Hardware AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB Review

Launch day pricing is quite high, however they have started revenue shipping, so there should be lots of cards availiable from day 1. I have seen somewhere that the first few shipments are on a more expensive PCB, and that AMD will be releasing a cheaper PCB? Finally if you are the undisputed performance king atm, you can charge what you like (within reality) when kepler is release will probs bring prices down, just look at what you can get now for between £150-200 due to competition in that area.

 

sorely tempted. Bit too early in the next gen launch and a bit more than what I was hoping for, with smaller dies you`d be expecting a cheaper mightily overclocking offering soon.

 

BT covers everything. We get copious amounts of reviews on the GTX 560Ti/550 and their ilk, and they're distinctly mid-range cards. The buyers guide has an entry level system, a mid-range system and the premium. Every review looks at the value proposition of a piece of hardware. Yes, BT deals with the latest hardware, but that hardware spans a great range of cost.

I think if you found BT dealing with only high-end kit they'd lose their readership and CustomPC mag would die. A simple look at the forums shows plenty of people spec'ing up new builds that definitely don't use the cutting the edge due to budget reasons.

Correct, and most people said the GTX 580 was too expensive at launch as well. It's only been with price cuts that it has become a better proposition for a build. You also have to look at the context in which a card is launched - if AMD wanted to hand a hammering to NVIDIA they need the 7970 to directly compete with 580 buyers on price, not be significantly more expensive.

10% gain over the 480, and a massive drop in noise and temperatures, a key facet of the 480 that crippled the card unless it was water-cooled. The 7970 is asking for £80-90 premium over your average 580 for a 9-20% increase...or about 5fps...when gaming at high resolutions.

Well yes, which is why waiting 2 generations usually makes more sense.

 

This was a very pleasant surprise. Gives AMD a decent foot to stand on while they continue to roll out the 28nm parts, a little pricey but nothing unexpected or out of the ordinary.
I suppose round 2 would be the arrival of nVidia, until then I will quietly wait before planning any kind of upgrade.

 

Looks really good but expensive.But i guess thats alway the case so unsure whether to move to nvidia or stick with AMD for my next card.Single monitor setup at 1920@1080 hoping for a 2-300 price range on the 7950s

 

to all who are saying that the next-gen high end nvidia card... it is not the GTX 680. if you have followed somewhat it is named as GTX 780...just saying.

what a few people us not saying much about as well as something that I hoped bit-tech would take is the multi-monitor setup that amd is touting about which is quite interesting. there is actually two parts to this...

1. the first part is the resolution that is possible. apparently the maximum resolution in total would be 16k by 16k. to put that number into context, you can put six 4K monitors in eyefinity where each one would be 4096X2160 resolution.

2. the second is the range of monitor resolution that you can place aka the flight sim setup. Also you can place other different sized monitor sizes in eyefinity.



link: http://vr-zone.com/articles/could-t...-60-percent-faster-than-a-gtx-580-/14296.html

 

I said for GPU compute applications. PCIe 3.0 doesn't (yet) do anything for games, but computing definitely requires all the bandwidth it can get.

Sent from my I9000 using Tapatalk

 

The fah V7 beta doesn't recognise the new cards yet. Noidea yet when the next beta will be available, or if fah will have had access to a card by then in orderto implement it. That's the biggest problem with using a new technology - when it's supported I expect it to perform very well, but until then nobody can say for sure.

I'm glad the SR-X and the new Xeon chips won't be out for a few months. It gives me a few months to assess which is going to be the best card for me (I don't think the high-end NVidia cards are due until late next year, but I can't remember where I saw their roadmap)

 

Same here mate.

 

Since I'm still a proud owner of a Sapphire HD4870 Toxic vga (top of the AMD HD4000 single gpu family tree - 4890 wasn't even a rumor back then) and probably the same would apply, back then who needed that much grunt?! Today I see the benefits of investing in such beast because I can play today games at medium-high, thing that wouldn't be possible to a mid-range card so to the likes of me that aren't upgrade junkies and only do when their hardware dies or gets outdated, this 7970 might be the update I really need to regain the grunt I once have. 4~5 years with the same top-end vga says a lot so I think this is quite a viable option even with such expected price.
I can't help but think there is a little bias towards Nvidia because I remember in the GTX580 review, such thing wasn't said and there's a GTX580 3GB from eVGA.
I agree that you didn't give it the recommended award and the extreme ultra but a recommendation in the article, a simple line would be enough.
Finally, I'm probably going to update when Sapphire or other partner releases a special OC version of the HD7970.

 

Very nice! Now, what is the 7670 or 7750 going to offer for performance, price and power use? A nice passively cooled 7670 might be just the ticket for me if it can also offer 50% better performance than the 6670.

 

Yeah me too, but everyone's extremes vary quite a bit , my new extreme is 2560x1440 new IPS cheesecake wooooo .

This one sure is very nice though but a tad expensive for a single GPU I think, hope that isn't the new standard price for top end single GPU's, definitely a bit too much IMO, if that is the new standard price I guess dual GPU's will be a grand .

 

"However, it's questionable whether you seriously need that much graphics performance. With the PC games industry tied down by games that need to be developed for ageing consoles, you won't benefit from this sort of graphics power unless you use very high resolutions". This is true, but I also own a GSXR 1000 and can't use all its potential on the road....but its just good to know its there if I need it.

 

The reason it's highly priced is because they can. AMD know that Nvidia won't have any response to the 7970 until at least Q2 2012, and so they can avoid their usual profit margin-destroying strategy of undercutting Nvidia.

Once Kepler lands, they'll slash hard to maintain their lead.

 

WARNING: Nvidia fanboy posting:

Ooooooh snaaaaaaaaap

its not much from GTX580! LOL

i was expecting MUCH more, AMD. What happened? This **** will get bulldozed by the time Kepler arrives... (pun definitely intended)

but ok, ill give credit that now AMD is back on the trone, baby!

 

"most people said the GTX 580 was too expensive at launch as well. It's only been with price cuts that it has become a better proposition for a build."
...and this wont come down in price?
"You also have to look at the context in which a card is launched - if AMD wanted to hand a hammering to NVIDIA they need the 7970 to directly compete with 580 buyers on price, not be significantly more expensive."
...you want new tech at old tech prices....hmmm?

"a key facet of the 480" ....was that it was 6 months late! And no one knows when nVidia's response will turn up... or how it will perform.

 

Pretty much this. Being more powerful than a GTX580 it can command an even higher price. I was shocked when the rumors first came out about the high price but in retrospect it makes sense. They milk high profit out of the first cards while they can so they can slash as low as possible to match Nvidia.

I also woudn't doubt that as the rest of the 7xxx series is launched the price will drop slightly, right now the 6xxx series isn't totally obsolete so the 7970 is being priced according to 6xxx price-performance ratios.

 

Firstly, I think you need to learn how to use the Quote feature...

Secondly, of course the 7970 will come down in price, eventually. Once it does, it may well become a better value proposition for buyers. However this is probably a year away before any decent cut hits.

New tech at old prices? Sure, why ever not? Intel launches new CPUs at the same price points as the previous generation after all...

Yes the 480 was late. That bears no relation to whether Kepler will be late or not. The argument about waiting is not necessarily to go out and buy an NVIDIA card, it's about getting a view of the whole, rather than rushing in to buying a card when it is the only option, only to regret it a few months down the line.

 

yes, but can it play farmville

srsly - update now and you'll get all your games in gloriously immersive full visual detail now and all the future releases over the next 18 months in similar fully detail - seems an easy choice if you can afford it.

 

far too expensive for my blood....