FluffmeisterHehe exactly, they haven't sold a lot, they are selling all of them as soon as they come in. :laugh:

Pretty bad they cant make enough to keep em in stock.

software rendering days>>lame video card days we had better games.

my old 466 mhz intel celeron p2 based bought in 1999 can run ut1999 in software mode easily.

proving video cards were never really needed it just made pc gaming less accessibile.

BarbaricSoulAMD needs to do something, GK110 is coming

There is nothing AMD can do with Tahiti that can challenge the GK104. It makes more sense to save the GK110 for Tesla cards.

Let's assume nVIDIA were to release a full GK110 die for the GeForce 600 series, they would have to work extra hard on the performance of the 700 series just to make it a viable upgrade from a GK110. Also assuming a GK110 gave us an additional 10-20% increase in performance over a GTX 680 now would be awesome, but not if the difference between a "GTX 685" and the GTX 780 was just 10% as a result. In fact, I could hear the whiners now. You have to remember they are already working on the 700 series, and such a change now, would be difficult. I don't think a lot of people think about that.

I can post screenshots to prove it but hardware mode in ut1999 looks more blurry than software mode and the colors arent as good.

video cards=blurry shithole.

We're excited at the prospect of AMD taking back the performance crown, though still slighly confused as to why they stopped at 1Ghz. Sure, its a nice round number, but 1050MHz would almost guaranteed victory.

LMAO. This writer is a dreamer.

Jurassic1024There is nothing AMD can do with Tahiti that can challenge the GK104. It makes more sense to save the GK110 for Tesla cards.

Let's assume nVIDIA were to release a full GK110 die for the GeForce 600 series, they would have to work extra hard on the performance of the 700 series just to make it a viable upgrade from a GK110. Also assuming a GK110 gave us an additional 10-20% increase in performance over a GTX 680 now would be awesome, but not if the difference between a "GTX 685" and the GTX 780 was just 10% as a result. In fact, I could hear the whiners now. You have to remember they are already working on the 700 series, and such a change now, would be difficult. I don't think a lot of people think about that.

you are aware that a gtx 680 is only 6% faster than a stock hd7970 on average? check the review done by wizz
amd will bump the clockspeed from 925-1000, thats like 7-8% that puts its on par knowing how these tahiti chips scale very well when overclocked, much better the the keplers since they aready max out close to their limit due to dynamic clocking
also these new ghz tahitis will overclock better (up to 1250mhz easily) due to a new revision or something, meaning the ghz edition is a good 8% more efficient

and with 25% headroom with near perfect scaling tahiti is unbeatable

also note that we already saw mention from amd about their upcoming enhanced GCN to be 20% faster than currenct gcn cards so that puts it on par with gk110 if its 20% faster than gk104
amd and nvidia have never been this close in terms of performance/efficiency. i think the only factor that remains for buyers to decide is features and price.

sergionographyi think many people here are missing the point, this is a new revision not just an overclocked hd7970, meaning it will be doing 1ghz at the same voltage which usualy means at the same power consumption as the first batch of hd7970, in other words the 28nm process matured and can now achieve better efficiency, note that the hd7970 was released at the infancy stage of 28nm and it still pulled off something great but now it can do better, even nvidia claims the reason behind its efficiency this round is due to the tsmc 28nm process, and them starting production like 3-4 month later meant they were fine tuning their chips with a more refined 28nm

I was going to post what you said, but wanted to read the thread to make sure I wasn't gonna reiterate something that was repeated dozens of time, but instead was treated to the most ingnorant and humorous reading I've seen this week and it's only Tuesday and this thread at least claimed a top spot.

OT but this is akin to a stepping change we with CPUs, where it essentially comes with a free over clock, more Hz for the same voltages, temps, and power consumption. Heck, it may even run cooler. I hope that they don't charge more for it and just phase out the old 7970.

erockerNvidia has never made a statment. Your post is just rumor. Granted, I would love to see this card. Too bad Nvidia can't make enough 680's.. I doubt they've sold a whole lot either.

