AMD Radeon HD 7970 Review: 28nm And Graphics Core Next, Together As One

[THX1138]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/a...hd-7970-review Anandtech
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/...eo_card_review Hardocp
http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-ra...d-7970-review/ guru3d
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/ Techpowerup Techpowerup
http://widescreengamingforum.com/art...w-benchmarking

I don't think this has been posted yeat, I hope.

[paulbagz]

First!

-PB

[Cold Fussion]

Quite dissapointing.

[HelixPC]

Quite dissapointing.

Yes, very, for a brand new card thats priced at $550, i expected more. If this was priced at $399 or even $449 it would be more appealing. Im sure once nVidia comes out with the new stuff, prices will be lowrered to around 450 for the 7970.

[DilTech]

Quite dissapointing.

What's disappointing about it? It's exactly what a lot of us were telling people to expect out of it. Bear in mind: this isn't the real flag-ship--there's still likely to be a dual gpu version.

[kuroikenshi]

^^

Yeah I am disappointed too, I was expecting a new car on a new process and architecture with premature beta drivers to perform 100% better than the previous gen... because that's obviously the norm in with flagship cards...

[Vipeax]

http://nl.hardware.info/reviews/2472...hd-7970-review
http://www.ixbt.com/video3/tahiti-part1.shtml
http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-rade...nds/14307.html
http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-ra...d-7970-review/
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...gb-review.html
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/a...hd-7970-review
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/...eo_card_review
http://www.overclockers.com/amd-rade...s-card-review/
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...-gcn,3104.html
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/review...roduction.html
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1805/1/
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphic...ew-Tahiti-28nm
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/AMD-R...ti-GPU-Review/
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphi...n-hd-7970-3gb/
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/artic...rd-Review/1458
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/fea...re_performance
http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/graph...radeon-hd-7970
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/g...adeon-hd-7970/
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,86...fikkarte/Test/
http://www.kitguru.net/components/gr...s-card-review/
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Ha...s/AMD_HD_7970/
http://www.clubic.com/carte-graphiqu...70-tahiti.html
http://www.lesnumeriques.com/carte-g...2460/test.html

Mix of languages (English, Dutch, French, German, ??), but numbers are numbers .

[Cold Fussion]

What's disappointing about it? It's exactly what a lot of us were telling people to expect out of it. Bear in mind: this isn't the real flag-ship--there's still likely to be a dual gpu version.

Because 20% is still not an awful lot better than what we had last year, and for the biggest game of year, bf3, depending on the review/location, that advantage can be within 10%. Obviously performance will go up, but the small performance increase and having to deal with AMD's drivers means I'm very much not going to be upgrading to it. Plus it costs a fair bit more than a GTX 580 before the inevitable price gauging will take place and has a horrible reference heatsink.

[DilTech]

Because 20% is still not an awful lot better than what we had last year, and for the biggest game of year, bf3, depending on the review/location, that advantage can be within 10%. Obviously performance will go up, but the small performance increase and having to deal with AMD's drivers means I'm very much not going to be upgrading to it. Plus it costs a fair bit more than a GTX 580 before the inevitable price gauging will take place and has a horrible reference heatsink.

Fair enough. Anyone that expected a giant leap over the GTX 580 was barking up the wrong tree though. It's a rather sizable jump over AMD's last single gpu though.

[Kristoferr]

Read a lot of rewiews.

It seems to me that the card has quite a lot of potentsial. Somehow its capped on several games. Are those drivers(yet again) or something else, i dont know. I also expected better perfomance on overal.
However. On the bright side- Card OCs very nicely with default voltages. Power consumption rises only 10% while overclocked to 1075/1700. Overclocked card is equal to HD 6950 CF in 3Dmark 11. Thats not bad at all!
I will definately buy this or 7950 soon. Just need a bit of price drop. This launch price is riddiculus.

[K404]

Faster than the GTX580 and uses less power. ATI are in the lead, it's totally fine that they price that way

It's not a big lead... and I expect nVidia to release a strong card that takes back the crown.... but it's gonna take what.... 4 months of waiting?

[DilTech]

Faster than the GTX580 and uses less power. ATI are in the lead, it's totally fine that they price that way

It's not a big lead... and I expect nVidia to release a strong card that takes back the crown.... but it's gonna take what.... 4 months of waiting?

a LOT less than that--but, that's another thread, another time.

Honestly, this card is exactly where I expected it to be. I'm just glad AMD finally walked away from using the same shader design that they've used for so many years before it--it's always more interesting when companies come with something new from the ground up.

