Radeon HD 7990 "Malta" Prices Slashed to $699, Targets GTX 780

[MxPhenom 216]

Maybe they don't cause they invest the money in to a decent dev team for their drivers? Where as AMD had to use software patch to fix frame problems, nVidia has hardware built in to do the job.

That same driver team that messed up some peoples GPUs last month??

 

[radrok]

That same driver team that messed up some peoples GPUs last month??

Yeah when Nvidia screws up, screws up for good

 

[cadaveca]

Yeah when Nvidia screws up, screws up for good

I use those "problem" drivers for board testing. Haven't seen any issues. Maybe it's beucase of the custom PCB my MSI cards use...

 

[radrok]

To be honest It didn't give me that many issues to me, unstable overclocks which were stable (and still are) on other releases and a few game crashes.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

I use those "problem" drivers for board testing. Haven't seen any issues. Maybe it's beucase of the custom PCB my MSI cards use...

Could be, I didn't have issues with them when I first had them. Then it hit about the 3 day mark and hello texture corruption in BF3. Also had issues with BioShock Infinite right away.

Thankfully my card didn't get damage, but I have seen reports at the Nvidia forums all over of people rolling back to other drivers, or doing clean windows installs with different drivers, and then they have lines all over the screen, and card isn't stable in games anymore. There's lots of videos on it too.

But there were also many people with no issues with the drivers. Looks like you were one of them.

 

[Xzibit]

Well Nvidia did start a stability feedback. 500+ post.

Geforce R320.xx-R326.xx display driver stability feedback thread.

 

[HumanSmoke]

 

[15th Warlock]

Whoa! AMD is playing hardball!, $699 (after rebate) for such a powerful card! Nevermind with all those AAA titles included, no Nvidia card can match that value!

Well played AMD, well played

So, who's volunteering for more quad-fire benchmarks?

Unfortunately quad fire is crippled on these cards, due to a defect in the fans design, the first GPU on the frist PCIe slot overheats, causing all 4 GPUs to throttle, that's why no OEM offers these cards in quad fire unless you use water cooling, still, one of this cards would be a great choice for a small factor gaming PC!

 

[arbiter]

Whoa! AMD is playing hardball!, $699 (after rebate) for such a powerful card! Nevermind with all those AAA titles included, no Nvidia card can match that value!

I wouldn't say nVidia can't match it, pair of 770's is only 800$. As for title's value of them is different per person. Mostly all those title's i already own so they have almost no value to me. Even how great the 7990 is it still has frame issues on all dx9 games and on eyefinity setup's. Their frame pacing fix is limited to dx10/11 games and resolutions 2560x1600 and lower. When and if they will fix multi monitors and dx9 is still unknown as AMD hasn't said a word. DX9 seems like it would be an easy fix but some reason multi monitors seems another matter that can't be done with software.

 

[EarthDog]

I wouldn't say nVidia can't match it, pair of 770's is only 800$.

770's match 2x 7970s for the most part, and cost $100 more, and do not come with those games (regardless if there is no value).

 

[newtekie1]

With the right kind of CrossFire profiles, a Radeon HD 7990 can offer frame-rates rivaled only by GTX Titan and GTX 690.

Too bad their crossfire profiles tend to suck, and you only get that kind of performance rivaling GTX Titan and GTX 690 in a select few games. Dual-GPUs(even on the same card) will always fail compared to a single GPU. The dual-GPUs might match or beat it every once in a while, but overall they don't compete.

 

[Eric_Cartman]

770's match 2x 7970s for the most part, and cost $100 more, and do not come with those games (regardless if there is no value).

I'm sorry, but try again.

2x GTX 670 outperform 2x 7970s, because lets face it the 7990 is just 2x 7970s.

The GTX 690 is a good 15% faster than the 7990(proof here), and that was with AMD cheating by rendering stub frames.

Now, 2x GTX 670 is within 3% of a GTX 690(proof here).

So 2x GTX 670 outperform 2x 7970.

You can probably pull a benchmark or two out of your ass that shows the 7970s winning, but overall they loose by a good margin.

And since 2x GTX 770 are even faster than 2x GTX 670 there is no way 2x 7970 even comes close to competing.