From VR zone today I quote:

GK110 will debut in just three days, but this is the part that targets the HPC i.e. GPGPU community. We were told that the number of pre-orders for Kepler-based Tesla cards (Tesla 3000 Series) should exceed the overall number of Teslas shipped so far (over 150,000 units sold).

Read more: vr-zone.com/articles/how-the-geforce-gtx-690-is-a-prime-example-of-nvidia-reshaped-/15786.html#ixzz1uGMCEQd3

Here is the story.

1.AMD released the 7970 cards first. They didn't clock it according to its potential. Most 7970s easily reach 1200Mhz which is a 30% boost from the stock clock.

2. Nvidia saw an opportunity to sandbag. They increased the clocks of GK104 more than they originally intended,and made some driver optimization for the current games so that it'll beat 7970 by a small margin. They slapped a gtx680 sticker on it to make it look like a high end card. The gk104 doesn't have enough fixed function compute-accelerator blocks since it was not meant to be a high end card.As a result, it takes less die area and consumes less power at the cost of GPGPU performance.

3. AMD finally decided to clock 7970 according to it's potential. But it might be too little too late. Since they cant strip away the excess silicon that accelerates the compute tasks, it'll take more power than the 680.

sergionographyyou are aware that a gtx 680 is only 6% faster than a stock hd7970 on average? check the review done by wizz
amd will bump the clockspeed from 925-1000, thats like 7-8%

Hate to burst your bubble, but the "GHz Edition" is 1050M core not 1000M. Secondly, here's a selection of OC'ed 7970's against the stock clocked card. Now assuming that the slightly OC'ed memory adds exactly zero to the added performance, you'll note that the gain for 1050MHz is 6-6.8% over stock

sergionographythat puts its on par knowing how these tahiti chips scale very well when overclocked, much better the the keplers since they aready max out close to their limit due to dynamic clocking

Cute story...pity it's a work of fiction

sergionographyalso these new ghz tahitis will overclock better (up to 1250mhz easily) due to a new revision or something, meaning the ghz edition is a good 8% more efficient

Note the first review. Four factory overclocked cards...three failed to break 1200M core. Or are you of the opinion that AIB's are happy to accept average bins five months after launch, while AMD stockpile the all-new all-dancing "SuperTahiti" for the next round of vanilla (reference) cards ?

sergionographyand with 25% headroom with near perfect scaling tahiti is unbeatable

Gunning to be Rory Reads gopher ?

sergionographyalso note that we already saw mention from amd about their upcoming enhanced GCN to be 20% faster than currenct gcn cards so that puts it on par with gk110 if its 20% faster than gk104

Which is real cool for AMD assuming that Nvidia don't actually improve their arch. It's thinking like that that got AMD in the position where Kepler came as a complete surprise to them-not to mention a fully functional 512 shader GTX 580 before that. Do you think that if AMD had clue one about GK104's ability they would have released a 925M core part in the first place?
BTW: How do you know GK110 is going to be 20% faster than GK104?....or is this a story that starts out "In a perfect AMD world..."

HumanSmokeQuote:
Originally Posted by sergionography
that puts its on par knowing how these tahiti chips scale very well when overclocked, much better the the keplers since they aready max out close to their limit due to dynamic clocking
Cute story...pity it's a work of fiction

The link you posted supports sergionography's post. From page 7 ,

"The Radeon HD 7970 has a wider overclockable range than the GeForce GTX 680.

Consider this, the default clock speed on the Radeon HD 7970 is 925MHz. We are easily getting overclocks to 1.2GHz out of the Radeon HD 7970, and even higher in some cases. That is between a 275MHz-300MHz overclock achievable from the Radeon HD 7970. With the GeForce GTX 680 however, we are seeing an overall smaller overclock because NVIDIA has already clocked the GTX 680 closer to its maximum potential by default"

hardcore_gamerThe link you posted supports sergionography's post. From page 7...

