powerful than the GTX 580.

Seriously?

Only 2000 ALUs.. on 28nm, when they got 1536 on 40nm.

What gives?


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## the54thvoid (Dec 22, 2011)

Nice summary from Anand.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review/25


> The fact of the matter is that since 2008 we’ve become spoiled by AMD’s aggressive pricing. More than anything else the low prices of the Radeon HD 4870 and Radeon HD 5870 made those products superstars thanks to their performance for the price and their undercutting of NVIDIA’s competing cards. The Radeon HD 5870 was definitely fast, but at $379 it was a steal, which is part of the reason prices for it never stabilized at that low a level.
> 
> At the same time the 7970 is not the 5870. The 5870 relative to both NVIDIA and AMD’s previous generation video cards was faster on a percentage basis. It was more clearly a next-generation card, and DX11 only helped to seal the deal. Meanwhile if you look at straight averages the 7970 is only around 15-25% faster than the GTX 580 in our tests, with its advantage being highly game dependent. It always wins at 2560 and 1920, but there are some cases where it’s not much of a win. The 7970’s domination of the 6970 is more absolute, but then again the 6970 is a good $200 cheaper at this point in time.



This is regards to its gaming prowess.  Anand is* very optimistic about GCN for compute* and thinks with proper coding it will be a barnstormer.


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## Benetanegia (Dec 22, 2011)

So a 30% increase from HD6970, like I said it would happen based on specs.

I told you so guys. Now where's the people that called me names for pointing out the obvious?


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## HellasVagabond (Dec 22, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> i use an out of the box install of the drivers without any change to settings



Well that's why i asked. A few months back AMD admitted to having used lower IQ in the default settings than they used to in the past so i was wondering if they reverted that to the original state or they left it as is with the 7970 series.


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## dj-electric (Dec 22, 2011)

1200Mhz core clock with air cooling isnt a dream?
look on the OC of HH






(No-one's lookin) *fap* *fap* *fap* *fap* *fap* *fap* *fap*


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## cdawall (Dec 22, 2011)

qubit said:


> I don't think the card offers enough of a performance increase. Yes, it beats the 580, as it doesn't trounce it, but it should do - after all the 580 has been out for a year now. I would have expected around 50% better performance than the 580 minimum in all benchmarks, but we don't get that.
> 
> Note that PCI-E 3.0 won't make much of a difference to performance, as W1zz stated in an earlier post.
> 
> ...



Mature AMD drivers normally boost a few more percents across the board. 50% I don't think has ever happened in a single generation jump most two generation jumps don't offer that.


----------



## arnoo1 (Dec 22, 2011)

Now crossfire that damn thing and see some real numbers xd


----------



## Kaotik (Dec 22, 2011)

Any chance of double checking the numbers?

I can see how 590 would jump over 6990 with different games and drivers, same obviously with 570vs6970, but 5850 going over 6870, both are even VLIW5 chips, simply shouldn't happen.
It seems that whole HD6-lineup performance is lower than it should be.


----------



## Benetanegia (Dec 22, 2011)

cdawall said:


> Mature AMD drivers normally boost a few more percents across the board. 50% I don't think has ever happened in a single generation jump most two generation jumps don't offer that.



What is this selective memory or what? Most generation jumps have been well over 50% increase and often times close to 100% increase, especially when a new process is used.


----------



## W1zzard (Dec 22, 2011)

Kaotik said:


> but 5850 going over 6870, both are even VLIW5 chips, simply shouldn't happen.



hd 5850 is high-end, hd 6870 is mid-range. remember, amd boosted their model numbers for hd 6000 series.


----------



## Trackr (Dec 22, 2011)

Benetanegia said:


> What is this selective memory or what? Most generation jumps have been well over 50% increase and often times close to 100% increase, especially when a new process is used.



Wow, Qubit agrees with this?

You're suggesting the HD 4870 had the performance of an HD 5870 when the latter was released?

How unfathomably absurd.


----------



## Benetanegia (Dec 22, 2011)

Trackr said:


> Wow, Qubit agrees with this?
> 
> You're suggesting the HD 4870 had the performance of an HD 5870 when the latter was released?
> 
> How unfathomably absurd.



Whaaaaaaat?! You need to get some reading skills ASAP.

I said that most generation jumps have a 50% to 100% *INCREASE* in performance. The HD5870 was ~80% faster than the HD4870 so it falls in that range.


----------



## cdawall (Dec 22, 2011)

Benetanegia said:


> What is this selective memory or what? Most generation jumps have been well over 50% increase and often times close to 100% increase, especially when a new process is used.



Review your facts again 


6870->6970 18%
5870->6870 -7%
4890->5870 26% 
3870->4870 46%
2900XT->3870 -2%
Overall performance summaries

As I don't see anything that exceeded 50% let alone came close to 100%.


----------



## Benetanegia (Dec 22, 2011)

cdawall said:


> Review your facts again
> 
> 
> 6870->6970 18%
> ...



Most of those are not generation jumps.

HD3800 was not a new gen. HD6870 is not a new gen and it's not even the same market segment as the HD5870. HD6970 is the same gen and forms part of the same lineup as the HD6870. Pff I'm sure you can do better.

Plus you need some math skills. For example is the HD3870 is 64% as fast as the HD4870 that means that 100/64*100= 156%. So the HD4870 was 56% faster. On the exact same 55nm process BTW.

EDIT: With the HD4890 vs HD5870, you are mostly correct, except for the failed math, that is. I totally forgot about the HD4890.


----------



## qubit (Dec 22, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> hd 5850 is high-end, hd 6870 is mid-range. remember, amd boosted their model numbers for hd 6000 series.



"Boosted", I like it.  One could say "did an nvidia", too.


----------



## cdawall (Dec 22, 2011)

Benetanegia said:


> Most of those are not generation jumps.
> 
> HD3800 was not a new gen. HD6870 is not a new gen and it's not even the same market segment as the HD5870. HD6970 is the same gen and forms part of the same lineup as the HD6870. Pff I'm sure you can do better.



The 5870->6970 still isn't a 50% bud. The 5870->6870 still represents a core change and a lateral performance change between generations. The 6970 later took the top spot without pulling off 100% performance increase.


Benetanegia said:


> Plus you need some math skills. For example is the HD3870 is 64% as fast as the HD4870 that means that 100/64*100= 156%. So the HD4870 was 56% faster. On the exact same 55nm process BTW.


I just went off percent difference. 



Benetanegia said:


> EDIT: With the HD4890 vs HD5870, you are mostly correct, except for the failed math, that is. I totally forgot about the HD4890.



It's not really failed math its just not the way you were phrasing it. If the 5870 is 100% and the 4890 is 74% the 5870 still has 26% higher performance.


----------



## badtaylorx (Dec 22, 2011)

point being this card is going to be a great one....considering amd blew their wad 3 weeks early and we *still* get performance this good means nvidia is in for a world of hurt untill 6xx


----------



## Benetanegia (Dec 22, 2011)

cdawall said:


> The 5870->6970 still isn't a 50% bud. The 5870->6870 still represents a core change and a lateral performance change between generations. The 6970 later took the top spot without pulling off 100% performance increase.



HD5000 to HD6000 is NOT a new gen, unless you really fall for AMD's (and Nvidia's) tactics. It was also made on the same 40nm process.

With a new process, and all the additional transistors that you can use, a lot more is expected.



> It's not really failed math its just not the way you were phrasing it. If the 5870 is 100% and the 4890 is 74% the 5870 still has 26% higher performance.



No, that's failed math, plain and simple. Let's go with round numbers. 50% and 100%. According to you 100 is 50% more than 50, and that's false. 100 is 2x, or double of 50. 100 is also a 100% increase or 200% as much as 50.

50 + 50% == 50 + 1/2 * 50 == 75 != 100


----------



## cdawall (Dec 22, 2011)

Benetanegia said:


> HD5000 to HD6000 is NOT a new gen, unless you really fall for AMD's (and Nvidia's) tactics. It was also made on the same 40nm process.
> 
> With a new process, and all the additional transistors that you can use, a lot more is expected.



Was a 65nm althon x2 the same generation as a 65nm phenom?




> No, that's failed math, plain and simple. Let's go with round numbers. 50% and 100%. According to you 100 is 50% more than 50, and that's false. 100 is 2x, or double of 50. 100 is also a 100% increase or 200% as much as 50.
> 
> 50 + 50% == 50 + 1/2 * 50 == 75 != 100



You could call it lazy after work math not to mention the magarita and couple of beers . My point that no generation was a 100% or 2x increase still stands. Also I was using the card at 100% as the starting point meaning card A at 100% and card B at 75% card A has a 25% performance lead while also being 50% faster.


----------



## GSquadron (Dec 22, 2011)

Only the price ruins this card. You get power for noise so it is normal i think.
I think it was much better than gtx 580, but still it needs to evolve as a 28nm gpu
so would not get dissapointed for being the best single gpu


----------



## dj-electric (Dec 22, 2011)

People are used to being spoiled with AMD products, always expecting X5 performance for 150$ like its some kinda of freaking magic they can perform


----------



## Benetanegia (Dec 22, 2011)

cdawall said:


> Was a 65nm althon x2 the same generation as a 65nm phenom?



Different situation, but mainly yes. many Athlon X2's are the same generation as Phenom. Athlon II is same generation as Phenom II, etc.





> You could call it lazy after work math not to mention the magarita and couple of beers . My point that no generation was a 100% or 2x increase still stands. Also I was using the card at 100% as the starting point meaning card A at 100% and card B at 75% card A has a 25% performance lead while also being 50% faster.



If you use the faster card as the starting point, you can only say that card B is x% *slower* than card A. No matter how you word it, it's not correct to say it's x% faster unless the slower card was used as the baseline.

And not trying to bring you down completely, but 100% would be 33% faster than 75%, not 50%.  I suggest a cup of coffee and/or a little bit of sleep.


----------



## Kaotik (Dec 22, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> hd 5850 is high-end, hd 6870 is mid-range. remember, amd boosted their model numbers for hd 6000 series.



Yes I'm fully aware of this, however I'm also aware that 6870 has been always faster than 5850 (while 6850 has been slower)

Previously the difference has been something around 6-7% in favor of 6870 on average at 1920x1200, and now suddenly 5850 is supposed to be nearly 4% faster at same res?

That's just not right, if 6800's were VLIW4's it could possibly be explained by some driver optimizations just working for VLIW5's and not VLIW4's, but since they're both VLIW5's it's just not right.


----------



## cdawall (Dec 22, 2011)

Benetanegia said:


> Different situation, but mainly yes. many Athlon X2's are the same generation as Phenom. Athlon II is same generation as Phenom II, etc.



On that note an Athlon X2 is a K8 and a Phenom I would be a K10. Those are two completely different cores. Same thing as saying a Pentium 4 65nm is the same as a Core 2 Duo 65nm chip. Fab means shit as far as generations go if the core is new its a different generation. Not to mention there are plenty of cards of the same generation that received die shrinks 9800GTX vs GTX+ for example same exact core with a die shrink.



Benetanegia said:


> If you use the faster card as the starting point, you can only say that card B is x% *slower* than card A. No matter how you word it, it's not correct to say it's x% faster unless the slower card was used as the baseline.



I was comparing % difference which is Card A-Card B and my post reflects that.


Benetanegia said:


> And not trying to bring you down completely, but 100% would be 33% faster than 75%, not 50%.  I suggest a cup of coffee and/or a little bit of sleep.



Fuck it I am having another beer.


----------



## Andrei23 (Dec 22, 2011)

Came here to read the review first, great job w1zz


----------



## Super XP (Dec 22, 2011)

Benetanegia said:


> *HD5000 to HD6000 is NOT a new gen, unless you really fall for AMD's (and Nvidia's) tactics. It was also made on the same 40nm process.
> 
> With a new process, and all the additional transistors that you can use, a lot more is expected.*
> 
> ...


I agree with this to a certain extent. Take the HD 6970; it's quite similar to the HD 5870 but with the introduction to some minor design tweaks based on Southern Islands (HD 7970). AMD was forced to come out with a somewhat Hybrid design branching two completely different Generations (Evergreen + Southern Islands) together onto a 40nm process and naming it Northern Islands. This is all thanks to the failed 32nm process which the HD 7970 design should have been based on with AMD calling it the HD 6970 instead. And if 32nm did get released, today we would be talking about this 2nd Gen HD 7970 design rather than the 1st Gen IMO.


----------



## 20mmrain (Dec 22, 2011)

Great performance increase for AMD's card over AMD.... Not enough to probably compete with the GTX680/780 when it releases. I really hope AMD has a refresh to come out around the same time. While I love the 30K GPU score in vantage and the 40% increase on average (or so) if you take the same math and apply it to the GTX 580 right now.... this card will get stomped when Nvidia drops Kepler (Complete speculation just looking at history). Which sux... because I was hoping to see a much higher performance in crease for $550 bucks. Doesn't mean that this card for right now is still the new baddest boy on the block.... and I do plan to get two to play with for sure!
Please don't take my opinion as complaining.... 40% or so is still a awesome increase! I just was wishing and hoping for something from the stars. 

