Official Radeon 7970 Review and discussion thread

[Muppet]

Originally Posted by K007

lmao!! that is just daylight robbery...

Yes, i'm not interested in paying that sort of cash, for a 20% increase in performance. If it hasn't dropped $300 by the time the GTX680 launches, i'll grab 2 of those instead.

[K007]

hardware usually not that expensive compared to US, but game prices are a different story.

Skyrim 100
MW3 100
Batman AC 100

On steam we also get hit with a overseas transaction fee as well.

So almost double the price for online download, where as store u pay same price and get box version, no download (or little) and proper manual/etc, and collectors edition/etc..

i grab my 5870 i think 1 or two months after release and i paid about 350ish~ for a vapor-x sapphire version

[Rollo]

Originally Posted by Maverick123w

Lackluster frame rates? What the hell are you going on about?

I'm pointing out that K007s theories about AMD not releasing the "full power" cards for review are highly unlikely. (as are 400MHz factory OCs)

AMD wants to sell cards, and releasing a part that could be clocked at 1300 MHz at 925MHz would be nuts. They want the launch reviews to show their card in the BEST possible light , not the worst. What K007 was saying only would make sense if the 7970 and the 680 were both launching in a year and NVIDIA actually had time for design modifications.

The Sapphire "1300MHz+" paper is likely a fabrication as well, for the same reasons. You'll probably see up to 100MHz factory OCd cards, because no one releases a part at 60% of what it's capable of.

By "lackluster" I mean 15-25% better than last generations best isn't particularly impressive for a totally new chip. It's not a beefdozer, but it's not revolutionary either. Usually companies shoot for 35-50% faster than last gens best to give people who have that solid reason to update. The low end people aren't likely to start buying high end, so you basically have the people that own 6970s and 580s as most of your market. People who have 580s aren't likely to sell them at a big loss and spend a bunch more money to get 15-25% more performance, so that leaves them with the 6970 crowd. Half the market that they had anyway, who are not used to paying $600 for an AMD card.

If these cards were generally capable of 1300MHz speeds, they'd be that (or 1200) in reference form, because EVERYONE (self included) would jump at that.

Last, if there are SPs disabled, it's a yield at current process thing like the GTX480 was. If they had enough fully functioning parts, you'd be seeing them at launch.

[red777star]

Compared to GTX580 not impressed at all. It took AMD three generations HD5xxx, HD6xxx and HD7xxx to beat Fermi

Fermi is overall better and more balanced designed piece of hardware. Can't wait for Kepler.

[Rollo]

http://www.techpowerup.com/158042/Re...From-$525.html

Wow, slashing the price before it even hits the market. Looks to me like ATi just found out something about Kepler the rest of us are going to find out soon.

[shadow001]

Originally Posted by Rollo

http://www.techpowerup.com/158042/Re...From-$525.html

Wow, slashing the price before it even hits the market. Looks to me like ATi just found out something about Kepler the rest of us are going to find out soon.

The rollo interpretation i see, while there's no evidence that the production cost savings will be passed on to the end consumer, and simply increase AMD's profit margin perhaps, but then according to you if they don't pass their savings to the end consumer, that's also a crime if a company makes a bigger profit margin off their high end product, am i right?...


Oh and Btw, i tried battlefield 3 at high quality settings with just 2x AA at 7880*1440( bezel compensated), and the 3 GTX580's are having a hard time keeping it playing smooth(60 Fps)....I basically have to disable AA altogether, so i'm really finding the limits to them.....Heck i don't see any card anytime soon being able to pull off 8X AA at this resolution in battlefield 3 like we see at lower resolutions anytime soon and keeping it playable, as the amount of memory needed would be massive to begin with...Never mind playing at the ultra settings on the game...

[Mojoe]

Here is what caveman-jim had to say about it.

That's not a retail price cut, that saving won't get passed on to the consumer.