Kind of depends how much you look into it:
GTX 680: Max OC 22%... Scaling: BF3 14.9%, Batman:AC 14.1%, Deus Ex 16.6%, Skyrim 5%...average 12.7% ( 0.58% gain per 1% OC)
HD 7970: Max OC 36%...Scaling: BF3 13.7%, Batman:AC 30.4%, Deus Ex 28.6%, Skyrim 20.9%...average 23.4% ( 0.65% gain per 1% OC)
Slight win for the HD 7970 there...
Second half of the equation...
GTX 680 power usage : Average 358w (OC by 22%), 339.5w (stock) = 0.84w increase per 1% OC
HD 7970 power usage: Average 540w (OC by 38%), 464w (stock) = 2w increase per 1% OC (since [H] neglected to include the 7970's OC'ed power consumption in comparison to the 680 :rolleyes: )

If you're talking performance only, then yes, the HD 7970 will certainly come out ahead since it's base core clock is effectively underclocked- basically the same scenario as measuring OC percentage for the GTX 560 Ti (and GTX 460 before it).
Since OC'ing tends to be limited by voltage and thus heat more often than not, I'd tend to take that into consideration. It's also not beyond the realms of possibility that GTX 600 BIOS will in future allow for a greater flexibility in OC potential- there's obviously some untapped potential...which I'm guessing would even things up- the rationale being that with cards closer in OC percentage, the disparity in results would likely contract judging by reviews based on like-for-like OC ( i.e this TT review. Both cards OC'ed by ~22-23%. The GTX 680 scales better in 6 of 8 games (admittedly a fair number are Nvidia-centric but that shouldn't work against the 7970 in scaling)

HumanSmokeKind of depends how much you look into it:
GTX 680: Max OC 22%... Scaling: BF3 14.9%, Batman:AC 14.1%, Deus Ex 16.6%, Skyrim 5%...average 12.7% ( 0.58% gain per 1% OC)
HD 7970: Max OC 36%...Scaling: BF3 13.7%, Batman:AC 30.4%, Deus Ex 28.6%, Skyrim 20.9%...average 23.4% ( 0.65% gain per 1% OC)
Slight win for the HD 7970 there...
Second half of the equation...
GTX 680 power usage : Average 358w (OC by 22%), 339.5w (stock) = 0.84w increase per 1% OC
HD 7970 power usage: Average 540w (OC by 38%), 464w (stock) = 2w increase per 1% OC (since [H] neglected to include the 7970's OC'ed power consumption in comparison to the 680 :rolleyes: )

If you're talking performance only, then yes, the HD 7970 will certainly come out ahead since it's base core clock is effectively underclocked- basically the same scenario as measuring OC percentage for the GTX 560 Ti (and GTX 460 before it).
Since OC'ing tends to be limited by voltage and thus heat more often than not, I'd tend to take that into consideration. It's also not beyond the realms of possibility that GTX 600 BIOS will in future allow for a greater flexibility in OC potential- there's obviously some untapped potential

so, what's the point do you want to talk about here? so do you want to say that HD7970 is really crap stuff even it's clocked over nine thousaaandd gigaaaaaaahheeeeezzz ?? :laugh:

Hayder_Mastereven with 1Ghz still can't beat GTX680 !!! , better move to make it really active is lower the price.

That's just it though AMD don't need to as nvidia cannot supply what they offer. I say good on AMD make some money while they can as we all don't want either of these company's go bust just to supply the moaners of the world.

Thinking about it's not all that price crazy as the ATI 9800 was in this kinda price range when that came out many moons ago.