Nice review Wizzard!


----------



## ZoneDymo (Dec 22, 2011)

Holy ffing shit this thing looks good :O
Man, really makes the 6000 series look slow 

Also just saying but is it just me or does Batman AC look heavily Nvidia oriented?


----------



## Kaotik (Dec 22, 2011)

ZoneDymo said:


> Holy ffing shit this thing looks good :O
> Man, really makes the 6000 series look slow


Even though I've been using TPU as reference for card speeds for years, I'm taking current results with grain of salt - especially HD6000-series performance seems notably slower compared to what it should be, even when compared to HD5000-series (and 7970 performance seems to be a lower than on most sites, too)



> Also just saying but is it just me or does Batman AC look heavily Nvidia oriented?


After the MSAA fiasco on Batman AA, is it a wonder?


----------



## AsRock (Dec 22, 2011)

Kaotik said:


> Even though I've been using TPU as reference for card speeds for years, I'm taking current results with grain of salt - especially HD6000-series performance seems notably slower compared to what it should be, even when compared to HD5000-series (and 7970 performance seems to be a lower than on most sites, too)
> 
> 
> After the MSAA fiasco on Batman AA, is it a wonder?



Forget Batman,  i want to know why Skyrim sucks with this card lol.


----------



## cdawall (Dec 22, 2011)

AsRock said:


> Forget Batman, i want to know why Skyrim sucks with this card lol.



Best of the bunch?


----------



## Super XP (Dec 22, 2011)

It makes sense why AMD priced the HD 7970 at $549. Mark my words, you won't be seeing price cuts from HD 6970's or HD 6950 because the HD 7970 is priced too high. This leaved the door open to making the HD 6900's sell very well for the Christmas Holiday Season. 

Anyhow I've had enough of being the early adopter, from now on I'll wait for modifications and driver fixes before buying new tech.


----------



## W1zzard (Dec 22, 2011)

Kaotik said:


> especially HD6000-series performance seems notably slower



3dmark11 1680x1050, same data as used for the review:






anything wrong other than hd 5970 ? (which was running in single gpu mode it seems, rebenching that now)

essentially the same numbers as in the hd 6790 review in may 2011: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/HD_6790_IceQ_X_Turbo/23.html


----------



## R_1 (Dec 22, 2011)

Well, based on actual capacity of my 2TB HDD, compared to previous  360GB one, it should cost me $850. So at $85 it was a steal, "which is part of the reason prices for it never stabilized at that low a level".


----------



## Kaotik (Dec 22, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> 3dmark11 1680x1050, same data as used for the review:
> 
> http://img.techpowerup.org/111222/Capture235.jpg
> 
> ...



3DMark seems to be having the exact expected order (well, aside 6950 losing to 5870, but that's just one app so could be just app specific), it's just the average that doesn't make any sense, I simply don't see any way that 6870, which has always been faster, in the most recent review nearly 7%, could suddenly jump down to being nearly 4% slower than 5850, both being VLIW5 chips


----------



## buggalugs (Dec 22, 2011)

Its funny, everyone is happy with the performance of the 7970 except people who have 580's lol.


----------



## Grings (Dec 22, 2011)

Superb Review, the 3 games i am playing atm (Batman, BF3 and Skyrim) tested, AND my card in there for comparison (6950)

I'm getting one, i wanted to see a review first before deciding on this or a 2nd 6950


----------



## badtaylorx (Dec 22, 2011)

buggalugs said:


> Its funny, everyone is happy with the performance of the 7970 except people who have 580's lol.



it's the same on other sites as well


----------



## Fluffmeister (Dec 22, 2011)

Hehe that's probably because this gext gen, 28nm card doesn't offer much of a boost over the year old 580.

I can see why the Cayman crowd are getting giddy though.


----------



## cdawall (Dec 22, 2011)

Fluffmeister said:


> Hehe that's probably because this gext gen, 28nm card doesn't offer much of a boost over the year old 580.
> 
> I can see why the Cayman crowd are getting giddy though.



It could be .5nm and that would do absolutely nothing as far as design goes. Good job bringing up a fact that makes zero difference towards performance though.


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Dec 22, 2011)

1Kurgan1 said:


> 50% is a lot to expect, I don't know if any generation gap has brought those kind of figures.



4850 to 5850  Thats what I was hoping for. But anymore its just not gonna happen.

Also W1zz how did you test BF3?


----------



## Mussels (Dec 22, 2011)

fantastic card, exactly what we expected from a new design.


pity about the price, but thats one thing that WILL get better over time.


the power efficiency really intruiges me, would like a graph on how that compares to SLI/crossfire setups that give similar performance.


----------



## Grings (Dec 22, 2011)

I don't think the price is that bad, everybody seems to be comparing it to the cheapest 580 prices, which have dropped a fair bit since launch, as any product does once its been out a few months.

Also, 3gb versions of the 580 cost a fair bit more than the price of a standard one most people are using for comparison.


----------



## ERazer (Dec 22, 2011)

great reviewed once again almighty wiz 



buggalugs said:


> Its funny, everyone is happy with the performance of the 7970 except people who have 580's lol.



true, guess ill hold on to my 580 for another year but cheers for the red team tho. i still consider my old 5870 one of best cards i had


----------



## ensabrenoir (Dec 22, 2011)

Making it hard for me to go green on my next build.  Amd/ati = awesome gpus.  People test with intel cpus &etc because amd dont have anything yet to make full use of its gpus potential.


----------



## Crap Daddy (Dec 22, 2011)

20% performance gain at the most common res. over the 6970 and GTX570 for 200$ + difference? Hmmm...


----------



## Benetanegia (Dec 22, 2011)

Crap Daddy said:


> 20% performance gain at the most common res. over the 6970 and GTX570 for 200$ + difference? Hmmm...



Sssshhhh or you will be burned at the stake as the rest of us stating the obvious.


----------



## afw (Dec 22, 2011)

Great review ... Solid Card  ...


----------



## RejZoR (Dec 22, 2011)

Am i only one who thinks MLAA should work faster on GCN ? I mean, MLAA is done through compute shaders, if they say GCN is faster, they should consider rewriting the algorithm for HD7000 series in order to better utilize it. Would give me a reason to reconsider HD7000 series card. though i doubt it since HD6950 serves me very well at the moment.


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Dec 22, 2011)

RejZoR said:


> Would give me a reason to reconsider HD7000 series card. though i doubt it since HD6950 serves me very well at the moment.



See this is where I'm at. My 5850 still runs great and most everything on high. Maybe not the max settings but not far off. 550 bones just doesnt seem worth it in my case. I could get another 5850 for 100 bucks and run everything at maxed even with the crappy scaling of the 58xx series.


----------



## dieterd (Dec 22, 2011)

why are many of you so happy about it??
in price/preformance this gen will suck ass or those prices need to bee cut BAD. it is first generation change with such a price increase, but such a preformance increase we have seen before. the price increase is even more than preformance increase!!!!
When next gen HD 8970 will be +30% faster than hd 7970 (do enyone is expecting less???) we will be paying for it >800$?


----------



## THE_EGG (Dec 22, 2011)

OMG just bought a Gigabyte Geforce GTX 580 superoverclock a week ago to replace my ageing 460sli setup!. D:


----------



## Crap Daddy (Dec 22, 2011)

Benetanegia said:


> Sssshhhh or you will be burned at the stake as the rest of us stating the obvious.



OK, here's another one. I was expecting this to smoke the 580 at 550$ MSRP so we can all enjoy better pricing on the 580, 570 and 6970. Well, it all went up in smoke. Now the Kepler dude, when he'll enter the scene, might ask 600$ for a ride as I can't imagine it'll be just 20-30% faster than his fellow Fermi.

But we will have to see what's the performance and the positioning of the other lower end 7000 series (lower than "high-end" that is) especially the 7950 and the 7870 (when will this be?)


----------



## DOM (Dec 22, 2011)

THE_EGG said:


> OMG just bought a Gigabyte Geforce GTX 580 superoverclock a week ago to replace my ageing 460sli setup!. D:



at your oc its faster then it and about par with both oced


----------



## AsRock (Dec 22, 2011)

cdawall said:


> Best of the bunch?
> 
> http://tpucdn.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/images/skyrim_2560_1600.gif



I am on about this lol.. Which is much closer to my resolution i use.


----------



## Nimmer (Dec 22, 2011)

I find it hard to believe none of the 8 reviews AFAIK have not compared the new
7970 3gig to a GTX580 3 gig. 

I sell AMD and Nvidia all day long I love them both and both have advantages and disadvantages. BUT ....I can tell you for sure 3 of the games tested in the TPU review use more than 1.5g of Vram  (verified through MSI afterburner) at the highest settings in 1080p and 1600p.  Can some of the more experienced members give me their take on this... 

When BF3 came out most of my friends and customer who run mostly 1080p some 1600p want ultra settings and 40+ frame rates made the switch to 3gig 580's and there problems have been solved. 

I wonder where the increase of price per performance would lay with a true 3gig to 3gig comparison???????


----------



## Jeager (Dec 22, 2011)

Nimmer said:


> I find it hard to believe none of the 8 reviews AFAIK have not compared the new
> 7970 3gig to a GTX580 3 gig.
> 
> I sell AMD and Nvidia all day long I love them both and both have advantages and disadvantages. BUT ....I can tell you for sure 3 of the games tested in the TPU review use more than 1.5g of Vram  (verified through MSI afterburner) at the highest settings in 1080p and 1600p.  Can some of the more experienced members give me their take on this...
> ...



580 w/ 3Gbs -> http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...s/49646-amd-radeon-hd-7970-3gb-review-13.html


----------



## RejZoR (Dec 22, 2011)

I'm actually waiting for cards that offer more software based features like MLAA was. And Adaptive AA and so on. Features that work in all games and you don't have to wait for feature to get game support after 3 years or even never. I've hit the performance "wall" even with HD5850 so i'm looking more for features than raw performance.


----------



## Nimmer (Dec 22, 2011)

Nice find thanks Jeager! Looks like the lead of 10% increase gets cut in half to 5% when comparing it to a 3gig GTX580...


----------



## Super XP (Dec 22, 2011)

Like I said before, this is AMD's strategy to artificially inflate the HD 7970 to $549. Now watch, you won't see a price drop for the HD 6970 or HD 6950 at all. If anything a price increase for those cards too.


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Dec 22, 2011)

RejZoR said:


> I'm actually waiting for cards that offer more software based features like MLAA was. And Adaptive AA and so on. Features that work in all games and you don't have to wait for feature to get game support after 3 years or even never. I've hit the performance "wall" even with HD5850 so i'm looking more for features than raw performance.



Yeah man. I think its due to the kinda games we are getting. All ports. I mean I LOVE BF3. But it was toned down a lot more then it should be IMO. The Back to Karkland maps show how much smaller the maps have become. 

Really my 5850 rocks it on high and is very fluid. Its a three year old card on a "cutting edge" game. When in high end PC history has a 3 year old card cut it for so long. 500 dollars for any GPU nowadays is a waste of money unless you fold. If I could afford one I might get it for e-peen. But for anyone on a budget its useless.


----------



## Jeager (Dec 22, 2011)

3Gbs seems overkill for a single card but it can rly help in >2560 resolutions

As for the price, I think they will maybe drop a little but not really until nVidia drop his new cards


----------



## theJesus (Dec 22, 2011)

buggalugs said:


> Its funny, everyone is happy with the performance of the 7970 except people who have 580's lol.


Really?  I only have a 560 Ti and I'm disappointed.  TheMailMan78 mentioned that he was expecting more too, and he's only got a 5850.


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Dec 22, 2011)

theJesus said:


> TheMailMan78 mentioned that he was expecting more too, and he's only got a 5850.


 I also tend to drool on myself.


----------



## theJesus (Dec 22, 2011)

TheMailMan78 said:


> I also tend to drool on myself.


Great, now I've lumped myself in with a loony; what was I thinking?


----------



## Vancha (Dec 22, 2011)

The price is too high, but it will drop in time. That's not a problem.

I think the target for this generation was power and cooling efficiency. We already have the horsepower to play the vast majority of newly released games due to the limits of this generation's console hardware. We need to be reducing the size, power draw and heat generated in preparation for the next graphics boom.

With that in mind, the 7970 is alright. It's okay. It's not spectacular, but it's sort of gone in the right direction. It is what it is and I don't think it's worth the effort of complaining about.


----------



## cadaveca (Dec 22, 2011)

cdawall said:


> Mature AMD drivers normally boost a few more percents across the board. 50% I don't think has ever happened in a single generation jump most two generation jumps don't offer that.


Personally, my own expereince with every generation of card has led to near 80% boosts in performance many times. Of course, it's app and res-dependant, and I've been running 2560x1600 for near 5 years now. At lower resolutions, fine, but high-res scaling is a different thing all together. Technically, I need high-end cards, and have been using them now, in pairs, for at least 7 years. 



theJesus said:


> Great, now I've lumped myself in with a loony; what was I thinking?



