Official Radeon 7970 Review and discussion thread

[Redeemed]

$550... that's roughly what I make in two weeks.

Yeah I'll not be picking one up anytime soon. Curious how the other 7000 series parts will turn out though. Even more curious what Kepler will bring to the table.

[Redeemed]

Originally Posted by slaWter

So, two weeks is a long time for you?

No, I have bills to pay. Honestly if I wanted one I'd probably have to save up for at least two months. lol No so far I don't have any plans to replace this 5870 anytime soon. My "upgrade money" will go towards other things. I'm planning on picking up, hopefully, three new SSDs in the next several months to replace three of my current HDDs. After that I'm hoping the prices on HDDs will have come down some more and I want to get some 2TB+ drives. After that it'll either be a new PSU or monitor. But those are the planned upgrades for now.

[red777star]

Originally Posted by Ninja Prime

1. Yeah how about them 2 physx games last year? LOL. Its dead.
2. Actually, IIRC, AMD actually has support for 3d in more games than NV does via third party software.
3. Yawn. Worst feature ever, kills performace and adds an effect most people can't even see.
4. AMD has SSAA too.
5. SLI has the same number of problems as crossfire, NV only claims better in TWIMTBP game where they've bought off early access to game code, kudos for that, I guess.
6. Name some?
7. OpenCL apps.

Awesome feature set brah.

You know to tell you the truth HD5870 and HD6970 Tess performance over Fermi is joke in fact GTX470 setup smokes HD6970 setup in Crysis 2 or Metro 2033. With HD7970, AMD managed to beat Fermi tess performance but by very small margin which leads me to conclusion that Fermi compared to three AMD series 5000, 6000, 7000 was very well designed. I say that HD7000 series has no chance against Kepler since GTX580s is not that far behind HD7970. of course unless AMD is planning 8000 series soon after Kepler gets released

From my experience and i owned cards from both camps SLI is still superior over Crossfire. Crossfire is really hit and miss and takes AMD bloody at least two months to get it right. Lately they have been doing much better on that front so we will see. Physx is really nice and speaking of 3D for people who haven't seen Nvidia 3DVision in action they don't know what you are missing especially for 3DMovie playback.

OpenCL is joke, didn't find a single example of being used. Cuda is way to go and hopefully AMD starts supporting it for their video cards since Nvidia opened it up (Open source).

So in my mind if you own HD6970 or 580, 7970 is not for you unless you got money to burn.

[Ninja Prime]

First beta driver for 7900 series shows 19% improvement in Unigine bench: http://www.hwupgrade.it/forum/showpo...postcount=1509

I wonder what other benches/games will show this kind of improvement, pretty impressive for the first week.

[Roadhog]

Originally Posted by Ninja Prime

First beta driver for 7900 series shows 19% improvement in Unigine bench: http://www.hwupgrade.it/forum/showpo...postcount=1509

I wonder what other benches/games will show this kind of improvement, pretty impressive for the first week.

Need download link...

[K007]

it looks like there is some issue with 120hz monitors causing flickering...it can be fixed by setting to 60hz...so hopefully there will be a driver fix with the 7950.

[Muppet]

Originally Posted by K007

it looks like there is some issue with 120hz monitors causing flickering...it can be fixed by setting to 60hz...so hopefully there will be a driver fix with the 7950.

I would expect it to be fixed well before the 7950 launches. ATI have been releasing drivers in greater quantity than Nvidia as of late.

[K007]

indeed, the drivers have picked up a bit lately, although my 5870 doesn't really need anymore driver fixing...

[Muppet]

Originally Posted by K007

indeed, the drivers have picked up a bit lately, although my 5870 doesn't really need anymore driver fixing...

That's always good to hear

[Ninja Prime]

Originally Posted by Roadhog

Need download link...

Here you go:
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles...00-series.aspx

[Roadhog]

Originally Posted by Ninja Prime

Here you go:
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles...00-series.aspx

Those are the original drivers... How do you improve on something when nothing came before it?

[K007]

some new cap profiles are out

Grab the new AMD Catalyst Application Profile - 11.12 CAP2


These are the Catalyst profiles for multi-GPU support.

This release of ATI Catalyst delivers support for the latest ATI CrossFireX profiles in a separate executable file ensuring users have access to the absolute latest set of profiles installed on their PC.

Latest profiles added :

Project C.A.R.S.(DX9 version) : Improves CrossFire performance
Counter Strike: Global Offensive: Improves CrossFire performance
Modified Battlefield3 Profile
Modified Saints Row 3
ProfileAdded Prototype 2 Profile
Added Project C.A.R.S Profile
Added Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Profile
Added Might and Magic Heroes VI Profile
Anno 2070: Improves CrossFire scaling and fixes image quality issues seen in water, shadows, etc.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3: Improves CrossFire performance
Saints Row 3 (DirectX 9 version): Improves CrossFire performance
Serious Sam 3: Improves CrossFire performance
Java Control Panel: Fixes black screen corruption seen on single and multi GPU configurations when Anti-Aliasing is forced on through the Catalyst Control Center

Saints Row 3: Resolves stuttering seen when playing in CrossFireX mode.
Also provides Single GPU and CrossFireX performance improvements when running in lower resolution configurations
Gothic 4 Arcania: Fall of Setarrif: Improves CrossFire performance
Battlefield 3: Tweaks to the CrossFire profile
Battlefield 3 – Provides great CrossFire scaling and resolves stuttering issues when running in CrossFire mode.
Deus Ex Missing Link: Improves CrossFire performance
F1 2011: Improves CrossFire performance
Dead Island: Improves CrossFire performance
Batman Arkham City (DX9 version): Improves CrossFire performance
NBA 2012: Disables CrossFire
Battlefield 3: Provides great CrossFire scaling and reduces flickering / corruption issues when running in CrossFire mode
Red Orchestra 2 – Improves CrossFire Performance.
Serious Sam 3 – Improves CrossFire performance
Saints Row: The Third – Improves CrossFire performance
Battlefield 3
Red Orchestra 2 – Improves CrossFire Performance
TrackMania propfile added
Hard Reset – Improves CrossFire performance
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine – Improves performance on Single GPU configurations
War Inc Battle Zone: Resolves image corruption seen when enabling Anti-Aliasing through the Catalyst Control Center
Call of Juarez The Cartel - Improves CrossFire performance
Rome Total War: Disables CrossFire support
F1 2011:
- Improves performance on Single GPU configurations
- Forced on Anti-Aliasing through the Catalyst Control Center has been disabled
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 2 - Forced on Anti-Aliasing through the Catalyst Control Center now works
LA Noire - Improves CrossFire performance
Need for Speed World – Disable CrossFire support
Serious Sam HD : The First Encounter – Disable CrossFire support
Serious Sam HD Demo: The First Encounter – Disable CrossFire support
Serious Sam HD : The Second Encounter – Disable CrossFire support
Deus Ex3: Human Revolution(DX9) - Improves CrossFire performance
Shaun White Skateboarding - Improves CrossFire performance
MaxPayne3 - Improves CrossFire performance
Global Ops – Commando Libya: Improves CrossFire performance
Driver San Francisco: Disables CrossFire