SIGSEGVso, what's the point do you want to talk about here? so do you want to say that HD7970 is really crap stuff even it's clocked over nine thousaaandd gigaaaaaaahheeeeezzz ?? :laugh:

Nope. The point is that you can't circumvent the laws of physics. Jacking the core clock by 13.5% and the memory clock by 0% isn't suddenly going to turn the 7970 into some "unbeatable" card as some seem to think:

sergionographyand with 25% headroom with near perfect scaling tahiti is unbeatable

So yeah, You might very well get 25% OC headroom- although thats assuming the average card can get to 1313MHz, but that is going to come at a cost. It's basically the same argument regarding GTX 480/580 performance vs power consumpion...except the group that were making the "Fermi grill" jokes have suddenly gone silent.
My personal viewpoint is that raising the clocks from 925 to 1050 is more of a stunt to get the 7970 into another round of reviews and back into the spotlight. As has been pointed out ad nauseum, many 7970's already clock to (and past) 1050...indeed, I've already posted a link to a review that has cards clocked at 1000, 1050, 1070 and 1120...and here's the kicker...they are near enough the same price as the reference 925M card

HumanSmokeNope. The point is that you can't circumvent the laws of physics. Jacking the core clock by 13.5% and the memory clock by 0% isn't suddenly going to turn the 7970 into some "unbeatable" card as some seem to think:

unbeatable? even without or with crazy overclocking their core clock, when did amd be unbeatable? :)
*even their crown (amd) just only a small period of time not so long ago before nv took back :)*

sergionographyi think many people here are missing the point, this is a new revision not just an overclocked hd7970, meaning it will be doing 1ghz at the same voltage which usualy means at the same power consumption as the first batch of hd7970, in other words the 28nm process matured and can now achieve better efficiency, note that the hd7970 was released at the infancy stage of 28nm and it still pulled off something great but now it can do better, even nvidia claims the reason behind its efficiency this round is due to the tsmc 28nm process, and them starting production like 3-4 month later meant they were fine tuning their chips with a more refined 28nm

as for gk110 i heard it will be released around october, that is 2 month before its time for amd to release the hd 8970
so if you ask me i think amd is giving nvidia a run for their money

TotallyI was going to post what you said, but wanted to read the thread to make sure I wasn't gonna reiterate something that was repeated dozens of time, but instead was treated to the most ingnorant and humorous reading I've seen this week and it's only Tuesday and this thread at least claimed a top spot.

OT but this is akin to a stepping change we with CPUs, where it essentially comes with a free over clock, more Hz for the same voltages, temps, and power consumption. Heck, it may even run cooler. I hope that they don't charge more for it and just phase out the old 7970.

hardcore_gamerHere is the story.

1.AMD released the 7970 cards first. They didn't clock it according to its potential. Most 7970s easily reach 1200Mhz which is a 30% boost from the stock clock.

2. Nvidia saw an opportunity to sandbag. They increased the clocks of GK104 more than they originally intended,and made some driver optimization for the current games so that it'll beat 7970 by a small margin. They slapped a gtx680 sticker on it to make it look like a high end card. The gk104 doesn't have enough fixed function compute-accelerator blocks since it was not meant to be a high end card.As a result, it takes less die area and consumes less power at the cost of GPGPU performance.

3. AMD finally decided to clock 7970 according to it's potential. But it might be too little too late. Since they cant strip away the excess silicon that accelerates the compute tasks, it'll take more power than the 680.

Thank you all, that was my thinking back several pages ago...
www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2622936#post2622936
www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2622978#post2622978

TSMC is now giving AMD chips the way thier engineers designed and where told TSMC would deliver from day one (back OCt/Nov) for the orginal release (Remember TMSC was all 28Nm is fully ready for prime time, not). The 7970 was always a 1Ghz 250W TDP design, but TSMC was choking the monkey, finally they shut-down and fixed the process. Figure since say mid-Feb providing full fledged "Tahitis", while then AMD working on this, then started dropping the price to move that old product out.

I'd like to see the current 7950 spec cards renamed as 7930; the 7970 (@925Mhz) become a 7950, and the real 1Ghz be the only 7970 from here on out! Then as the market evolves use the bins of geldings that TMSC messed-up on that early Tahiti production as 7890's and those show for say $280 by end of summer.