Nah, I'm with you. I didn't expect a lot. In fact, I expected a 30% increase over 6970. It's pretty close to that. However, because the price is so high, it makes no sense for me to upgrade. I ahve dual 6950's, which should match, if not out-perform, the 7970 on it's own.

So what do I do? Get dual 7970's, @ near $1100? Or do i buy two more 6950's, for just $500?  Igot 3960X CPU, so 4 cards should be great.



OF course, it's comical to me that I've been mentioning being interested in another two 6950 2GB cards...and ignoring the impending release of this 7970...you'd think i'd have accepted how this worked out, but damn me if I'm not dissappointed.


----------



## theJesus (Dec 22, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> So what do I do? Get dual 7970's, @ near $1100? Or do i buy two more 6950's, for just $500?  Igot 3960X CPU, so 4 cards should be great.


You shouldn't do a damn thing.  I think even at your resolution, two 6950's is plenty enough already and I don't think there's enough performance scaling with more than two cards.


----------



## MatTheCat (Dec 22, 2011)

Volkszorn88 said:


> The performance definitely justifies the price. God, can't even imagine two of these bad boys.
> 
> A GTX580 killer for sure. Not to mention with future drivers to increase the performance even more!



Wot, a 10% increase in performance over the GTX 580 justifies it being 10% more expensive than the GTX 580 card that was released ages ago? Nvidia produces better quality cards with much better quality drivers and support. In contrast, ATI has always offered better value for money, but we aint seeing that here.

Early adopters of this card will be paying through the nose for the troubles they have had with the 28nm fabrication process. Combining the extoritionate price of these cards with the loudness of the stock fans, I will be holding off upgrading from my 5850 (which tbh still easily does the job for my purposes) for quite some time. That card is worth $400, and not a penny more.


----------



## cadaveca (Dec 22, 2011)

theJesus said:


> You shouldn't do a damn thing.  I think even at your resolution, two 6950's is plenty enough already and I don't think there's enough performance scaling with more than two cards.



Alas, the 6 23-inch monitors I have for the other rigs in my house and Eyefinity for me says I do not have enough performance.

Even 2560x1600 is still too slow, when in Crossfire.


Oh, and there are 6 people in my family, me, my wife, and 4 kids, which is why i have so many monitors. 3 for me, 4 for other rigs.

Anyway, most apps, even 30FPS is nigh on impossible for Eyefinity. IN fact, AMD uses 30 FPS as their "Schaweet-schpot". That's why I've been considering 4 GPUs.


----------



## Kaotik (Dec 22, 2011)

W1zzard, now I'm 100% confirmed something went wrong, and badly, at least with 6870 - it's performance at 1920x1200 on average in previous review was nearly 20% over 6850 - yet in the 7970 it's mere 6% faster than 6850 at same resolution

edit:
In fact, 6870 has exactly same speed as 6850 in "all resolutions", and loses to 6850 1024x768 - no matter how irrelevant resolution, that simply tells that something borked on at least HD6870 benching.


----------



## theJesus (Dec 22, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> Alas, the 6 23-inch monitors I have for the other rigs in my house and Eyefinity for me says I do not have enough performance.
> 
> Even 2560x1600 is still too slow, when in Crossfire.
> 
> ...


Well, in that case, if you've got the cash . . .


----------



## Crap Daddy (Dec 22, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> OF course, it's comical to me that I've been mentioning being interested in another two 6950 2GB cards...and ignoring the impending release of this 7970...you'd think i'd have accepted how this worked out, but damn me if I'm not dissappointed.



There is still hope. Other reviews point out at the great overclockability with these cards and nice performance jumps with that.

I can totally understand the price point, transition to 28nm, yields and stuff but I think that this launch - Papermaster Mark is doing his job well - is more of a prestige, psychological action. Look, we can do highest of ends, we can ask more than NV asked for top of the line in the past few years, we're back in business, we don't care that only a handful of people want this badly because anyway we don't have supplies. And we should expect a revision that will boost performance at a better price as soon as NV comes out.


----------



## Yellow&Nerdy? (Dec 22, 2011)

I thought it was first going to release in January, so this came as a pleasant surprise. The price is with all honesty a little steep, but then again it does beat the GTX 580 with a solid 10% at 1080p, so it's obviously priced higher than the GTX 580. What's even greater is that it consumes as much/a little less power than the 6970, which is to be expected since it's 28nm. And it overclocks like a madman. Plus the drivers are very new, so more mature drivers will offer even better performance. Now I'm interested in seeing the 7950 and 7870, which will be priced lower, but likely still have the same overclocking potential.

As for Nvidia, they will most likely claim the "top single-GPU" title by a little margin, but be more expensive and power hungry. That has kind of been the trend in the past few generations of graphics cards. Though they will suffer from launching months later than AMD.


----------



## cadaveca (Dec 22, 2011)

theJesus said:


> Well, in that case, if you've got the cash . . .
> 
> http://easycaptures.com/fs/uploaded/656/2089955948.jpg



That's the thing..I don't have teh cash, really. I got 20 motherboards sitting here, and a CPU for nearly every platform, but I didn't pay for most of it. If I'm going to make a purchase like dual 7970's...I have to be very sure that it's gonig to work well for me.

I am done buying stuff for minor gains, for more than double the cost, and then some. I mean really..3960X? Even that CPU is kinda useless to me. but I'd liek to put it to use...

I just want the tech that AMD told me 2 years ago worked so well..to work like they described. I bought my monitors before the 5870 launch, and as soon as they were out, I bought two 5870's. I spent the next year RMA'ing my cards every three weeks, until the 6950's came out, and XFX replaced a 5870 with a 6950 for me. I then bought a second 6950. After NINE 5870 RMAs.

Still, I have flicker on secondary monitors, and Eyefinity performance is terrible. So terrible, in fact, that I tried going back to 2560x1600, but that was no better!!


And now..I'm supposed to believe AMD is being honest about high-res performance, again? after they blew the Bulldozer launch...I think not.

90% of the "new tech" offered in the 7970 is useless for 99% of users out there. THAT is why we have a paper launch, and no cards. Heck, FX-8150 has only been available locally for about 3 weeks.


----------



## mastrdrver (Dec 22, 2011)

Hey Wizz, what monitor connections did you use for the multi display setup?

I've read that when using two DP monitors that the clocks do no go up at all.

Thanks in advance.


----------



## theJesus (Dec 22, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> That's the thing..I don't have teh cash, really. I got 20 motherboards sitting here, and a CPU for nearly every platform, but I didn't pay for most of it. If I'm going to make a purchase like dual 7970's...I have to be very sure that it's gonig to work well for me.
> 
> I am done buying stuff for minor gains, for more than double the cost, and then some. I mean really..3960X? Even that CPU is kinda useless to me. but I'd liek to put it to use...
> 
> ...


Then like I originally said, don't do anything.  It sucks that there still isn't a solution that can truly handle eyefinity.


----------



## Crap Daddy (Dec 22, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> After NINE 5870 RMAs.



What in hell was wrong with those? I mean nine? You kept going on and on?


----------



## cadaveca (Dec 22, 2011)

theJesus said:


> Then like I originally said, don't do anything.  It sucks that there still isn't a solution that can truly handle eyefinity.



Ok, but you understand that you've categorically agreed wit hthe 7970 being useless, right?

I mean, only multi-monitor users and 2560x1600 users need more than what I have already.


So, to me, that's the compare I need, as  high-end VGA solution user...I need to see, either dual 6990's, or 4x6950/6970, vs dual 7970's, in 5870x1080.

Of course, Eyefinity users aren't that common, so barely any reviewers have the hardware for such a compare.

This whole launch is completely useless to me.







Crap Daddy said:


> What in hell was wrong with those? I mean nine? You kept going on and on?



No idea, dude. Most cards had bad ram. One had a coldbug at idle. XFX kept replacing cards, so clearly it wasn't anything I did, and now, I've put my 6950's in the same hardware that the 5870's were in, and don't have any issues, so clearly i got a whole bunch of bad cards, and that is all. but then again, I was pushing Eyefinity @ 5870x1080, and 2560x1600, so maybe that was jsut plain ol' too much for the cards.


----------



## theJesus (Dec 22, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> Ok, but you understand that you've categorically agreed wit hthe 7970 being useless, right?
> 
> I mean, only multi-monitor users and 2560x1600 users need more than what I have already.
> 
> ...


I absolutely agree.  Also, like Crap Daddy said, what was up with those 5870's?


----------



## Crap Daddy (Dec 22, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> Of course, Eyefinity users aren't that common, so barely any reviewers have the hardware for such a compare.



Here, some eyefinity for ya:

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/12/22/amd_radeon_hd_7970_video_card_review/9


----------



## magibeg (Dec 22, 2011)

Nimmer said:


> Nice find thanks Jeager! Looks like the lead of 10% increase gets cut in half to 5% when comparing it to a 3gig GTX580...



I couldn't help myself here.... did you REALLY look at the reviews there he posted.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...s/49646-amd-radeon-hd-7970-3gb-review-25.html

There's the conclusion there:
 7970 average improvement vs the regular 580 is 24%.

If you go through all the reviews the 580 3GB picks up a frame or 2 here or there but nothing significant. So going by hardware canucks numbers the 580 3gb would be merely 20% slower than 7970. I know you're obviously hurt but please don't lie.


----------



## cadaveca (Dec 22, 2011)

Crap Daddy said:


> Here, some eyefinity for ya:
> 
> http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/12/22/amd_radeon_hd_7970_video_card_review/9



Yeah, great, one card, usually less than 40 FPS average. Yippie. Still useless to me. I need dual 7970, vs dual 6990 or equivalent.






*This just tells me that AMD's marketing is still fail, new staff or not. Every reviewer should have been supplied with 3 monitors, a stand, and two or three 7970 VGAs. Rory Read needs to be fired, as clearly he is incapable of ensuring that his staff do their jobs properly.*


7970, yeah, it's nice, less power from the wall, more perforamnce. Great. But OMG, someone please put these things to good real-world use, and share the numbers!!!

I'm now going back to clocking ram. Cheers.


----------



## sauron (Dec 22, 2011)

> CPU:Intel Core i7 920 @ 3.8 GHz


Why?


----------



## Jeffredo (Dec 22, 2011)

Looks like a great card - very efficient for the performance - but damn these "soft launches".  If the card isn't going to be available retail for three weeks, keep your mouth shut AMD.  Whatever happened to the good old days when reviews and retail availability coincided?


----------



## cadaveca (Dec 22, 2011)

sauron said:


> Why?



Because I have TPU's 3960X and supporting boards, on the other side of the ocean. 



S'alright?

Actually, honestly, to me, using X58 @ 3.8 is closer to replicating what the average user will get with a 7970, performance-wise. Probably half of 7970 buyers will be using something pre-SB/SB-E.

Also, the review guide that was flaoting around before the launch used other paltforms, so it's intereting to see numbers from something AMD didn't use themselves. If all the reviews used the same hardware, there'd be no point to having more than a single review published, on one single site.


----------



## Delta6326 (Dec 22, 2011)

Why are people complaining about price the 7970 isn't even released yet I say wait till the 9th and then complain(not saying the price will be lower or higher) if the 7970 is to high VS 580 is over 1 year old. And it really isn't that bad.


AVG Price is $510, 580's $6630/13=$510

AVG Price is $585, 580 3GB's $2340/4=$585


----------



## LAN_deRf_HA (Dec 22, 2011)

Mussels said:


> pity about the price, but thats one thing that WILL get better over time.



Will it? Look at the 580. It's price hasn't budged since launch. The only reason I'm getting a 580 3Gb is because I found one new for $430 and that's all it's worth this far into it's life, but Nvidia and AMD would seem to disagree with that logic. The 7970 won't budge in price as long as the 580 doesn't budge in price. Neither have to move because their price is relative to their performance. Nvidia and AMD have been doing this at a distance price fixing since the 5xxx series. Why fight a price war when they can just slot cards in between.


----------



## Jeffredo (Dec 22, 2011)

The GTX 580 dipped down the the low $400 range about a month ago for a short time.  Its back up to $500+ now.


----------



## OneCool (Dec 22, 2011)

Well it looks like AMD got the 7xxx series right.

Reckon they could get BullDozer fixed with a revision or is it to late?


----------



## OrbitzXT (Dec 22, 2011)

the54thvoid said:


> Why the flip (too early for swearing) can't AMD spend some time making a proper damn cooler? If you're going to release a new kick ass card that I 'was' tempted to go for (for the Pci-e x3 novelty), why don't you make sure the cooler is quiet at load?  It's not like it draws huge power and creates lots of heat.



I agree, I've owned both AMD and nVidia cards over the years and I'm not a fan boy, but the noise has turned me off to AMD for awhile now. The last card I owned was a 4870X2...and that got hot so I can understand the noise, but as you say the 7970 is efficient and shouldn't have this issue.