[RPGWiZaRD]

Results are pretty much what I expected, not a very huge jump in performance for 40->28nm but all in all power consumption/performance wise it's still pretty good. I'm very interested in how GK104 will fare against these cards though in January/February or whenever they gets released, I have a feeling Nvidia will come with a more aggressive pricing which will push prices down so at least I wouldn't buy a card right now but then again I'm not really in a huge need for a new card either so. At least I'm like 90% sure Nvidia won't price GK104 over $500 even if it would perform about same as HD7970 (I don't it'll quite be that fast in avg but very very close, in-between GTX580 and HD7970 is my guess at 400~$450 and will then EOL GTX580 rather immediatly)

[Dainas]

Doing lots better than the other side of the companies recent big release. Things are only going to get better for all of us after a year of stagnation, my 580 is doing better than i wanted, but i really really want a 3GB framebuffer and less heat.

[AKM]

Impressive, and I hope Nvidia will also have much better perf/watt with Kepler, look at that GTX 480 yikes don't want to see that again.

[OCX600RR]

Will we see this card on shelves or in-stock later today @ e-tailers? I have been looking here in USA and EU but haven't found one yet!

[mockingbird]

I'm actually impressed. I don't like ATI/AMD cards, but I'm very happy that they're implementing power-saving features. Not because I particularly care about saving power - that's nice too - but these features significantly lengthen the life of the card and the fan. This is a step in the right direction. Now my problem with ATI/AMD is that these features will probably be broken in a future driver release in a year or two when they release the next generation and completely ignore the previous generation. That's why I never recommend their cards.

They got to 28nm before nVidia, but nVidia shops at the same fab, TSMC. AMD has better quality control, but nVidia has better drivers. I have to give the edge to nVidia's next gen unless AMD astounds everyone with a complete re-release of their lackluster drivers. They need to replace the trainwreck known as Catalyst with something new, make some sort of guarantee on a TRUE unified driver architecture, hire 10-20 more driver programmers for Linux, and then I will consider recommending their stuff again.

[Frontl1ne]

I'm actually impressed. I don't like ATI/AMD cards, but I'm very happy that they're implementing power-saving features. Not because I particularly care about saving power - that's nice too - but these features significantly lengthen the life of the card and the fan. This is a step in the right direction. Now my problem with ATI/AMD is that these features will probably be broken in a future driver release in a year or two when they release the next generation and completely ignore the previous generation. That's why I never recommend their cards.

They got to 28nm before nVidia, but nVidia shops at the same fab, TSMC. AMD has better quality control, but nVidia has better drivers. I have to give the edge to nVidia's next gen unless AMD astounds everyone with a complete re-release of their lackluster drivers. They need to replace the trainwreck known as Catalyst with something new, make some sort of guarantee on a TRUE unified driver architecture, hire 10-20 more driver programmers for Linux, and then I will consider recommending their stuff again.

*cough cough*

do you know whose driver actually broke the fan speed control?

[boost]

I'd like to see a clock for clock analysis of a 7970 and a GTX 580.
I think a 7970 @ 772/1002 MHz would match the speed of a stock 580 almost exactly.

[sergiojr]

I'd like to see a clock for clock analysis of a 7970 and a GTX 580.
I think a 7970 @ 772/1002 MHz would match the speed of a stock 580 almost exactly.

With shader domain @ 772Mhz 580 will lose heavily.

[Delex]

One more review from Italy: http://www.techstation.it/hardware/a...e-qui-233.html

[Chrono Detector]

Performance wasn't so bad though I expected more, at least its not a dud like Bulldozer, and at least this card is faster than a GTX 580 and uses less power and heat output which is a good thing.

[3lfk1ng]

It's always nice to see the technical advancements alongside decreased power usage. To be perfectly honest though, I was expecting more from the half-node jump down to 28nm. I was also expecting a GTX 580 beating price around $450.

I wasn't planning on upgrading anytime soon so It will be interesting to see what Nvidia releases.

[flopper]

It's always nice to see the technical advancements alongside decreased power usage. To be perfectly honest though, I was expecting more from the half-node jump down to 28nm. I was also expecting a GTX 580 beating price around $450.

I wasn't planning on upgrading anytime soon so It will be interesting to see what Nvidia releases.

compute take die size cant work around that.
even if kepler comes out next year, they still face the same issues.
we see the same thing with cpu, new generations either be a tick or tock dont add much.

[ajaidev]

Where is the 7950??