AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3 GB

[kadeep]

why did Nvidia fanboy complain too much in AMD articles

 

[VasyaRogov]

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

 

[sand_dune]

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

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 Those games are not adequate measures for modern cards, because they are outdated.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

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

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

Review conclusions are plain ridiculous

 

[qubit]

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

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

The last line of the review really says it all:

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

Still, this is good for competition.

 

[sand_dune]

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

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

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

 

[sand_dune]

AMD are gonna go back to second place once more.

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

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

You make no sense.

 

[entropy13]

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

 

[phanbuey]

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

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

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

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

 

[qubit]

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

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

You make no sense.

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

 

[entropy13]

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

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

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

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

"You make no sense" indeed.

 

[pantherx12]

AMD, I am disappoint.

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

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

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

 

[Aquinus]

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

 

[GC_PaNzerFIN]

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

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

 

[qubit]

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

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

 

[Crap Daddy]

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

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

 

[pantherx12]

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

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

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

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

 

[human_error]

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

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

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

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

 

[sergionography]

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

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

 

[HellasVagabond]

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

 

[TheMailMan78]

Anything above 35dBA is unacceptable. NVIDIA or ATI.

 

[pantherx12]

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

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

 

[Mindweaver]

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

 

[entropy13]

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

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

Anything above 35dBA is unacceptable. NVIDIA or ATI.

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

 

[TheMailMan78]

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

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

 

[HellasVagabond]

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

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