----------



## human_error (Dec 22, 2011)

Thanks for the great review w1zz. Also I for one am glad you still use an i7 920@3.8 as that's what I'm still using and won't be updating for a little while yet.

As for the card this looks good, and performs pretty well (the real boosts in performance are in compute tasks as Anandtech has investigated) but I just get the feeling that the real gains will be in the 8k series when AMD have been able to identify weaknesses in the new arcitecture, so my 5970 gets to stay for another year (longest I've ever had a GPU for).


----------



## W1zzard (Dec 22, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> Because I have TPU's 3960X and supporting boards, on the other side of the ocean.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



i disagree. i think most users of this card will be on normal sandy bridge. lga2011 is simply a waste of money - and tpu is catered toward the price/performance enthusiast crowd that favours overclocking (that's also why we have an oc'd i7 920 and not some more expensive cpu)

i haven't upgraded to sandy bridge because of its lack of good multi-gpu support (need two x16 pcie links, otherwise you people would complain about it in the cf / sli reviews).

i will definitely look into upgrading the vga benchmark rig to ivy bridge, because the i920 will be outdated in 2012


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Dec 22, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> i disagree. i think most users of this card will be on normal sandy bridge. lga2011 is simply a waste of money - and tpu is catered toward the price/performance enthusiast crowd that favours overclocking (that's also why we have an oc'd i7 920 and not some more expensive cpu)
> 
> i haven't upgraded to sandy bridge because of its lack of good multi-gpu support (need two x16 pcie links, otherwise you people would complain about it in the cf / sli reviews).
> 
> i will definitely look into upgrading the vga benchmark rig to ivy bridge, because the i920 will be outdated in 2012



Quick since your reading the thread how did you bench BF3?!


----------



## Assimilator (Dec 22, 2011)

So multi-monitor setups still run at max memory clocks (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/31.html) and higher vCore, hence negating much of the benefit of the new lower power draw at idle.

Not impressed.


----------



## W1zzard (Dec 22, 2011)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Quick since your reading the thread how did you bench BF3?!



single player jet map like everyone else


----------



## Kaotik (Dec 22, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> single player jet map like everyone else



Since I'm not sure if you got time to read all the posts:


Kaotik said:


> W1zzard, now I'm 100% confirmed something went wrong, and badly, at least with 6870 - it's performance at 1920x1200 on average in previous review was nearly 20% over 6850 - yet in the 7970 it's mere 6% faster than 6850 at same resolution
> 
> edit:
> In fact, 6870 has exactly same speed as 6850 in "all resolutions", and loses to 6850 1024x768 - no matter how irrelevant resolution, that simply tells that something borked on at least HD6870 benching.



Can't know for sure if any other card bench is borked, but 6870 results for sure are


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Dec 22, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> single player jet map like everyone else



Ah ok. Thanks!


----------



## W1zzard (Dec 22, 2011)

i rebenched the hd 5970 and uploaded new summary graphs with the corrected results


----------



## cadaveca (Dec 22, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> i disagree. i think most users of this card will be on normal sandy bridge. lga2011 is simply a waste of money - and tpu is catered toward the price/performance enthusiast crowd that favours overclocking (that's also why we have an oc'd i7 920 and not some more expensive cpu)
> 
> i haven't upgraded to sandy bridge because of its lack of good multi-gpu support (need two x16 pcie links, otherwise you people would complain about it in the cf / sli reviews).
> 
> i will definitely look into upgrading the vga benchmark rig to ivy bridge, because the i920 will be outdated in 2012



It just seems to me that those that bought or were interested in SB, have it already. There are a few single-card holdouts, for sure, but most users already with sandybridge bought 6950, chasing the unlock, and most bought two, as for $500, they offered decent performance.  icannot see many of those users really interested in the 7970...not @ $500 ea. Those that can afford that cost went GTX580 anyway, you'd think. Perhaps the upgrade itch will sell a lot of cards come tax time, but with retail launch not until January 9th, who knows how it will work.

2011 overkill and expensive...sure...but the 4-core might save it, if it ever comes out.

This is the first card launch that I can think of in a long time that doesn't have it's "killer app", too. It's a weird launch...given the overclcoks, you'd think they'd have gone for the "First consumer 1GHz GPU" to match the Guiness record of Bulldozer, or something.


----------



## qubit (Dec 22, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> It's a weird launch...given the overclcoks, you'd think they'd have gone for the "First consumer 1GHz GPU" to match the Guiness record of Bulldozer, or something.



Yes, that does seem odd, I reckon it might be to do with yields. Perhaps 925MHz are a lot better than 1000?


----------



## johnnyfiive (Dec 22, 2011)

badass card.


----------



## Kaotik (Dec 22, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> i rebenched the hd 5970 and uploaded new summary graphs with the corrected results



At least 6870 results are still borked, even if the 5850 comparison could be explained, there's simply no explanation, whatsoever, ever, never, that it would be slower than 6850 in _anything_, yet in all resolutions it's the same speed, and at 1024x768 6850 is over 3% faster than 6870


----------



## Steevo (Dec 22, 2011)

Is the cooler mounting the same as a 5870? And possibly the VRM cooler?


----------



## Jeffredo (Dec 22, 2011)

Steevo said:


> Is the cooler mounting the same as a 5870? And possibly the VRM cooler?



One can hope.  If Kepler isn't all we hope for I have an Arctic Cooling Accelero Twin Turbo II I'd like to make use of on an HD 7900 series - if the mounting holes are compatible.


----------



## Swamp Monster (Dec 22, 2011)

I like how other tech besides GPU in these cards evolves too. Anyone noticed that MOSFET package type has changed? Are they using IR DirectFet now?


----------



## dj-electric (Dec 22, 2011)




----------



## NAVI_Z (Dec 22, 2011)

gonna wait till more mature drivers come out. i hope these scale better than the 5xxx series cards for crossfire n eyefinity.


----------



## R_1 (Dec 22, 2011)

Swamp Monster said:


> I like how other tech besides GPU in these cards evolves too. Anyone noticed that MOSFET package type has changed? Are they using IR DirectFet now?


Old ones were golden with like +95 efficiency and extremely low voltage ripple, so they used small SMD capacitors with them. New ones are cost-effective and needed 470-1000mF capacitors. Also spacing is different and you cant mount bolted radiator on top of them. So second best thing, after full cover water-block for after-market cooling will be Arctic thermal glue of or some sticky no-name pads.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Dec 22, 2011)

Now if we could just get the CPU Side to Dev and Manufacture and Execute with Precision like the GPU side does...


----------



## Delta6326 (Dec 22, 2011)

qubit said:


> Yes, that does seem odd, I reckon it might be to do with yields. Perhaps 925MHz are a lot better than 1000?



maybe they will come out with something like the 4890 like 7980


----------



## Melvis (Dec 22, 2011)

Finally a card worthy to upgrade to from a 4870X2, god i can keep up with a 6950 ffs 

I find the card very impressive, good in every way apart from "possible" price, but meh that will drop.

Well done AMD 

And also well done wizz, excellent review, good amount of games which i like to see.


----------



## pantherx12 (Dec 22, 2011)

Eating my words as I speak disregard what this post said before XD

Performance scaling on a per game basis!





(edited and removed my old post because apparently my at a glance maths is crappy and these cards are better than expected lol)



1920x1080
AVP : +26.26
Batman AA :+ 62.55
BFBC3: +51.57
Battleforge:+ 32.57
COD4:+11.81
CIV5:+43.73
Crysis:+33.51
Crysis2:+56.26
Dirt3:+15.64
Dragonage2:+19.14
Hard reset :+34.14
Metro:+27.23
Stalker cop:+40.07
Starcraft 2 :0.93
Shogun 2 :+39.51
Skyrim:+5.95
Wow: - 6.5 that's minus 6.5 so to be absolutely clear
3dmark 11:+47.43
Heaven:+97.81 (wooo improved tessellation)


These cards are great!
(In engines that actually take advantage of GPU horse power)


I was WRONG about only expecting a 25% improvement!

As usual average out the result ( what most people look at) makes the cards look shit because of a few bad results( This applies to nvidia cards to by the by, INb4 fan boy comments)


The leaks got the games wrong but damn they were bang on about performance 25-50% improvements with a few surprises : ]


----------



## SK-1 (Dec 22, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> i rebenched the hd 5970 and uploaded new summary graphs with the corrected results



On top of things as usual


----------



## mastrdrver (Dec 22, 2011)

Assimilator said:


> So multi-monitor setups still run at max memory clocks (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/31.html) and higher vCore, hence negating much of the benefit of the new lower power draw at idle.
> 
> Not impressed.



I don't know about 5xxx or 6xxx series cards. Over on Anand, Ryan stated that if you use the DP connection on the 7970, then the clocks do not go up but stay at the low clocks.


----------



## W1zzard (Dec 22, 2011)

mastrdrver said:


> I don't know about 5xxx or 6xxx series cards. Over on Anand, Ryan stated that if you use the DP connection on the 7970, then the clocks do not go up but stay at the low clocks.



i used dvi + hdmi with mismatched resolutions.

afaik on nvidia if you run 2x same monitor and resolution it will be able to fall back to normal idle clocks, not sure about ati


----------



## cadaveca (Dec 23, 2011)

ATI cards that support DP get higher clocks for multi-monitor use due to flicker noticed under the lowered clocks that a single monitor runs at.

Both the 5-series and 6-series cards exhibit the flicker and higher clocks. Perhaps if the use of DP removes the use of the higher clocks with 7-series cards, perhaps the flicker issue has been fixed, too.

AMD explained that the differing protocols or difference in refresh times between monitors led to the flicker, and that the higher clocks were the fix.  Unfortunately there still many users noticing flicker, myself included. Currently it only seems to occur due clock changes. The 5-series card did not use higher clocks for multimonitor use until the 10.1 driver 4 months after the launch, if I remember correctly.


----------



## Mussels (Dec 23, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> ATI cards that support DP get higher clocks for multi-monitor use due to flicker noticed under the lowered clocks that a single monitor runs at.
> 
> Both the 5-series and 6-series cards exhibit the flicker and higher clocks. Perhaps if the use of DP removes the use of the higher clocks with 7-series cards, perhaps the flicker issue has been fixed, too.
> 
> AMD explained that the differing protocols or difference in refresh times between monitors led to the flicker, and that the higher clocks were the fix.  Unfortunately there still many users noticing flicker, myself included. Currently it only seems to occur due clock changes. The 5-series card did not use higher clocks for multimonitor use until the 10.1 driver 4 months after the launch, if I remember correctly.



i run multi monitor and crossfire, and have never had the flicker problems (albeit, crossfire only recently)


my brother had some nasty issues with his card early on, but the new drivers that raised clocks + an updated BIOS solved all his issues.


----------



## mastrdrver (Dec 23, 2011)

How do you have the monitors connected to the card (DVI, DP, HMDI)?


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Dec 23, 2011)

ive allways had flicker on dual heads(32"lcd and a 19") but i even get it on one occasionally dependent on clocks, ive heard the best fix(not tried) is to edit your bios clocks to permenantly goto 400 900 afaik in 2d mode and video(hdmi+vga and the hdmi shimers on lines the vga actually tears and stuff with net vid)

OT great review, and lovein the TPU lately, ive missed some life recently, 

now thats a concise and full review good stuff 

the card looks gr8 too im twitching as i expected / hoped,i might,and my 5870+5850 seems a bit shit now .


also just thinkin aloud but shouldnt the extra compute grunt provide higher (slightly) fps in games that rely on take advantge of opencl/direct compute ingame as the gpu will be taxed less by these tasks.


----------



## Mussels (Dec 23, 2011)

mastrdrver said:


> How do you have the monitors connected to the card (DVI, DP, HMDI)?



one DVI one HDMI - for a while i ran triple with 2x VGA and one DP-> DVI, and all were flicker free.


----------



## Super XP (Dec 23, 2011)

NAVI_Z said:


> gonna wait till more mature drivers come out. i hope these scale better than the 5xxx series cards for crossfire n eyefinity.


They do, they scale great, and in most games almost 2x the performance vs. a single HD 7970. And we are talking about beta drivers. I can only imagine a performance increase with newer drivers.


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Dec 23, 2011)

Mussels said:


> one DVI one HDMI - for a while i ran triple with 2x VGA and one DP-> DVI, and all were flicker free.



thats good to know mate lookin at your sys specs i am gona be allmost copying ya tomorrow but diff mem and an optimists 960T phenomII


----------



## pantherx12 (Dec 23, 2011)

Anyone know if the knew eyefinity features a 7000 series only?

Or if it's a software thing.

( talking specifically about independent resolutions)

As if it's only 7000 series only, I MUST have one lol.

Will be able to have a 2.39:1 aspect set up


----------



## cadaveca (Dec 23, 2011)

Mussels said:


> one DVI one HDMI - for a while i ran triple with 2x VGA and one DP-> DVI, and all were flicker free.



Might be the use of VGA that saved ya. Using dual DVI now, anytime the clocks switch, say for youtube acceleration, the secondary monitor flickers(I'm currently only using 2 monitors). The same also happens using DP with just two. Using DP + DVI, and three monitors, either with 1 DVI or TWO, I get the same flicker.