 

[EarthDog]

I looked HERE and the difference was 4% (1080p) overall. To me that not noticeable. That said, I pulled 3 games out of my ass, Grid2, Hitman Absolution, and Tomb Raider (ok, TR was less than a FPS, LOL!) that the 7970 wins in. But there are a few ties and a few where the 7970 just gets plain worked. Now that the facts are on the table, let's look at the math again...

Is 4% difference overall worth the 13.5%/$100 price difference ($700 versus $800)?

 

[BigMack70]

You can probably pull a benchmark or two out of your ass that shows the 7970s winning, but overall they loose by a good margin.

2 7970s are faster overall if you exclude the games where CF is broken, and slower overall if you don't exclude them.

But yeah, 770s are going to be faster unless you're talking about overclocked 7970s (with broken games excluded).

 

[Eric_Cartman]

I looked HERE and the difference was 4% (1080p) overall. To me that not noticeable. That said, I pulled 3 games out of my ass, Grid2, Hitman Absolution, and Tomb Raider (ok, TR was less than a FPS, LOL!) that the 7970 wins in. But there are a few ties and a few where the 7970 just gets plain worked. Now that the facts are on the table, let's look at the math again...

Is 4% difference overall worth the 13.5%/$100 price difference ($700 versus $800)?

It doesn't matter where you look, even in your review the GTX 690 was 3% faster than the 7990 at 1080.

So since we know 2x GTX 670 is within 3% of a GTX 690, the review you picked confirms what I said, a 7990 only matches 2x GTX 670.

That means 2x GTX 770 would be faster than a 7990 or 2x 7970s.

The reason a 2x GTX 670 matches a 7990 is because SLI scales way better than Crossfire.

Plus those benchmarks were still using AMD's cheating.

2 7970s are faster overall if you exclude the games where CF is broken, and slower overall if you don't exclude them.

But yeah, 770s are going to be faster unless you're talking about overclocked 7970s (with broken games excluded).

By why should be exclude games were CF doesn't work?

We shouldn't, that would give an unfair advantage to AMD.

Unless you let me exclude a few of the games were nVidia does poorly too.

 

[EarthDog]

AMD cheating...? SLI scales better than CFx? OOof, ok Cartman...


... have a nice day...I'm taking the blue pill on this one.

EDIT: Just let me clarify before I bail on this potential shitstorm...

AMD, I don't believe, was cheating. Nobody knows for a fact. Until the FCAT stuff came out, we knew the problem existed for some people, and after AMD found out about it (ok, I will concede that is a tough pill to swallow), they worked on changes that were recently implemented and show tremendous promise. Now cheating? Those are some hard words, especially considering a title or two, didnt show a FPS loss. You(we) have no proof they knew there was a difference in FPS and the runt frames and that it would affect FPS.

As far as the SLI and CFx scaling. I find both scale well in most titles. Both camps have their bad and good with scaling. As you (should) know, scaling with vary by title, resolution, drivers, and in-game settings. So to make a blanket statement like that without being more granular leaves a lot to be desired to me.

.....and, IM OUT.

 

[cdawall]

Why are we comparing 1080P? these are still $700 video cards if you are playing at 1080P seems a bit of a waste.

 

[fullinfusion]

Why are we comparing 1080P? these are still $700 video cards if you are playing at 1080P seems a bit of a waste.

Like a 5ghz cpu? Just poking at ya bro

 

[BigMack70]

By why should be exclude games were CF doesn't work?

We shouldn't, that would give an unfair advantage to AMD.

Unless you let me exclude a few of the games were nVidia does poorly too.

I didn't say we should. I said that if you exclude those games, the 7990 is faster. There's a lot of people who don't play those games, and for them it doesn't matter that the 7990 doesn't scale in them.

 

[cdawall]

Like a 5ghz cpu? Just poking at ya bro

Yea I need to update my specs. Using eyefinity again now that I am home.

 

[arbiter]

Lets put this to a fact IF you are 1080p gameing, using a gtx690 or 7990 is way overkill. As for which is faster, its a Toss up really as one card is better in game A other card is better in game B. Now 1440 and multi monitors is where there cards will be best use. Even with the change AMD made in the driver to fix the problem with CF, It don't work on more then a single monitor running 2560x1600. Running 2560x1440/1600, 7900 would be a good buy if some games you get with it you don't have and want, but if you already have them all its still a good buy but not as good of one less you know someone that would give ya say 50cents on the dollar for the games or even 25 cents.