[Rollo]

Originally Posted by shadow001

The rollo interpretation i see, while there's no evidence that the production cost savings will be passed on to the end consumer, and simply increase AMD's profit margin perhaps, but then according to you if they don't pass their savings to the end consumer, that's also a crime if a company makes a bigger profit margin off their high end product, am i right?...

(shrugs) ATi didn't realize there were "production cost savings" in the last two weeks Shadow. They either decided sales volume would be too low at the proposed MSRP, found orders from retailers/etailers too low at that MSRP, or caught wind of upcoming competition and they wanted to get as much market share as they could.

Originally Posted by shadow001

Oh and Btw, i tried battlefield 3 at high quality settings with just 2x AA at 7880*1440( bezel compensated), and the 3 GTX580's are having a hard time keeping it playing smooth(60 Fps)....I basically have to disable AA altogether, so i'm really finding the limits to them.....Heck i don't see any card anytime soon being able to pull off 8X AA at this resolution in battlefield 3 like we see at lower resolutions anytime soon and keeping it playable, as the amount of memory needed would be massive to begin with...Never mind playing at the ultra settings on the game...

I don't even get why you'd bother testing the 1.5GB cards at 78X14. That res is probably pushing it for 2GB cards at a lot of games and settings, your only option now is 3GB cards.

[Nsavop]

Nvidia is holding a press conference at CES on jan. 9 which will be streamed on the net. Hopefully we get something concrete on Kepler then.

Nvidia announces 2012 CES press conference

[i SPY]

Originally Posted by Nsavop

Nvidia is holding a press conference at CES on jan. 9 which will be streamed on the net. Hopefully we get something concrete on Kepler then.

Nvidia announces 2012 CES press conference

lol Rollo is that you?



I thought this is a AMD7970 review debate, not Kepler vs AMD7970 or how according to Rollo AMD sucks with its wise strategy.

news flash Rollo that's a very wise move from AMD and better for end consumer too, besides its only 50$ cheaper anyway xD


also that 2300 core edition is apparently fake, AMD denied it.

[shadow001]

Originally Posted by Rollo

(shrugs) ATi didn't realize there were "production cost savings" in the last two weeks Shadow. They either decided sales volume would be too low at the proposed MSRP, found orders from retailers/etailers too low at that MSRP, or caught wind of upcoming competition and they wanted to get as much market share as they could.

Simply a change in currency exchange rates can make a difference, or maybe out of the hundreds of components soldered on a video card, suppliers set new prices for some of the components, or maybe yeilds on the GPU's are even better now...


Keeping in mind that the GPU's in this initial batch oh HD7970's were made 2~3 months ago at TSMC....Basically there could be tons of reasons why the price dropped so how about we see in a few weeks

I don't even get why you'd bother testing the 1.5GB cards at 78X14. That res is probably pushing it for 2GB cards at a lot of games and settings, your only option now is 3GB cards.

Actually it's not too bad believe it or not, as i only needed to disable AA for battlefield 3 and kept the high quality settings and it was fully playable in a 64 player online match(damavan park) at 60 FPS....Now one could say that keeping AA disabled is a big sacrifice in IQ, but given that the monitors natively display aat 2560*1440 anyhow, the jagged edges on objects aren't as noticable as on 1920*1080 sceeen.....I suspect that even cards with 3GB onboard will have their hands full at just 4X AA at this nutty resolution.

[Nsavop]

Originally Posted by i SPY

lol Rollo is that you?



I thought this is a AMD7970 review debate, not Kepler vs AMD7970 or how according to Rollo AMD sucks with its wise strategy.

news flash Rollo that's a very wise move from AMD and better for end consumer too, besides its only 50$ cheaper anyway xD


also that 2300 core edition is apparently fake, AMD denied it.

No it's not Rolo, I thought I post it because of all the Kepler talk in this thread. Also according to legitreviews i wouldn't get my hopes up on that price cut.