Before the clock-change fix, the flicker was almsot random, so it's definitely better, but it's not 100%.

Based on how the display output works, I think the ability to use different resolutions is a 7-series only feature, but here's hoping it's not.


----------



## Brod (Dec 23, 2011)

I believe there is an error with the 6870 and 5850 performance per watt figures. As you can see, their PPW relative to the 6850 differs wildly from Techpowerup's 6870 review.


----------



## THE_EGG (Dec 23, 2011)

MatTheCat said:


> Wot, a 10% increase in performance over the GTX 580 justifies it being 10% more expensive than the GTX 580 card that was released ages ago? Nvidia produces better quality cards with much better quality drivers and support. In contrast, ATI has always offered better value for money, but we aint seeing that here.



Hear Hear, totally agree 580 killer my ass.


----------



## magibeg (Dec 23, 2011)

THE_EGG said:


> Hear Hear, totally agree 580 killer my ass.



Well it all depends on how you look at it. If i was going to buy a new rig right now (i'm waiting until ivy bridge) I looks like it would be a no brainer to get the 7970 over the GTX580. At 1920x1200 res the 7970 maintains an easy 20+% advantage (according to anad, hardware canucks, etc etc). Uses less power too.

By all means the resolutions that gamers in the market for $500 cards in has the 7970 in quite the lead.


----------



## pantherx12 (Dec 23, 2011)

magibeg said:


> Well it all depends on how you look at it. If i was going to buy a new rig right now (i'm waiting until ivy bridge) I looks like it would be a no brainer to get the 7970 over the GTX580. At 1920x1200 res the 7970 maintains an easy 20+% advantage (according to anad, hardware canucks, etc etc). Uses less power too.
> 
> By all means the resolutions that gamers in the market for $500 cards in has the 7970 in quite the lead.



The reason it reads as 10% on here is because Wizz averages out the scores for the performance summary page, so one bench mark with a low score can bring down the entire thing.

I posted this on the last page but no one seems to of noticed 

VS 6970
1920x1080
AVP : +26.26
Batman AA :+ 62.55
BFBC3: +51.57
Battleforge:+ 32.57
COD4:+11.81
CIV5:+43.73
Crysis:+33.51
Crysis2:+56.26
Dirt3:+15.64
Dragonage2:+19.14
Hard reset :+34.14
Metro:+27.23
Stalker cop:+40.07
Starcraft 2 :0.93
Shogun 2 :+39.51
Skyrim:+5.95
Wow: - 6.5 that's minus 6.5 so to be absolutely clear
3dmark 11:+47.43
Heaven:+97.81 (wooo improved tessellation)



In games with decent engines it maintains 20%+ and then some.


----------



## THE_EGG (Dec 23, 2011)

pantherx12 said:


> The reason it reads as 10% on here is because Wizz averages out the scores for the performance summary page, so one bench mark with a low score can bring down the entire thing.
> 
> I posted this on the last page but no one seems to of noticed
> 
> ...



hey can you do a comparison like this except vs. gtx 580 ? maybe the 3GB model as well ?


----------



## THE_EGG (Dec 23, 2011)

magibeg said:


> Well it all depends on how you look at it. If i was going to buy a new rig right now (i'm waiting until ivy bridge) I looks like it would be a no brainer to get the 7970 over the GTX580. At 1920x1200 res the 7970 maintains an easy 20+% advantage (according to anad, hardware canucks, etc etc). Uses less power too.
> 
> By all means the resolutions that gamers in the market for $500 cards in has the 7970 in quite the lead.



I do agree it is better but still the 580 is over a year old now and I think a direct comparison review is needed with Nvidia's newest (maybe WHQL?) drivers. Along with the 3GB version of the card. TBH though I think it would have been a GTX 580 killer if it came out at the start of the year. Also from my experience Nvidia have always had more stable drivers etc.


----------



## pantherx12 (Dec 23, 2011)

THE_EGG said:


> hey can you do a comparison like this except vs. gtx 580 ? maybe the 3GB model as well ?



I can do vs the regular model of 580*, give me 10 minutes or so.

Have to manually input the data 


*At 1920x1080 the extra ram shouldn't really come into play anyway, if it does difference won't be game changing.


----------



## Vipeax (Dec 23, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> i rebenched the hd 5970 and uploaded new summary graphs with the corrected results


Thank you W1zzard. Highly appreciated that you toke the time to fix it.


----------



## magibeg (Dec 23, 2011)

THE_EGG said:


> I do agree it is better but still the 580 is over a year old now and I think a direct comparison review is needed with Nvidia's newest (maybe WHQL?) drivers. Along with the 3GB version of the card. TBH though I think it would have been a GTX 580 killer if it came out at the start of the year. Also from my experience Nvidia have always had more stable drivers etc.



http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...s/49646-amd-radeon-hd-7970-3gb-review-13.html

I dunno about the drivers, but he 3GB model doesn't appear to gain all that much. 

From those numbers it looks basically like the regular 580 loses by 24% and the 3GB loses by about 20%.


----------



## dom99 (Dec 23, 2011)

hmmm I must admit I was expecting a bit more from this chip, plus for the price they are asking there is no way I am trading in my 6950. If they priced it at £300 I would be sorely tempted but £450 is ridiculus. Once Nvidia release their 28nm cards im sure we will see a huge price drop. It must be AMD trying to make up for the Bulldozer fail and claw back more profits


----------



## pantherx12 (Dec 23, 2011)

1920x1080
7970 vs 580
Percentage increase or decrease
AVP : +25.40
Batman AA :+8.71
BFBC3: +19.69
Battleforge:+4.61
COD4:+3.46
CIV5:-7.3
Crysis:+23.64
Crysis2:+20.57
Dirt3:-7.53
Dragonage2:+12.44
Hard reset :+3.06
Metro:+10.03
Stalker cop:+17.82
Starcraft 2 :+2.84
Shogun 2 :+47.36
Skyrim:-1.4
Wow:+2.5
3dmark 11:+32.18
Heaven:+27.76 

Now we have a fair comparison, highlights any weaknesses and strengths of the new card : ]


----------



## Winston_008 (Dec 23, 2011)

R_1 said:


> Well, based on actual capacity of my 2TB HDD, compared to previous  360GB one, it should cost me $850. So at $85 it was a steal, "which is part of the reason prices for it never stabilized at that low a level".



You really should use the quote button when you try to mock what someone has said, people just see you as stupid otherwise.

Great review btw, i actually read the entire thing which is unusual for me. Top job


----------



## Aceman.au (Dec 23, 2011)

So it's going on shelves on January 3rd?


----------



## mastrdrver (Dec 23, 2011)

pantherx12 said:


> Anyone know if the knew eyefinity features a 7000 series only?
> 
> Or if it's a software thing.
> 
> ...



It is software from what I've read. Suppose to come to all 5xxx and 6xxx cards when the 12.2 Catalyst driver shows up.


----------



## khanman125 (Dec 23, 2011)

I am really surprised how well the 5970 has held up over the past 2 years, but i think its time for me to move to a single GPU config finally. But, a 7990 sounds pretty good to me. It seem like the scaling issues from the 5xxx to the 6xxx have been improved quite a bit. I hope the 7xxx follows suit.


----------



## pantherx12 (Dec 23, 2011)

mastrdrver said:


> It is software from what I've read. Suppose to come to all 5xxx and 6xxx cards when the 12.2 Catalyst driver shows up.



Thanks man, now I just need a hdmi/display-port to vga and to find two el cheapo 16:10 monitors


----------



## mastrdrver (Dec 23, 2011)

That's what I read over on Anand. I have not seen anyone else comment on it so ymmv.

Source


> So what is Eyefinity Technology 2.0 composed of? We’ve already seen several new features starting with Catalyst 11.10, such as 5x1 portrait and landscape support and flexible bezel compensation support. The next step is going to be integrating Stereo 3D (or as AMD likes to call it, HD3D) into the mix, similar to how NVIDIA has 3D Vision Surround. Catalyst 11.12 introduced the ability to use HD3D with an Eyefinity display setup, and Catalyst 12.1 (preview out now) added support to do that in a CrossFire configuration. The final step is going to be with Catalyst 12.2 in February, which will add support for custom resolutions and the ability to relocate the Windows task bar to an arbitrary screen, two features that users have been asking about for quite some time. Again, all of these improvements are driver side, but they are a major component of AMD’s marketing for Southern Islands.


----------



## H82LUZ73 (Dec 23, 2011)

cdawall said:


> Review your facts again
> 
> 
> 6870->6970 18%
> ...



You Have this wrong my friend ,The 5870 was replaced with the 6970 not the 6870 replace 6970....Barts and Cayman came out last year,The 6870 was the first to hit but was a mid range card,The Cayman replaced the Cypress IE 6970-5870.So too see the % between the 5870-6970 you need to redo them.


----------



## buggalugs (Dec 23, 2011)

The release price usually only lasts a couple of months anyway, when all the stores have stock the price will start to drop, then the cheaper non reference models start to appear.


----------



## cdawall (Dec 23, 2011)

H82LUZ73 said:


> You Have this wrong my friend ,The 5870 was replaced with the 6970 not the 6870 replace 6970....Barts and Cayman came out last year,The 6870 was the first to hit but was a mid range card,The Cayman replaced the Cypress IE 6970-5870.So too see the % between the 5870-6970 you need to redo them.



Your like 5 pages late that's been gone over.


----------



## Kaotik (Dec 23, 2011)

Brod said:


> I believe there is an error with the 6870 and 5850 performance per watt figures. As you can see, their PPW relative to the 6850 differs wildly from Techpowerup's 6870 review.


It's not only that, 6870 was ~20% faster than 6850 earlier, now it says ~6% - at "all resolutions" it's exactly the same speed, and at 1024x768 it's actually ranked slower than 6850.

It leaves a bitter taste of the whole review, TPU has been "the place" for me to check the general speed of cards, but this incident makes one think, is rest of the graphs crooked too (as they're quite a bit different from previous ones, though that could be explained by new game choices - 6870 performance however can't be)

I just hope W1zzard will re-bench things when 7950 is released, if he's not going to do it now


----------



## DannibusX (Dec 23, 2011)

Kaotik said:


> I just hope W1zzard will re-bench things when 7950 is released, if he's not going to do it now



On the third page, you'll find the follwing:


W1zzard said:


> not sure about those HD 5970 numbers, maybe CF didnt get enabled. I'll rebench.
> 
> no, i rebenched all cards with the latest drivers, check the test setup page


----------



## Kaotik (Dec 23, 2011)

DannibusX said:


> On the third page, you'll find the follwing:



Yes, and that still doesn't change the fact that _at least_ 6870 results are still wrong.

HD5850 and 6870 are both VLIW5 parts, there's just explainable way that HD6870 goes from being ~7% or so faster than 5850 to 5850 beating it by nearly 4% at same resolution.

Even if you could pull some tricks from somewhere to explain why that happens, there is absolutely no possibility that HD6850 would outperform HD6870 in any circumstances, like it is doing now (1024x768 chart), or that it would be as fast (all resolutions combined chart).

6850 is weaker than 6870 on every single theoretical and practical meter, it uses the very same chip with parts disabled and has lower clocks too - 6850 *can not* outperform 6870, ever, yet in this review it does under certain resolution, with a difference (over 3%) which can't be even called error margin by a long shot.


----------



## YautjaLord (Dec 23, 2011)

Whether this is the 1st time you use it Wiz, or not - thank you for running Crysis 2 benchie in DX11 & not 9; thanx for conductive benchmarking as usual.  One more question remains: which level or timedemo you used? Times Square one or do you have access to built-in timedemo via console/cvar? Once got this game i wanna run it too.


----------



## the54thvoid (Dec 24, 2011)

Kaotik said:


> Yes, and that still doesn't change the fact that _at least_ 6870 results are still wrong.
> 
> HD5850 and 6870 are both VLIW5 parts, there's just explainable way that HD6870 goes from being ~7% or so faster than 5850 to 5850 beating it by nearly 4% at same resolution.
> 
> ...



Why are you getting _so_ upset?

How the 6870 and 6850 score relative to 7970.
All Res : Equal % 
1024x768: 6870 2% lower  (the 'wonky' result')
1280x1024 : 6870 2% higher
1680x1050 : 6870 3% higher
1920x1200 : 6870 3% higher
2560x1600 : 6870 2% higher

In one result it is 2% worse than the 6870 when cmpared to the 7970.  It could have been a minor glitch and you want him to rebench?  It's a review for the highest end single gpu.  The low-medium mainstream cards _aren't that relevant_ to the review.

Go here to feel better. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/Radeon_HD_6870/29.html.  This is the 6870 original review. It is far more relevant if you want to compare the 6870 and 6850. This review is for the 7970.


----------



## Mussels (Dec 24, 2011)

not to mention with various driver enhancements and bugs, sometimes you do just get weird results.