 

[Eric_Cartman]

AMD cheating...? SLI scales better than CFx? OOof, ok Cartman...


... have a nice day...I'm taking the blue pill on this one.

EDIT: Just let me clarify before I bail on this potential shitstorm...

AMD, I don't believe, was cheating. Nobody knows for a fact. Until the FCAT stuff came out, we knew the problem existed for some people, and after AMD found out about it (ok, I will concede that is a tough pill to swallow), they worked on changes that were recently implemented and show tremendous promise. Now cheating? Those are some hard words, especially considering a title or two, didnt show a FPS loss. You(we) have no proof they knew there was a difference in FPS and the runt frames and that it would affect FPS.

As far as the SLI and CFx scaling. I find both scale well in most titles. Both camps have their bad and good with scaling. As you (should) know, scaling with vary by title, resolution, drivers, and in-game settings. So to make a blanket statement like that without being more granular leaves a lot to be desired to me.

.....and, IM OUT.

It is obvious AMD knew about these problems, people have been complaining about them for months.

Our own Cadaveca had been complaining about the problem for months actually, and he's a reviewer for a top rated review site(HERE).

To say AMD didn't know about the problem and wasn't cheating is ignorant.

There was just no way to catch them cheating, until now, and they got caught, plain and simple.

Now, as for SLI scaling better, that is a given considering it turns out Crossfire doesn't scale at all!

Maybe these new drivers will fix the issue, but who knows what the framerates will actually be like with the fix in place.

Will we see framerates that are the same as they were before?

I highly doubt it.

They won't be able to sync the frames properly and keep the same framerates.

And some people like to use their 120Hz monitors to their fullest, so a 7990 or GTX 690 is not overkill for 1080p for some.

 

[HumanSmoke]

It is obvious AMD knew about these problems, people have been complaining about them for months.
Our own Cadaveca had been complaining about the problem for months actually, and he's a reviewer for a top rated review site(HERE).
To say AMD didn't know about the problem and wasn't cheating is ignorant.

Might be more a case of:
1. Internal inertia within AMD's managerial hierarchy. It is well documented that product divisions within AMD are unnecessarily compartmentalized (ATI especially). Getting anything done seems to a long slow painful process. Cases in point are the Evergreen PowerPlay issue (Grey Screen of Death). Reported in their own forums ad nauseum along with high return rates from the launch in September 2009, it took months (and a lot of adverse press coverage in Feb/March 2010) before AMD allocated resources to fix the issue. The Enduro mobile dual graphics issue has also taken some time to alleviate.

2. AMD don't seem to be particularly attuned to their user base (at least not to the same extent as their market rivals). AMD obviously don't monitor the consumer feedback ( sites, forums, support tickets) to any great extent. Citing complete surprise at Nvidia's implementation of frame metering seems like a colossal fuck up in market research.

All this seems to point to a divisive management structure, a lack of funds, and a lack of monitoring of the end user experience- which may be a product of the first two (management and funding), rather than an strategy of cheating

my $0.02

 

[arbiter]

2. AMD don't seem to be particularly attuned to their user base (at least not to the same extent as their market rivals). AMD obviously don't monitor the consumer feedback ( sites, forums, support tickets) to any great extent. Citing complete surprise at Nvidia's implementation of frame metering seems like a colossal fuck up in market research.

Yea I haven't payed much attention to when complaints started, but i know people back in least 6000 series and most like even before that complained of the problem. It wasn't til nVidia released these tools and sites like Techreport and Pcper that were some first few to release data on the results before AMD even took steps towards it. Weather it was just AMD not caring or they didn't even know what problem was is anyone's guess. AMD yes they are making a huge push with their very aggressive pricing of their video cards, but is they seem to be outta touch with users issues then that will be something that will leave the door open for nVidia to stay firmly in the game.

 

[BigMack70]

Maybe these new drivers will fix the issue, but who knows what the framerates will actually be like with the fix in place.

Will we see framerates that are the same as they were before?

I highly doubt it.

This has already been tested by several sites, and the difference is minimal. Frame pacing does not hurt overall performance numbers in any meaningful way. I think you need to stop with the hatorade.