Monday, May 7th 2012
AMD Readies Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition
AMD's Radeon HD 7970 could not hold on to the single-GPU performance crown for too long. It lost it to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680, and the upcoming GeForce GTX 670 threatens to damage its competitiveness even further. Reports suggest that AMD is working on a new Tahiti-based graphics card SKU, the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. AMD unveiled the "GHz Edition" moniker to denote SKUs that come with engine clock speed ≥1 GHz. The new HD 7970 GHz Edition will come with reference core clock speed of 1050 MHz.
AMD needn't tinker with memory clock speed, as it already has a 384-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface compared to the GeForce GTX 680 and its 256-bit memory bus width. Sources told Atomic PC that improved yields and manufacturing processes have benefitted Tahiti just as well as GK104, and ES Tahiti chips from the latest batches "easily" hit 1250 MHz core. These batches could make custom-design graphics cards with extremely high core clock speeds possible.
Sources:
Atomic PC, Engadget
AMD needn't tinker with memory clock speed, as it already has a 384-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface compared to the GeForce GTX 680 and its 256-bit memory bus width. Sources told Atomic PC that improved yields and manufacturing processes have benefitted Tahiti just as well as GK104, and ES Tahiti chips from the latest batches "easily" hit 1250 MHz core. These batches could make custom-design graphics cards with extremely high core clock speeds possible.
203 Comments on AMD Readies Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition
$699 for 7990 is FTW. 690 EAT SH** with $1200 price tag.
It will now only take long for the real next gens from Nvidia to come out and for what?
Oh yeah, lame as price fixing.
If they release GK110 now, they will ruin the profit they're making with 670/680/690.
I don't know. I'm hoping for a Aug release as GK110 is what I plan on replacing my 5870 crossfire with.
I don't claim to be a expert, just going by what I've read and heard about GK110.
I thought AMD having bad drivers is a myth only propagated by Nvidia fanboys?
www.overclock.net/t/1234921/zol-gk110-and-possible-gk110-2-information
semiaccurate.com/2012/02/07/gk110-tapes-out-at-last/
wccftech.com/nvidia-kepler-gk110-diesize-specs-detailed-launch-expected-q3-2012/
wccftech.com/nvidia-flagship-gk110-midrange-gk107-detailed-dual-gk104-chip-gpu-slated-2012/
forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2224710
videocardz.com/31650/geforce-gtx-685-gk110-features-4gb-512bit-memory
I'm seeing plenty of information about GK110 being released in Q3 2012
Where is this magical "110" chip that is so amazing it will make your girlfriend cum at the mere mention of it? Right, no where.....
What was supposed to be the 680 when they admit they had issues getting the actual 680 done and out, may in fact be, the 680 you may or may not be able to buy today. And why exactly are you thread crapping about green vaporware in this thread?
Saying it will happen in the future is like saying we will have interplanetary travel in the future as a daily occurrence, or that someone will win the lotto, of course it will happen, but between now and then.......
Remember AMD brought the HD 7970 really immaturely..... and once a driver update came out for the HD 7970 the performance went up quit a bit.
The benchmarks used to show how powerful the HD 7970 is compared to the GTX 680 is from a very immature launch driver. If these benchmarks were changed to use the 12.2 WHQL or 12.3 WHQL the story is very different.
Not to mention there are a few short comings that the GTX 680 has that I never hear anyone talking about. For example the Overlocking on the cards is capped for all intents and purposes in terms of voltages.
This is one of the reasons you don't see people blowing the HD 7970 out of the water when benchmarking with the GTX 680.
I have owned both cards and they are both really great! Just don't give in accurate information to people unless you know what you are talking about. I also don't care how many reviews you fire back at me either.... or say something like "Well the GTX 680 drivers are from launch too" yes this is true.... but Nvidia also released the card 3 months later.... I would hope they had time to better the drivers for the GTX 600 series. If they didn't they would be dumb not too.
Their biggest issue is really not performance but pricing. The pricing for the entire 7 series was way too high.
The 5 series was when AMD really pulled off a huge victory, mostly due to pricing.
Right now they are trying to pursue the Nvidia model of "offer the best performance and overcharge for it", and it seems that it is not working out for them.