----------



## Kaotik (Dec 24, 2011)

the54thvoid said:


> Why are you getting _so_ upset?
> 
> How the 6870 and 6850 score relative to 7970.
> All Res : Equal %
> ...



Of course newest reviews are always the most relevant, as all the cards are being benched with the said set of drivers & games (unless same set of drivers and games has been used before to bench the said card, which isn't true for this case)

Let's turn those to actual numbers and compare to 1 review ago and the original one too - all have different drivers and games - and of course we won't compare to 7970, but 6870 and 6850 directly

Numbers presented 6870 compared to 6850, 7970 review / 560Ti 448 review / 6990 / 6870 review
All res: 0% faster / 17.9% faster / 14.6% faster / 14.9% faster
1024: 3.1% slower / 14.7% faster / 12.7% faster / 11.1% faster
1280: 1.8% faster / 17.4% faster / 16% faster / 14.9% faster
1680: 5.7% faster / 16.7% faster / 15.6% faster / 14.9% faster
1920: 6% faster / 19.7% faster / 19% faster / 16.3% faster
2560: 4.4% faster / 21.5% faster / 17.9% faster / 16.3% faster

Bonus tip: All reviews between 560Ti 448 and 6870 reviews give similar numbers to those

The relative speed between 2 cards doesn't change notably regardless of which card is being reviewed, only the roundings to nearest full % twist the difference to one way or another a bit, but it doesn't have major impact on it - this is why I've included 6990 in which the 100% mark is even higher than in 7970 review.

Which review doesn't belong, in which review, it's 100% certain that 6870 numbers are plain wrong, which also makes one think if other numbers in the said review are borked, too?

Also, it seems there's some fundamental errors in other reviews too - in 6990 review all 5 resolutions have bigger difference than in 6870 review, but the "all resolutions" difference is smaller



Mussels said:


> not to mention with various driver enhancements and bugs, sometimes you do just get weird results.



Yes, but when you're talking about 2 cards, which use _same chip_, of which lower model is using partly disabled chip _at lower clocks too_, it's impossible, regardless of bugs and whatnot which would be the exact same for both cards, that the lower model of these 2 could outperform the higher model card in tests which are the same for both cards.

edit:
Car comparisons are always fun.
Let's say we have 2 identical Ferraris, which drive straight line - only difference is, the other Ferrari has 1 gear removed and revs limited too. It's impossible that the Ferrari with 1 gear removed and revs limited would outrun the Ferrari with full gears & no rev limits. The full blown Ferrari will keep outrunning the crippled Ferrari no matter if you switch some slowbie driver to fast driver on both cars, and no matter how many faster cars you put to do the same - same applies to 6870 vs 6850.


----------



## yogurt_21 (Dec 24, 2011)

Kaotik said:


> Of course newest reviews are always the most relevant, as all the cards are being benched with the said set of drivers & games (unless same set of drivers and games has been used before to bench the said card, which isn't true for this case)
> 
> Let's turn those to actual numbers and compare to 1 review ago and the original one too - all have different drivers and games - and of course we won't compare to 7970, but 6870 and 6850 directly
> 
> ...



math... you needs more classes in it. Each review is re-stated against the current card reviewed. Ie the baseline for comparison changes with each review. This is why percentages are not comperable between reviews and due to changes in drivers and the games benched fps aren't really either. 

so sure when the 6870 is the baseline, it shows up as 20% faster on the graph. However should the baseline be say a 5450, it would show as a higher percentage. With a better gpu as the baseline the difference between the cards is going to show as a lower percentage. The difference between other cards on the graphs is only comperable against the baseline. So you must compare each against the baseline to come up with the percentage between the two. Stats doesn't allow you to simply add or subtract percentages of the other cards against each other. That's bad math. 

at 1680x1050 the 6870 is actually closer to 10% faster overall compared with the 6850 based on this review. Remember several new bencmarks were introduced in this review and several others were removed. You simply cannot use the other numbers to justify why you think this review is off. 

if you're really interested in the how and why of all this I'm sure there's plenty of course offerings in your area on stats and percentages.


----------



## Kaotik (Dec 24, 2011)

yogurt_21 said:


> math... you needs more classes in it. Each review is re-stated against the current card reviewed. Ie the baseline for comparison changes with each review. This is why percentages are not comperable between reviews and due to changes in drivers and the games benched fps aren't really either.
> 
> so sure when the 6870 is the baseline, it shows up as 20% faster on the graph. However should the baseline be say a 5450, it would show as a higher percentage. With a better gpu as the baseline the difference between the cards is going to show as a lower percentage. The difference between other cards on the graphs is only comperable against the baseline. So you must compare each against the baseline to come up with the percentage between the two. Stats doesn't allow you to simply add or subtract percentages of the other cards against each other. That's bad math.
> 
> ...



Wait what, *I* need math classes? Did you even read what I wrote? 

If you bothered checking my numbers, you'd see the numbers are correct - they're all counted as how many %'s is the 6870's number from 6850's - the baseline is irrelevant for that, moving the 100% mark only causes some rounding errors. I used 6990 review too just to illustrate this, and could use 5450 review too. 

They're all counted as how many percents faster (or slower in 1 case) 6870 is compared to 6850 - 11.1% faster is the same regardless if of what you have as baseline, 6850 27 vs 6870 30, 6850 90 6870 100, 6850 216 6870 240 - they're all the same.

I know several games were changed for this review, and that can of course affect the difference between 2 cards a bit, but it doesn't do what happened in this review, it doesn't put a card ~15-20% faster on every occasion before to be around 5% faster to actually being slower just because you switch games


----------



## nt300 (Dec 24, 2011)

I wonder how the HD 7850 and 7870 will perform and how much they will cost?


----------



## Mussels (Dec 24, 2011)

nt300 said:


> I wonder how the HD 7850 and 7870 will perform and how much they will cost?



i'm more interested in their power to performance ratio, they could turn out to be extremely fast for their power consumption, which is a massive win for ITX/mATX system builders.


----------



## W1zzard (Dec 24, 2011)

problem found why hd 6870 sucks so much since the rebench:







result of the damage -> card running at pcie x2 (that's 2 lanes vs. 16 it should run at)

off to find another hd 6870


----------



## eidairaman1 (Dec 24, 2011)

dom99 said:


> hmmm I must admit I was expecting a bit more from this chip, plus for the price they are asking there is no way I am trading in my 6950. If they priced it at £300 I would be sorely tempted but £450 is ridiculus. Once Nvidia release their 28nm cards im sure we will see a huge price drop. It must be AMD trying to make up for the Bulldozer fail and claw back more profits



Incorrect. The 7000 Series had a precise launch and met or exceeded performance expectations, Marketing of this model series hasnt been exaggerated by the marketing dept. FYI Bulldozer is far from a failure because people and businesses are buying them.


----------



## cadaveca (Dec 24, 2011)

Ouch. Good catch though, W1zz!


----------



## crazyeyesreaper (Dec 24, 2011)

yup that definitely a bummer and explains the discrepancies in performance.


----------



## pantherx12 (Dec 24, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> problem found why hd 6870 sucks so much since the rebench:
> 
> http://img.techpowerup.org/111224/Capture244.jpg
> 
> ...



One day I hope those get embedded in the PCB it's self rather than surface mounted.

Knocked so many off them off over the years.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Dec 24, 2011)

Never knocked smds off. Ive shorted ram out n bent a cpu pin but thats pretty much it


----------



## twicksisted (Dec 24, 2011)

wow 3gb of gfx ram, wonder how crap it performs on a 32bit OS!


----------



## W1zzard (Dec 24, 2011)

eidairaman1 said:


> Never knocked smds off. Ive shorted ram out n bent a cpu pin but thats pretty much it



don't store your electronics like this and you will be fine


----------



## twicksisted (Dec 24, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> don't store your electronics like this and you will be fine
> 
> http://img.techpowerup.org/111224/Capture245.jpg



"Boxing" day at Wizz's house


----------



## cadaveca (Dec 24, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> don't store your electronics like this and you will be fine
> 
> http://img.techpowerup.org/111224/Capture245.jpg






You're doing better than I am At least some of yours are seperated by carboard.:


----------



## acperience7 (Dec 24, 2011)

I was really looking forward to seeing their liquid chamber tech on these cards. Other than that I'm really liking the performance numbers, but I think I'll be able to get by on my 5870's for a while.


----------



## twicksisted (Dec 24, 2011)

but on a serious note, what happens if you try and use one of these on a 32bit OS?
If a 32bit OS can only address 4gb of ram in total that doesent leave much left for the gfx memory to be duplicated in the system memory or has this since changed in Win7?


----------



## arnoo1 (Dec 24, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> don't store your electronics like this and you will be fine
> 
> http://img.techpowerup.org/111224/Capture245.jpg



please donate me one


----------



## W1zzard (Dec 24, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> At least some of yours are seperated by carboard



i added the cardboard today after discovering the damaged hd 6870. but then was too lazy to do it for the other boxes 



> but on a serious note, what happens if you try and use one of these on a 32bit OS?


the card will only allocate a 256 or 512 mb window in the cpu address space (i actually checked this with a hd 7970, but forgot which of the two it was)


----------



## MxPhenom 216 (Dec 24, 2011)

If the 7870 has GTX570 performance but low power consumption. it might be my card! maybe 2 of them.

okay yep. Might get a 7870

http://wccftech.com/amd-launching-r...n-xtpro-february-2012-pricing-specs-detailed/


----------



## Kaotik (Dec 24, 2011)

twicksisted said:


> wow 3gb of gfx ram, wonder how crap it performs on a 32bit OS!



I wouldn't worry about the cards performance so much - i'd be more worried how on earth the OS itself would perform with the leftover address space


----------



## Kaotik (Dec 24, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> the card will only allocate a 256 or 512 mb window in the cpu address space (i actually checked this with a hd 7970, but forgot which of the two it was)


This can't be right 
It has to map everything it's going to ever use to the address space there is, which is exactly 4GB in 32bit system, since PAE hasn't been supported since.. was it XP SP2?

Pushing the Limits of Windows: Physical Memory - Mark's Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs


> The consumption of memory addresses below 4GB can be drastic on high-end gaming systems with large video cards. For example, *I purchased one from a boutique gaming rig company that came with 4GB of RAM and two 1GB video cards. *I hadn't specified the OS version and assumed that they'd put 64-bit Vista on it, but *it came with the 32-bit version and as a result only 2.2GB of the memory was accessible by Windows.* You can see a giant memory hole from 8FEF0000 to FFFFFFFF in this Meminfo output from the system after I installed 64-bit Windows:


 
The system memory that is reported in the System Information dialog box in Windows Vista is less than you expect if 4 GB of RAM is installed


> Various devices in a typical computer require memory-mapped access. This is known as memory-mapped I/O (MMIO). For the MMIO space to be available to 32-bit operating systems, the MMIO space must reside within the first 4 GB of address space.
> 
> For example, if you have a video card that has 256 MB of onboard memory, that memory must be mapped within the first 4 GB of address space. If 4 GB of system memory is already installed, part of that address space must be reserved by the graphics memory mapping. Graphics memory mapping overwrites a part of the system memory. These conditions reduce the total amount of system memory that is available to the operating system.
> 
> ...


 
Memory Limits for Windows Releases


> *How graphics cards and other devices affect memory limits*
> 
> Devices have to map their memory below 4 GB for compatibility with non-PAE-aware Windows releases. Therefore, if the system has 4GB of RAM, some of it is either disabled or is remapped above 4GB by the BIOS. If the memory is remapped, X64 Windows can use this memory. X86 client versions of Windows don’t support physical memory above the 4GB mark, so they can’t access these remapped regions. Any X64 Windows or X86 Server release can.
> X86 client versions with PAE enabled do have a usable 37-bit (128 GB) physical address space. The limit that these versions impose is the highest permitted physical RAM address, not the size of the IO space. That means PAE-aware drivers can actually use physical space above 4 GB if they want. For example, drivers could map the “lost” memory regions located above 4 GB and expose this memory as a RAM disk.


----------



## Mussels (Dec 24, 2011)

Kaotik: thats not how much is usable max, its how much is reserved, (minimum) per card.


----------



## W1zzard (Dec 25, 2011)

finished rebenching the hd 6870 and updated the summary graphs


----------



## theJesus (Dec 25, 2011)

Quick everybody, find something else wrong with the graphs; we mustn't let W1zzard have any time to enjoy the holidays!


----------



## W1zzard (Dec 25, 2011)

theJesus said:


> Quick everybody, find something else wrong with the graphs; we mustn't let W1zzard have any time to enjoy the holidays!



"holidays" = extra time for work


----------



## GSquadron (Dec 25, 2011)

I think working with graphics is quite a holiday ^_^


----------



## jrs3000 (Dec 25, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> "holidays" = extra time for work



Hey wizz can you give us a gift and do a quick test or two of the card with a bulldozer processor.   I haven't seen any and I'm sure people are curious how it would stack up compared to intel.


----------



## cadaveca (Dec 25, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> "holidays" = extra time for work



No kids, eh? Holidays for me  = 4 kids running around the house buzzed on sugar from holiday goodies.


----------



## mediasorcerer (Dec 26, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> problem found why hd 6870 sucks so much since the rebench:
> 
> http://img.techpowerup.org/111224/Capture244.jpg
> 
> ...



Could you try resoldering? has it bridged between c106/c107? seems a shame anyway.


----------



## Jonap_1st (Dec 26, 2011)

a perfect remedy for curing the failure of bulldozer..

.. i want one,


----------



## buggalugs (Dec 31, 2011)

In the 7970 review on the heaven benchmark page, the 6970 gets 32 FPS(@1920x1200). 

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/25.html

 On an old 6970 review for the HIS model the 6970 gets 45 fps in heaven:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/Radeon_HD_6970/26.html

 The test systems look to be exactly the same, same res, same everything, how can a 6970 lose 25% performance over a few months??


----------



## cowie (Dec 31, 2011)

A card loses performance after a few months by the drivers needing to actually apply aa/af or tessellation.
On the other hand they do gai some fps over time by being better optimized(Thats the one you hear most

Anyway i cant believe wizz dont use 03 05 or 06 anymore!!wtf?


----------



## cadaveca (Dec 31, 2011)

03, 05, and 06 are all CPU-limited. In other words, vastly more powerful cards don't score as much as they should due to CPU limitations. Those tests are good for overclock testing only, IMHO.


----------



## cowie (Dec 31, 2011)

lol  
I know its low res when default but i just am so used to seeing his reviews include those benches.
At the same cpu speeds i could get the jist of a score and ponder what a card could do by certain benchmark areas.
I'm not that big a gamer so i dont care if one card can run a game 10fps faster or stuff like that.


----------



## cadaveca (Dec 31, 2011)

Ah. well, if benching, I think the reports of 1335 Mhz stock cards bodes well for future benchmark records.


----------



## cowie (Dec 31, 2011)

You aint kidding,and the way they clock on dice/ln2 they will be top of the boards till either a refreash or nv cards are out(maybe).


----------



## WhoDecidedThat (Jan 1, 2012)

legends84 said:


> nice.. hope to see real performance if this card test on pciE 3.0 mobo..



Not Possible. SB-E has 8 PCIe 3.0 lanes whose bandwidth is equal to 16 PCIe 2.0 lanes since PCIe 3.0 doubles the bandwidth of PCIe 2.0 per lane. So there shouldn't be much performance improvements.


----------



## WhoDecidedThat (Jan 1, 2012)

1Kurgan1 said:


> 50% is a lot to expect, I don't know if any generation gap has brought those kind of figures.



GTX 480 was about that much faster than the GTX 285.


----------



## WhoDecidedThat (Jan 1, 2012)

Trackr said:


> Am I the only one who's disappointed here?
> 
> It's 8-15% more powerful than the GTX 580.
> 
> ...



It was designed for 2304 SPs at 1 GHz. They backed it down.


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## Casecutter (Jan 3, 2012)

Wow! Home Run with two on base, bottom of the 7th! Not a base loaded, but definitely has the crowd on their feet!

Sure the price... while high I don't know if it's truly all falls on AMD's shoulders. TSMC is a player in the new price structure, and I wouldn't make that call until Nvidia has their "Über Enthusiast" part is in the market to pass judgment.  Heck, Nvidia being 6 months (or better) on that release might play in their favor, that’s a millennium for TSMC/Nvidia to tweak their process(s) and provide cost ratio on deliverables.  Though Nvidia big die strategy is still as always a factor (strike) against them, it again is AMD taking lead, being the "guinea pig" and on parts for their star player first.  That was a baall'ies move IMO.

Then if you’re thinking of this for 1920x don't think of coming from popcorn stand to the dugout! Unless it's for BF3, Skyrim or STALKER COP; those are titles really pushing the hardware and that's how it works. (you have to pay to play to be a Top Tier Player)

With awesome power/performance it's a long wait for Kepler, and what's now I’m re-terming as "Super Über segment", and dropping "Über Enthusiast" to 580/570/6970/6970 or what will be the 7870 when it shows..

Is it time for the average Joe to grab one?  Only if you’re a Joe with disposable income.


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## Sir Alex Ice (Jan 4, 2012)

The testing method used seems to be old and outdated on 2 accounts:
1. the resolution used 1900x1200 should be replaced with the much more popular 1920x1080
2. Unigine's Heaven has reached version 2.5 and should be used to test all recent cards.


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## crazyeyesreaper (Jan 4, 2012)

for one 1920x1200 and 1920x1080 are so damn similar you wont see a difference worth bothering with so its a moot point

Heaven Bench at 2.5 or 2.0 dosent really matter all that much 2.5 is just a longer bench run but in the end it dosent matter because all gpus are tested in 2.0 meaning the performance head to head is still indicative of DX11 performance.
1024x768 4x3 = 786,432 pixels
530k difference
1280x1024 5x4 = 1,310,720 pixels
450k difference
1680x1050 16x10 = 1,764,000 pixels
300k difference
1920x1080 16x9 = 2,073,600 pixels
300k difference
1920x1200 16x10 = 2,304,000 pixels
1.7m difference
2560x1600 4,096,000 pixels

the reason 1920x1200 is popular for testing is because it has more distance away in terms of pixel count from 1680x1050 

300k pixel difference from 1680x1050 to 1920x1080 the difference is small enough that the change in FPS would be a bit less

using 1920x1200 offers up 600k pixel difference which gives a better overall indication of performance for those at 1080p because they can expect  that not all systems are the same so the bit of an extra drop for 1200p gives people breathing room, not to mention it tends to even off the pixel increase aka 500 450 600 is a bit more preferable to 500 450 then drop to 300.

not to mention 1080p might be more POPULAR but youll be hard pressed to find many on this forum that prefer 1080p to 1200p most would take 1920x1200 if they can get it.

thats how I see it anyway.


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## Sir Alex Ice (Jan 4, 2012)

Full HD is the current norm for gaming systems, either PCs or console based. Not using is living in the past.
Remaining with the version 2.0 when 2.5 is out and has been out for a while is also living in the past.
Finally, if there is not difference between them there should be no problem in using the new resolutions and versions.
I can understand keeping the test data for comparison, but when a new generation of VGA comes out the testing method should really be updated.


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## crazyeyesreaper (Jan 4, 2012)

well then go read other reviews that offer only 3D Mark 11 Vantage and 3-4 games then

fact is w1zzards isnt like most other reviewers he dosent keep stagnant old data around

every so often he rebenchs every single gpu you see on those charts benchmarks are kept as they are for comparison reasons as throwing away valuable data is worse then using an earlier benchmark version

get over it.

find me another review site that tests the same number of GPUs review tests and tests it on as many games as W1zzard does.

not to mention he tests at resolution ranges from 1024x768 up to 2560 x1600

most review sites test at 1680x1050 and up thats it. W1zzards work load is nearly 3-5 times more then most other GPU reviewers.

you want him to get with the times okay in that case lets drop half the gpus from the chart and some of the games.

if your going to nit pick a single damn benchmark and a single resolution you need to shape up

you do realize that your in favor of 16:9 1920 x 1080 

well guess what 1680x1050 is 16:10 and its the most common PC resolution period at nearly 3x the number of PC users vs 1920x1080 res

to be blunt 16:10 aspect ratio still has greater then 30% market share for desktop resolutions

1680x1050  1920x1200 and 2560 x 1600 are all thats right 16:10 = 30% market demographic according to steam

1920x1080 might have 17% but 16:9 displays only make up 20% of the market

untill 16:9 takes over as the dominate aspect ratio i see no point and switching out 1 resolution from 1920x1200 to 1920x1080 when it serves no purpose.

also your telling a reviewer to go out and buy more hardware to suit your needs. when its not neccsary

why not replace all resolutions remove the 4:3 the 5:4 and switch everything to 16:9 oh wait thats right expect for 1920x1080 almost all other 16:9 desktop resolutions have crap market share.

According to Steam
Total Aspect ratio of general users

4:3 = 7%
5:4 = 11%
16:9 = 21%
16:10 = 31%
misc = 4%
theres another 23% roughly misc resolutions thats not reported. aka 1920x1200 2560 x 1600 and other lower resolutions

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

of those resolution w1zzards supports the better PC market share for overall penetration in aspect ratio aka 16:10

but he also represents the most used 4:3 and 5:4 resolutions as well

no to switch to 1920x1080 from 1920x1200 is maybe 2% margin of error to the point it would be a worthless expense for w1zzard. to switch.

Altho im sure if you were so kind as to donate a 1920x1080 screen he might help you. but im willing to guess hes using the 2560x1600 res monitor to test all resolutions there for sticking to 16:10 works best over all since thats the aspect ratio the monitor was design with in the first place.


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## ViperXTR (Jan 5, 2012)

haha im sorry if im not rich enough to get 1080p display combo'd with a "capable" gpu.
I always tend to go in the mid range segment GPUs since i only use non full HD display, up to now im still using a 1280 x 1024 5:4 display (!!) on my weak GTX 460SE overclocked, at least it makes me play my game with less hassle vs running on a 1080p, so thats why Wiz's benchmark results are pretty helpful in my case at least


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## crazyeyesreaper (Jan 5, 2012)

its why youll notice i posted the 1 line there about 4:3 and 5:4  1024x768 and 1280x1024 both represent the largest group of uses in those 2 aspect ratios, for entry lvl gaming

1680x1050 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 of course are all 16:10 and represent the proper resolution for the monitor hes testing on. 

monitor size dosent matter, just point out obvious facts for why w1zzard does what he does.  most people think its SO easy to just change shit. they have no idea how much work is involved.


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## buggalugs (Jan 6, 2012)

cowie said:


> A card loses performance after a few months by the drivers needing to actually apply aa/af or tessellation.



 We actually looked into that very question here, to see if driver performance improved over time and the answer was it stays about the same overall, with maybe a 2 or 3 % improvement over several months.

 You can get the odd game where drivers improve performance by 25% or something but overall its more like 3%. That what the reviews show.

 Theres no way a 6970 can lose 25% performance in a benchmark(heaven), in a couple of months.

 I still think there is something wrong with the AMD numbers in the 7970 review, they are not consistent with Wizzards past reviews, using exactly the same hardware.

 Wizzard, can you explain why the 6970 scores 45 fps in heaven in the 6970 review, but scores 32fps in heaven in the 7970 review?


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## dj-electric (Jan 6, 2012)

So... much... power....







For reference, Stock HD5850 - about 7700~


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## W1zzard (Jan 6, 2012)

buggalugs said:


> Theres no way a 6970 can lose 25% performance in a benchmark(heaven), in a couple of months.



hd 6970 2560x1600:

catalyst 11.12: 21.0 fps
catalyst 11.2: 31.1 fps

can someone try to verify please? (should be visible at lower resolution, too)


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## TheMailMan78 (Jan 6, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> hd 6970 2560x1600:
> 
> catalyst 11.12: 21.0 fps
> catalyst 11.2: 31.1 fps
> ...



Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't the 11.2 drivers done with the old driver team? That could explain it right there.


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## cadaveca (Jan 6, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> hd 6970 2560x1600:
> 
> catalyst 11.12: 21.0 fps
> catalyst 11.2: 31.1 fps
> ...



I can test with 6950 2 GB only. But I can tell you that yes, current drivers are slower than just after launch. At the same time, image quality changed a bit too, that I could tell. The 11.4 driver, when they introduced the new "CCC" at the time, I think was when the performance drop occurred, and was there for nearly all apps. There's probably some complaints on the forums from back around then about poor performance...

Now, with 3DMark 2011, the most recent patch gives lower scores overall than previous versions, so there should be a drop there now too. 

Now we have yet another newer CCC, so I expect things to maybe stabilize after 6 months, as per the norm.

The only thing for me is that at the time, I was using multi-GPU and multi-monitor, and had other issues that still exist, like flicker on secondary monitors and such, that made the performance loss seem like not a big deal. When did SP1 come out? Is that potentially a factor as well?


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## buggalugs (Jan 7, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> hd 6970 2560x1600:
> 
> catalyst 11.12: 21.0 fps
> catalyst 11.2: 31.1 fps
> ...



 I installed 11.12 and I got 45.5 in heaven(@1080p), Every driver is around 45 ever since I got the 6970 when it first came out. Even my old 5870 got around 32fps in Heaven. Something is wrong with your system, because my hardware is almost identical to the test system. The only difference is 1080p/1200 res.





Uploaded with ImageShack.us


I think you have a software problem and I think I know what it is. After driver 11.7(or maybe 11.8) There was a C+ error that screwed up CCC. If you are changing from 11.2 to 11.12 drivers you would be affected by it.

 Try this, uninstall all AMD software and reboot, go into control panel and uninstall Microsoft C+ Redist 2010 x64 and reboot. Now Install driver 11.12(C+ is included) and reboot. (Then Load factory defaults in CCC)


 Problem solved. Your low scores for the 6970 arent consistent with your previous reviews. 