Now we what for what a GTX670 or whatever is to show has in store.

just lower the prices amd and make a quad gpu card

HumanSmokeProbably!
This does have a greater purpose though. I'm a system builder, and generally have to tailor my component fit-out advice based on specific need -for gamers usually a core of games/game engines, and I find that a lot of reviews tend to stick with a limited number of releases (BF3, Metro 2033, DiRT3, AvP for example), so going further afield nets a larger variety.
The information (in spreadsheet form) also highlights which benchmarks offer consistancy, and what kind of range is covered. Consistant outliers favouring one brand or another tend to be readily apparent

Partly due to bias (or non consistant benchmark settings), recycling old benchmarks and/or testing games that aren't to the same patched/revision status, misreporting the game i.q. used, forced CP/third-party utility settings which may, or may not be applied in game, and whether the bench is run with normal backround processes concurrently or not.

Likewise. The ones I put the most faith in are those that quantify all settings used and the revision/patch status of the bench/game being used. I will include all benchmarks (within reason) for an overview.

Much like auto racing it's "run what you brung". You could argue that a lot of games featured are Nvidia friendly or TWIMTBP- that also says to me that Nvidia have an eye for sponsoring/supporting gaming titles that gamers want to play. It stands to reason that a benchmark suite should reflect current gaming trends and game popularity, so I certainly wouldn't begrudge the widespread use of BF3, DiRT3, TESV:Skyrim or Batman:AC...although, the continued use of Metro 2033 (ok from a torture test angle) and Far Cry 2 I find debateable...does anyone actually play these, and if so how many would replay them?

The GTX 680 is stock in every case. The HD 7970 is stock in most cases ( a minority of reviews used factory overclocked cards for comprison. Maximum PCfor instance used the XFX Black Edition 7970).
As gaming f.p.s. was only a part of the info I was culling (along with power usage, heat, acoustics, overclocking headroom, overclock-to-power draw delta etc.) I figured that a handful of slight OC'ed 7970's wouldn't impact the overall dataset too highly.

That kind of depends what you have to pay for each respective card. Prices seem to fluctuate wildly depending upon the market.
As for AMD cutting prices...that is a double edged sword. Might gain some favourable comments at the conclusion of a few reviews, but I'm guessing if you're in the market for an enthusiast level card (or two), pricing isn't the be all and end all.
From a PR and public perception standpoint; AMD have just had a hefty price reduction...they are also giving away a three game pack...add another price cut and it starts looking like desperation...meanwhile, Nvidia's latest and greatest (GTX 690) is being compared to a work of art and/or supercar. Add in the fact that all this stems from ONE GPU (GK104) that traces it's origin to a general laughingstock (GF100) and you have a near complete swing in performance, die area, and most importantly, brand perception, and you can see that the momentum favours Nvidia regardless of AMD reaction -short of rolling out their own quantum leap in GPU tech. A much harder job when the baseline you are comparing with isn't a bad level of performance in its own right.
To a degree, pricing becomes secondary (esp if GK 104 is constrained) since the thing AMD are losing is not marketshare, it's mindshare.
Buying a performance AMD card already has one caveat built in against it for a lot of people* -it sorely doesn't need two.

*Resale. If you're updating cards regularly, resale value tends to play a significant part in the upgrade cycle. AMD's cards have historically lost value faster than Nvidia's cards. You now have the situation where one of AMD's biggest virtues- Bitcoin- also becomes a force that drives down the resale market, since many are wary of picking up a card which may have spent it's life at near 24/7 100% GPU usage

Why would amd cut the price of 7970 if gtx 680 isn't available?, and, where it is, it costs at least $100 more, so $480 vs $600 that's 22% more price for 7% more performance that i won't even see..

If they cut at least 40% of this card's price, probably I (we) will be interested of this card. Until then...bye bye AMD. You lost this round. You lost hard.