 Anyway Wizzard I love your work, I hope the fix works.




cadaveca said:


> I can test with 6950 2 GB only. But I can tell you that yes, current drivers are slower than just after launch. ?



 I dont agree, my scores have been pretty consistent. EVen Wizzards reviews are consistent except for the 7970 review. We're talking about a 25% difference in performance, if AMD have lost 25% performance there would be world wide outrage and it would be front page news.

 Other reviews around the net dont show any significant drop in performance on AMD cards. Wizzards review is the odd one out, and I'm pretty sure its a software error.


This is Wizzards last graphics card review (before the 7970) for Zotac GTX 560, it was done only 6 weeks ago(Nov 29th) and the 6970 scores 45.3 in Heaven benchmark@1920x1200.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Zotac/GeForce_GTX_560_Ti_448_Cores/24.html

So the 6970 has lost 25% in 6 weeks? Doesnt make sense

Edit: just to add the 11.12 driver isnt a good driver overall, and its not recommended by AMD to use.

 This is what AMD say about 11.12:

The AMD Catalyst™ 12.1 Preview includes all of the features found in AMD Catalyst™ 11.12 and also includes all of the latest optimizations found in the AMD Catalyst 11.11c performance drivers *(AMD Catalyst 11.12 does not include the latest 11.11c optimizations).   It is highly recommended that all gamers use the AMD Catalyst 12.1 Preview driver.*

 I know the preview driver doesnt work with the 7970 so thats a problem, but if you're using a driver thats not recommended (11.12)thats a problem too. I think Wizzard will have to rerun the tests when the official 12.1 driver is released in a few days because the results arent accurate.


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## W1zzard (Jan 7, 2012)

buggalugs said:


> I think you have a software problem



the current vga rig is a complete reinstall with only 11.12 ever being installed.

for testing i went back to the old installation, same results with 11.12.

i tried 11.2 on both installations and got the same (higher) results, suggesting it's not an installation problem on my side

to downgrade catalyst you have to uninstall the newer drivers first.

please uninstall your ati driver, reboot, install 11.2, run the bench and report back



buggalugs said:


> but if you're using a driver thats not recommended (11.12)thats a problem too



amd recommends their latest WHQL driver, and most people use it, that's why I use WHQL only.
if amd can't get their WHQL drivers working right, SOL AMD.


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## buggalugs (Jan 7, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> amd recommends their latest WHQL driver, and most people use it, that's why I use WHQL only.
> if amd can't get their WHQL drivers working right, SOL AMD.



 Usually thats the case, but 11.12 is the first time they recommend not to use it. Probably because they have a new card with new CCC features they didnt want to waste time on the old one that will be obsolete.

Anyway this is 11.2. , I had an install error "C+ failed to load" as I described in my previous post. But I fixed it and results are about the same.







[/URL][/IMG]

My 6970 has improved a little since 11.2. If you installed drivers from scratch it must be just 11.12 is a bad driver for you but the difference is too big to ignore.

 Maybe you can use 12.1 preview this time(or wait for 12.1WHQL) and rerun the tests. 




..


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## dj-electric (Jan 7, 2012)

I have tested Heaven 2.5 with HD6970. 1920X1200 4XAA the rest is default. 36.3FPS
(3960X @ 4.2Ghz)

Kinda similar to the performance you got w1zz.
BUT something weirder happend. you used 16 Dec driver, i used the updated 20 Dec one and got only 55.1FPS with HD7970 on that screnario


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## W1zzard (Jan 7, 2012)

Dj-ElectriC said:


> I have tested Heaven 2.5 with HD6970. 1920X1200 4XAA the rest is default. 36.3FPS
> (3960X @ 4.2Ghz)



check catalyst 11.2 vs. 11.12

also check if heaven 2.0 makes any difference. i'm using heaven 2.0 because they want me to buy the pro version for automation @ $495, vs. free with 2.0


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## dj-electric (Jan 7, 2012)

Y U Make me waste time on older graphics cards when i need to work on new ones ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Alrighty. Heaven 2.0 - HD6970
1920X1200 4XAA

Cat 11.2 - 40.7FPS
Cat 11.12 - 31.8FPS

There's definitely a problem and heaven 2.0 performance have dramatically decreased


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## W1zzard (Jan 7, 2012)

Dj-ElectriC said:


> Cat 11.2 - 40.7FPS
> Cat 11.12 - 31.8FPS
> 
> There's definitely a problem and heaven 2.0 performance have dramatically decreased



thanks


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## buggalugs (Jan 7, 2012)

Dj-ElectriC said:


> Cat 11.2 - 40.7FPS
> Cat 11.12 - 31.8FPS
> 
> There's definitely a problem and heaven 2.0 performance have dramatically decreased



 But your heaven 2.5 score was low too with driver 11.12.

 I just ran heaven 2.0 and got 42.9 fps , pretty much the same. My min/max fps was a little lower though.

So with all the drivers and heaven 2.0/2.5 I get between 42.9-45.5fps. 

 Maybe you guys can try 12.1 preview, and make sure you have the C+ and .net updates from windows update. 

 @ Wizard I dont understand how to use the automation thingy. Do you put the commands in the cfg file or something?


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## pokazene_maslo (Jan 8, 2012)

The only thing I don't like about this card is the *multi-monitor power consumption*. Otherwise it's *PERFECT*.


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## Laki747 (Jan 12, 2012)

Gigabyte X58A-UD3R
i7 950 3.06
3x2gb Patriot Viper 1600mhz
HD 7970
Asus XONAR XD/DX/A
CFT 700W

I bought the card and had it installed today...i tried SC2 1920x1080 all maxed out and BF3 1920x1080 4AA all maxed out...both games were set on highest resolution and details possible

SC2 worked the same as it worked on HD6950 2GB that i had until today...Even with HD7970 when 1v1 big fight comes up FPS drops even to 25fps but usually it is between 50-60fps ( FRAPS )...86 fps seems impossible on my rig 

BF3....i also expected this game to run better...FPS drops to 35-40fps too often...


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## buggalugs (Jan 12, 2012)

Laki747 said:


> I bought the card and had it installed today...i tried SC2 1920x1080 all maxed out and BF3 1920x1080 4AA all maxed out...both games were set on highest resolution and details possible
> 
> SC2 worked the same as it worked on HD6950 2GB that i had until today...Even with HD7970 when 1v1 big fight comes up FPS drops even to 25fps but usually it is between 50-60fps ( FRAPS )...86 fps seems impossible on my rig
> 
> BF3....i also expected this game to run better...FPS drops to 35-40fps too often...



 That doesnt sound right. Run 3D mark11 and Heaven to see if your scores are ok.


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## Laki747 (Jan 12, 2012)

I downloaded some free version of 3dmark 11 and i could only perform some basic test since better and more complex tests are not free...result is P7264...at the end of the benchmarking it says :

Your Score is Low Compared to Similar Systems.
There may be a problem.

I downloaded Unigine from techpowerup site and i was also able to perform some basic standard test...

Powered by Unigine Engine
Heaven Benchmark v2.5 Basic
FPS:	
67.1
Scores:	
1689
Min FPS:	
10.2
Max FPS:	
147.3
Hardware
Binary:	
Windows 32bit Visual C++ 1600 Release Mar 1 2011
Operating system:	
Windows 7 (build 7600) 64bit
CPU model:	
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07GHz
CPU flags:	
3103MHz MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE41 SSE42 HTT
GPU model:	
AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series 8.921.2.0 3072Mb
Settings
Render:	
direct3d11
Mode:	
1920x1080 fullscreen
Shaders:	
high
Textures:	
high
Filter:	
trilinear
Anisotropy:	
4x
Occlusion:	
enabled
Refraction:	
enabled
Volumetric:	
enabled
Tessellation:	
normal


Are those scores normal or something is not right...maybe drivers are not right.

Catalyst control center info

Driver Packaging Version : 8.921.2-120104a-131222E-ATI
Catalyst Version : 11.12
Provider : Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
2D Driver Version : 8.01.01.1215
2D Driver File Path : /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/CLASS/{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}/0001
Direct3D Version : 7.14.10.0890
OpenGL Version  : 6.14.10.11331
Catalyst Control Center Version : 2012.0104.2210.39734
AMD Audio Driver Version : 7.12.0.7704


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## eidairaman1 (Jan 12, 2012)

ill wait for a 6144 MB edition


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## Laki747 (Jan 12, 2012)

Is it normal that i have lower minimum FPS with 7970 then you with 6970 in Unigine?


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## Xaser04 (Jan 12, 2012)

Laki747 said:


> Gigabyte X58A-UD3R
> i7 950 3.06
> 3x2gb Patriot Viper 1600mhz
> HD 7970
> ...



SC2 could be down to your CPU bottlenecking in this case both cards. Try with the CPU at or near 4GHZ to see if things improve. 

BF3 sounds about right considering your are running the 4xAA deffered option and you say they drop to 35-40. 

Get that HD7970 clocked and watch it fly (not literally of course).


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## Laki747 (Jan 12, 2012)

I have never overclocked any of the components so i dont think i know how to do it the right way...


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## Xaser04 (Jan 12, 2012)

Laki747 said:


> I have never overclocked any of the components so i dont think i know how to do it the right way...



In this case I would google for some i7 - 920/930/950 clocking guides before trying anything. 

Basically they are clocked using the base clock (previously known as the FSB in older processors). You will be increasing this to increase the overall core clock of the CPU (worked out by combining the built in multiplier with the base clock). From what I remember of the Nehalem i7's (had a i7 920) you should be able to do 3.8-4GHz without a massive increase in core (Vcore) voltage (important as they can run hot), anymore than that is very much down to how good a clocker the chip is. 

What CPU cooler are you running? If it is the stock Intel one you will want to change that pronto before clocking as it simply can't handle the heat generated. 

In terms of clocking the HD7970 it is a simple case of either increasing the clocks in CCC overdrive or using a program like MSI afterburner to increase the clocks. You will have to "unlock" Afterburner to get the true clocking potential of the GPU (google for how to do this as I can't recall the message you need to input into the config file off of the top of my head). 

The main advantage to overclocking through Afterburner is that you can monitor your voltages and temperatures in real time. You can also set custom fan profiles to keep things either nice and quiet - at the expense of heat, or loud but cool. 

If in doubt ask in the relevant section of the forum or do a google search before trying anything. In addition you may find helpful videos guiding you through the process on Youtube (note - your MB may be slightly different to the ones featured but the general idea is the same).


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## Laki747 (Jan 12, 2012)

Thank you very much...i will research a little bit more about it but TBH CPU clocking is a little bit confusing to me...

On the other hand GPU clocking in CCC overdrive seems a lot easier...I just need to find what numbers should i put instead of stock ones to perform safe clock...


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## Laki747 (Jan 12, 2012)

If i decide to go with CCC clocking...

High performance GPU clock settings: 925Mhz ( max select 1125 )

High performance memory clock settings : 1375Mhz (max select 1575 )

What numbers instead of those are safe to put so the card is clocked and still be on the safe side?


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## Laki747 (Jan 12, 2012)

I set it up via Sapphire TRIX ( I have Sapphire HD7970 ) to 1075/1715.The same clock that showed stable work of the graphic card that can be found in HD7970 review on techPowerUp review...I hope my card is safe with this Heaven showed nice improvement btw...


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## dj-electric (Jan 12, 2012)

Dude, please do not triple\double post.


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## twicksisted (Jan 12, 2012)

Laki747 said:


> Thank you very much...i will research a little bit more about it but TBH CPU clocking is a little bit confusing to me...



The HD7970 should be able to chew through any game maxxed out making overclocking unneccessary for normal use. If youre not familiar with overclocking this is quite an expensive graphics card to be learning on (unless you have buckets of cash hehe). 



Laki747 said:


> I set it up via Sapphire TRIX ( I have Sapphire HD7970 ) to 1075/1715.The same clock that showed stable work of the graphic card that can be found in HD7970 review on techPowerUp review...I hope my card is safe with this Heaven showed nice improvement btw...



Overclocking is fun but make sure you do a bit of research into overclocking video cards and understand what you are doing when changing voltages and clock speeds or you could end up with an expensive paper weight 
Every graphics card is slightly different and will run at different temperatures and speeds.


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## Laki747 (Jan 12, 2012)

I really expected a little bit more performance from the world FASTEST single GPU card on 23'' monitor 1920x1080 that's all...


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## EpicShweetness (Oct 15, 2013)

I'm reading this here in late 2013 and near the launch of a new "flagship" GPU for AMD. I can't help, but laugh. If you bought this card back in January of 2012 you would still be set, that's almost 2 years of hardly any progression. Things have definitely slowed down from the boon we in the 20xx's.



W1zzard said:


> AMD's suggested pricing for the HD 7970 is $549, which feels a bit expensive, I would consider $499 reasonable and $449 a bargain deal. However, even at its $549 price point, the Radeon HD 7970 is an ok deal when looking at other options in the high-end graphics card market.



This is also hilarious, since the suggested retail for the R9 290X is $600, which I still think is to much, follow your pricing AMD not NVIDIA's


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