Prima.VeraIf they cut at least 40% of this card's price, probably I (we) will be interested of this card. Until then...bye bye AMD. You lost this round. You lost hard.

wtf is up with this comment lol, they didnt lose, amd is obviously doing something right, you can actually buy them, btw AMD didnt have yield issues nvidia needs to learn to pick better tsmc partners becauset he ones they have suck. kepler delayed a whole year because of that crap

I find the back peddling and fanboy rants fun in this thread.

So, back to the topic.

" Do you think HD 7970 GHz Edition can make HD 7970 attractive again? "

The 7970 was never unattractive in my opinion, it was just priced wrong from the get go.
I think the GHz edition will be a nice welcome if its $449. I still think $469 is too much for a plain 7970. Fact is, the 680 does beat the 7970 in the majority of the games that actually matter (BF3, ding ding ding), so asking $30 less isn't enough. I think $50 less would make the 7970 the perfectly priced card. When the 670's launch, I have a feeling they will perform RIGHT under the 7970 but cost a good $50-60 less than the cheapest 7970. It would be in AMD's best interest to not bother releasing a "GHz" SKU and focus on strategic pricing, like they do with their processors.

I had/have both a 7970 and a GTX 680. Both are fantastic cards. However, I do like the 680 better. On the contrary, I like AMD's driver interface MUCH more than Nvidia's. They each have their pros and cons, but this time around, the 680 is the superior card. This is FACT, not fascinated fiction. It does indeed beat a reference 7970 in almost all benchmarks. It may not be a huge amount, but its enough to matter. Factor in the $549 MSRP vs 680 $499 MSRP, and its pretty obvious what the better card is. 7970 GHz and 7970 need to be $449 and $429 to make most people give a turd.

johnnyfiiveSo, back to the topic.

" Do you think HD 7970 GHz Edition can make HD 7970 attractive again? "

The 7970 was never unattractive in my opinion, it was just priced wrong from the get go.
I think the GHz edition will be a nice welcome if its $449. I still think $469 is too much for a plain 7970. Fact is, the 680 does beat the 7970 in the majority of the games that actually matter (BF3, ding ding ding), so asking $30 less isn't enough. I think $50 less would make the 7970 the perfectly priced card.

When the 670's launch, I have a feeling they will perform RIGHT under the 7970 but cost a good $50-60 less than the cheapest 7970. It would be in AMD's best interest to not bother releasing a "GHz" SKU and focus on strategic pricing, like they do with their processors.

I had/have both a 7970 and a GTX 680. Both are fantastic cards. However, I do like the 680 better. On the contrary, I like AMD's driver interface MUCH more than Nvidia's. They each have their pros and cons, but this time around, the 680 is the superior card. This is FACT, not fascinated fiction. It does indeed beat a reference 7970 in almost all benchmarks. It may not be a huge amount, but its enough to matter. Factor in the $549 MSRP vs 680 $499 MSRP, and its pretty obvious what the better card is. 7970 GHz and 7970 need to be $449 and $429 to make most people give a turd.

It's only a fact if all you do is gaming. Once you toss anything GPGPU in the mix, whether it be hardware acceleration, folding, etc, then the 7970 is a better card. 5-10% slower in games but 200-300% faster in GPGPU. yeahhh......
But if you don't do anything GPGPU then yeah the 680 probably calls to you more.

I thought we like banned the words "fan boy".. Well.. we should..lol..

I just want accurate numbers. Nvidia and Ati, don't pay me to advertise. I just had a 5850 but I want to try the 680.. green or red? idc.. honestly..

This "out of stock" issue, with the 6 series, is f'n dumb though..
To me, it simply makes sense, to want Ati, to have a card, as good or better, than Nvidias line.
Consumer wins.. That's all I care about..
Amazes me, how worked up, people get over this stuff.

I hope the new line, kicks ass and everyone who has a card, they pay top dollar for, enjoys it. Preferrably, without coming back, the the forums, to say "ahahaha your drivers are messed up", or something equally rude..
7970 is still, a great card, at an attrative price.
:toast: