7990 1ghz edition to debut at computex 2012

[Rollo]

That depends on how its used to whether its a fallacy or not and that is as person by person basis, my 4x3870 was not future proof at all and very short lived because of 512 Vram at 2560x1600, got burnt bad and never again when the choice for more Vram is available, but a friend of mine was still happily playing games on my old 1800xt 512mb at 1440x900 which if it was the 256mb version he would not have been.



Seen allot of 5970 + 5870 trifire being ditched because of Vram, i saw that coming [once bitten twice shy] before it happened so i have the 2GB per GPU 5970's.

So no, future proofing is not a fallacy if you know what your doing.

Future proofing is a fallacy, period. Got news for you- four 3870s would suck at a lot of games at 25 X 16 even if they had 100GB of VRAM per GPU. Don't even want to think about what the microstutter, fps, and driver issues of such a Frankenstein rig would be. (and I'd say the same of four 8800GTXs)

It has to do with what your bottleneck really is- and frame buffer usually isn't the issue. (for sure at 2GB per card)

But, you're an AMD fan, so you're pointing out one of very few areas the 7970 could possibly have an advantage and trying to make it seem like as big of a deal as possible. I understand that and don't blame you, it's sort of like you're a guy whose favorite baseball player bats .158 and averages 3 errors a game, but happens to steal a base half the time he gets on base. You post the equivalent of "Joe Baseball may not have the highest batting average, but you've got to have a player who can steal a base once he gets on!".

I had two 3GB GTX580s on my 57X10 rig before I got the two 2GB 680s, know what difference I've noticed? That the 680s are faster at everything. All the reviews I've seen of surround show the 680s as either better or equivalent to the 3GB 7970s for surround as well.

There might come a day when 3GB will be necessary, but I'll have different cards then. I don't know of many people who buy $500 cards and try to keep them multiple generations- usually people who buy high end are enthusiasts who want to try the new cards, sell the old ones for half what they paid, and move on. Besides getting the new features and more performance, the economics make sense. One generation card, still has re-sale and buyers. Two gen, may as well use it to hold down papers.

You seem to be speaking to some imaginary market of guys who buy very expensive video cards and plan on keeping them the rest of their life.

[Rollo]

Indeed, I may push 3 years this time, 04/06/2012 will be 2 years exactly.

And look what else i found.
http://www.overclock.net/t/1235392/o...-steam-now/400

That was a good find!

Game looks better to me with FXAA on Very High and MSAA off. Turning MSAA off also gets ride of the white outline around Max.

[BababooeyHTJ]

Anyone who thinks that FXAA looks better than MSAA needs to get their vision checked.

[cold2010]

^^^^

i'll state this again in the article, but fxaa has so many advantages over msaa it makes msaa look silly.

I don't understand why people are stuck on old technologies that don't even antialiase everything. Fxaa works on polygon edges, alpha textures, reduces specular aliasing, it covers the lot, the whole shabang, while msaa only works on polygon edges. Plus, fxaa has no performance impact, and looks as good as 4x msaa, and so far in my gaming of mp3 even looks as good as 8x msaa on polygon edges.

I've been looking closely at it, very high fxaa looks as good as 8x msaa in this game, with no perf hit, and no vram limits.

Grab hold of the future, shader aa is where it's at.

[BababooeyHTJ]

Yes, brent and Kyle need to get their eyes checked. Also makes you question their subjective approach to benchmarking, eh? If you can't see the texture blurring and aliasing in motion with FXAA then I don't know what to tell you. Given the choice I really like SMAA with 4x MSAA.

[boxleitnerb]

Agreed. FXAA looks good on stills, but that's about it. In motion it has little effect and it blurs (although to a certain extent, all AA-methods blur). In MP3, MSAA doesn't antialiase all the edges and has an insane performance impact. But that is only one example - there are other modern games where MSAA can and does work properly.

With this performance hit of MSAA, I guess downsampling is becoming more and more of a valid alternative. At 2560x2048@1280x1024 +ingame FXAA the loss of sharpness is negligible and aliasing is reduced considerably everywhere.

[Final8ty]

1)Future proofing is a fallacy, period. Got news for you- four 3870s would suck at a lot of games at 25 X 16 even if they had 100GB of VRAM per GPU. Don't even want to think about what the microstutter, fps, and driver issues of such a Frankenstein rig would be. (and I'd say the same of four 8800GTXs)

It has to do with what your bottleneck really is- and frame buffer usually isn't the issue. (for sure at 2GB per card)

2)But, you're an AMD fan, so you're pointing out one of very few areas the 7970 could possibly have an advantage and trying to make it seem like as big of a deal as possible. I understand that and don't blame you, it's sort of like you're a guy whose favorite baseball player bats .158 and averages 3 errors a game, but happens to steal a base half the time he gets on base. You post the equivalent of "Joe Baseball may not have the highest batting average, but you've got to have a player who can steal a base once he gets on!".

3)I had two 3GB GTX580s on my 57X10 rig before I got the two 2GB 680s, know what difference I've noticed? That the 680s are faster at everything. All the reviews I've seen of surround show the 680s as either better or equivalent to the 3GB 7970s for surround as well.

4)There might come a day when 3GB will be necessary, but I'll have different cards then. I don't know of many people who buy $500 cards and try to keep them multiple generations- usually people who buy high end are enthusiasts who want to try the new cards, sell the old ones for half what they paid, and move on. Besides getting the new features and more performance, the economics make sense. One generation card, still has re-sale and buyers. Two gen, may as well use it to hold down papers.

5)You seem to be speaking to some imaginary market of guys who buy very expensive video cards and plan on keeping them the rest of their life.

1) Got news for you, the four 3870s did not suck at all, i had 2 first then 3 and then 4 and it only got better and better with each card, you didn't have them so you cant speak on behalf of them and yes the Vram was the issue, microstutter was not an issue as i like to Vsync at 60fps as screen tearing is a no no for me so don't talk like you know it all when you have never had it and im not interested in how 4 8800GTXs performs, its irrelevant and don't lecture me on bottleneck.


2)My part in this has nothing to do with AMD or NV, im talking about Vram, so what if AMD has 3GB, NV has a 4GB versions, sometimes you have to learn when to take your tinted glasses off and not see everything in a AMD v NV when the comment being made is not about which has more.

3)Yeah so what, what's that got to with my comment besides you generalising again.

4)Yes some people like to do that and some don't.

5)The only person imagining things is you, no one said anything about keeping for life and you cant accept that others don't share your upgrade cycle.
If the 4x3870 did not run out of Vram then i would not of sold them and bought a cheap NV card as a stopgap that i could only game at 1280x800 until a suitable 2GB per GPU card came out and would of held out for the 2GB 6 series instead of the 2GB 5 series , plenty of people have already said that the only reason why they are upgrading is because of the Vram and if the cards had more they would not have, so why your carrying on as if that's all a fallacy is pure arrogance, the fact is im still using my cards as if they were the 1GB versions i would not be.

[Final8ty]

That was a good find!

Again nothing to do with the context or the point i was making.
We know you like FXAA already.

[Final8ty]

Yes, brent and Kyle need to get their eyes checked. Also makes you question their subjective approach to benchmarking, eh? If you can't see the texture blurring and aliasing in motion with FXAA then I don't know what to tell you. Given the choice I really like SMAA with 4x MSAA.

+1

Its all matter of personal taste.

[Rollo]

Yes, brent and Kyle need to get their eyes checked. Also makes you question their subjective approach to benchmarking, eh? If you can't see the texture blurring and aliasing in motion with FXAA then I don't know what to tell you. Given the choice I really like SMAA with 4x MSAA.

You're ignoring the elephant in the room here-

We have reviewers and end users posting that they like FXAA better than MSAA. I have no doubts there may be scenes or games MSAA looks better, but the fact of the matter is still that reviewers are examining it, people are posting stills and videos, and the verdict on it is largely positive.

The fact that it's an alternative is hard to dispute at this point.

[Roadhog]

You're ignoring the elephant in the room here-

We have reviewers and end users posting that they like FXAA better than MSAA. I have no doubts there may be scenes or games MSAA looks better, but the fact of the matter is still that reviewers are examining it, people are posting stills and videos, and the verdict on it is largely positive.

The fact that it's an alternative is hard to dispute at this point.

Do you even have eyes? Compare SMAA to FXAA and then tell me FXAA is still good. Even MLAA 2.0 offers far better IQ than FXAA minus the very slight text smoothing.

Only reason you like FXAA is because nvidia told you to like it. You don't have your own opinion in anything.

[boxleitnerb]

Is there a good comparison between MLAA 2.0 and FXAA out there or where do you get that opinion that MLAA is better? To speak about "image quality" in the same sentence as MLAA/FXAA is blasphemy anyway. Both are crap on their own.

[Rollo]

Do you even have eyes? Compare SMAA to FXAA and then tell me FXAA is still good. Even MLAA 2.0 offers far better IQ than FXAA minus the very slight text smoothing.

Only reason you like FXAA is because nvidia told you to like it. You don't have your own opinion in anything.

Actually AMD told me to like it:

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33983154

Well that explains me liking it, beyond my using it every day and not noticing this "horrible blurring" you refer to.

Wonder if it was AMD who forced HardOCP, PCPerspctive, Hardware Heaven, and the other review sites to like it too? You should email them and tell them they are blind Roadhog, they clearly don't have your discerning taste. They'll probably send you a 4th 7970 in thanks so you can run your 25X14 at 300fps errr...I mean 60fps....

[Roadhog]

Actually AMD told me to like it:

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33983154

Well that explains me liking it, beyond my using it every day and not noticing this "horrible blurring" you refer to.

Wonder if it was AMD who forced HardOCP, PCPerspctive, Hardware Heaven, and the other review sites to like it too? You should email them and tell them they are blind Roadhog, they clearly don't have your discerning taste. They'll probably send you a 4th 7970 in thanks so you can run your 25X14 at 300fps errr...I mean 60fps....

lol.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...rk,3148-2.html

As you can see, FXAA yields a blurrier picture than AMD’s morphological anti-aliasing, and MLAA 2.0 results in an even crisper picture compared to the original.

MLAA 2.0 doesn't blur textures, FXAA does. Simple as that.

I wish AMD would send me free cards like nvidia does for you. That would be nice.

[zalbard]

Nvidia needs to push FXAA 4.0 out, it should improve image quality considerably.

[BababooeyHTJ]

You're ignoring the elephant in the room here-

We have reviewers and end users posting that they like FXAA better than MSAA. I have no doubts there may be scenes or games MSAA looks better, but the fact of the matter is still that reviewers are examining it, people are posting stills and videos, and the verdict on it is largely positive.


The fact that it's an alternative is hard to dispute at this point.

Yup, they don't agree with the majority. Look in this thread alone. Its you vs how many other people? I don't care what other people think, I like to formulate my own opinions.. When I had a 6950 I thought that MLAA looked horrific and I think that FXAA is only a little better. These post process techniques have a long way to go before they come close to a little MSAA with some transparency aa or even better SGSSAA.

Like I said I like SMAA which is much better than FXAA but even that needs a little MSAA to top it off.

lol.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...rk,3148-2.html



MLAA 2.0 doesn't blur textures, FXAA does. Simple as that.

I wish AMD would send me free cards like nvidia does for you. That would be nice.

I'm glad to hear that MLAA is actually usable now. How does MLAA 2.0 compare to SMAA at the moment? Does it still need a little msaa to top it all off?

[Rollo]

lol.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...rk,3148-2.html



MLAA 2.0 doesn't blur textures, FXAA does. Simple as that.

Ah. So Tom's Hardware agrees with you, so they invalidate what HardOCP, PCPerspective, and Hardware Heaven say? Next you'll be posting Hardware Fr has declared the 7970 faster, they clearly invalidate all other websites.

Even if you throw FXAA out of the equation, the 680 still has the advantage with TXAA on the way:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/201...0-2gb-review/5

Nvidia has been quick to sign software developers up to TXAA, and claims that MechWarrior Online, Secret World, Eve Online, Borderlands 2, Unreal 4 Engine, BitSquid, Slant Six Games, and Crytek have all signed up to implement TXAA.

Of course there's the PhysX in upcoming big titles like Borderlands 2 you'll be missing as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bav8TCmCF1E

And ambient occlusion in Diablo 3:

http://international.download.nvidia...parison-1.html

Or PhysX in The Secret World:

http://www.geforce.com/games-applica...e-secret-world

or PhysX in Metro Last Light:

http://www.geforce.com/games-applica...tro-last-light

But what the heck- you don't mind watching the new games come out with all the features you can't see right? You've got almost comparable perfmance, more heat, higher electric bills, and more noise as offsetting factors, right?

[Roadhog]

Ah. So Tom's Hardware agrees with you, so they invalidate what HardOCP, PCPerspective, and Hardware Heaven say?
But what the heck- you don't mind watching the new games come out with all the features you can't see right? You've got almost comparable perfmance, more heat, higher electric bills, and more noise as offsetting factors, right?

Actually, this whole thread agrees with me. The whole thread on HardOCP even agrees that FXAA is blurry.

Oh no, I'm missing out on AO in Diablo 3, a game I have 0 interest in, same with Secret World and Metro. Borderlands is the only one that interests me, but I got that for free already from PAX Prime.

Last time I checked my system was pretty much silent, my cards also draw 40 watts less each than air cooled cards, and I can overclock really high too. I bet you were waiting all day just to get those comments out.

[cegras]

I'm sure that it's pretty hard to test image quality scientifically, so it's not like a reviewer's opinion is better. The only reason they are to be trusted with regards to hardware reviews is because they have a large set of data from which to draw from.

[Final8ty]

I'm sure that it's pretty hard to test image quality scientifically, so it's not like a reviewer's opinion is better. The only reason they are to be trusted with regards to hardware reviews is because they have a large set of data from which to draw from.

Even though, sometimes i do wonder like this person.

Yet as per usual, its a [H] review that makes no sense, results, 7970 is the bestest, its cheaper and overclocks the best and ends up the fastest(and lets make no mention of 680gtx's cheating in surround, again... though I still don't know if that's true or not, several reviews mentioned it, most didn't).

So conclusion.......... we've all gone green again. Yes, a review where their results say the 7970 is better, so they've switched to Nvidia.

Though even that is unclear, Nvidia are Green, AMD are green, ATi are red.... there is no ATi but I am assuming they mean Nvidia by going green.

So how can you do a review that says "AMD wins" but we're going Nvidia anyway.

This is my biggest problem with [H], they say one thing, and do another thing in reviews and have conclusions that are a third thing entirely based neither on the views they express in their forums, nor from the results of the review.

THey banged on for a while in reviews about SLI just being better, while ignoring that 2 of the games IIRC, didn't actually work as standard in SLI but needed user hacking, while if AMD can have xfire enabled by a .exe rename, its ignored and berated for not having xfire working. THen on their forums they say SLI is worse this gen and xfire is doing great both performance and feel in games, then they do another review not long after saying Xfire sucks again.

Then you get a review, we've been using AMD, its faster according to our results...... so we're going Nvidia. Joke of a site, read the Asrock review, summed up "we know this board is broken, we KNOW there is a fault that means it isn't possibly working at 100%, we could get a free RMA and a working board.... instead we've run our full normal benchmarking knowing the board is **** and bashed it.... we'll also mention that we've been GIVEN a board by Asus for review and its awesome, and we bought this board ourselves out of our own money and we hate it because the board sucks".

Maybe the most awful site out there right now, pretending to be unbiased, being paid for reviews, purposefully reviewing broken boards of the competition of their PAID reviews......... lol

Either way, I'm pretty happy, I got a 7970 for £10 more than the very cheapest 670gtx I can see, and overclocked its faster than a 680gtx. Anyone paying £400 + for either AMD or Nvidia cards is off their rocker.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...9&postcount=15

[kuroikenshi]

^^ that about sums it up for me.

[Rollo]

Actually, this whole thread agrees with me. The whole thread on HardOCP even agrees that FXAA is blurry.

I don't agree with you, the guy who posted H's opinion (which I had never seen) doesn't agree with you, the three reviewers don't agree. I guess we're not part of "everyone", but that wouldn't fit your "appeal to the masses" logical fallacy/rhetoric. I will say I haven't studied the difference, I just turned on the FXAA on my two computers and gamed when I put the Keplers in. The blurring you're talking about hasn't jumped off the screen at me and made me turn it off and go to MSAA. I'll compare the two tonight and see what I think. I've got to head to a charity "take a child with cancer" fishing event now, and then my son is playing in a soccer club match in another city, and then subbing for another city in a regional tournament. (so my day is shot)

Oh no, I'm missing out on AO in Diablo 3, a game I have 0 interest in,

A. That game is setting sales records, so whether you or I want it is irrelevant. B. Did you look at the difference in image quality in my link? It's a huge difference in image quality, and AMD users have to look at the worse side of it.

same with Secret World and Metro. Borderlands is the only one that interests me, but I got that for free already from PAX Prime.

Again, did you watch the video and see what you're missing and will never have because you chose AMD cards? In a discussion about whether the new slightly OCd 7970s are a good deal, this kind of stuff is pretty important.

The 7970s are so old school it hurts with feature set, so even if they upclock their reference model to similar performance, the buyer gets much less for the money. As all the reviews I've seen show the 680s as similar in performance (or better) at up to 57X12 that pretty much eliminates any "moar RAMz" arguments, so then you're reduced to piddly stuff like zero core and moving a task bar as a "feature set" to compare to NVIDIAs laundry list of items that actually make games look better.

Last time I checked my system was pretty much silent, my cards also draw 40 watts less each than air cooled cards, and I can overclock really high too.

No foolin'? Watercooled GPUs use less power and can OC?! This IS news! What's your point? The reference 1GHz 7970s will be using more power.

I bet you were waiting all day just to get those comments out.

No, I was out doing other things. What's interesting to me is how you can suggest people buy AMD high end this round when they fall short in so many ways. If a person had three 25X14 or three 25 X16 monitors, I'd have to recommend the 7970s if the 4GB 670s didn't exist. Other than that, a gamer using 7970s is locked out of so much proprietary stuff, and isn't getting anything relevant as an offset. (and paying more to boot)

Obviously you and I are just hobbyists havng what amounts to a "Mustang vs. Camaro" or "Browning vs Benelli" debate, but the scales are tipped so far in MVIDIA's favor this round I'm amazed anyoine recommends AMD at all. It's not a Bulldozer vs i7 sort of advantage, because the 1Ghz 7970s do perform pretty close in comparison, but they're lacking so many features lack of NV 28nm mid range is about the only thing keeping them in the market now.

[demowhc]

Lol guys, both FXAA and MLAA are crap. SMAA > all other shader based AA methods.

Rollo did bring up 1 good point though, the white outline artifacts produced by MSAA which happens in a few games (usually UE3 based), in which case I actually agree and would rather use FXAA or MLAA. Take RO2 for example, that has horrific white lines artifacts, aswell as missing a lot of jaggies when MSAA is used. In that case, I prefer to use the SMAA injector, but if that wasnt an option for whatever reason, then FXAA or MLAA over MSAA. But that is rare and only a last resort.

[marten_larsson]

What features are AMD missing again? I don't think you've repeated them enough in this thread, I mean, the thread is CLEARLY about Nvidia feature set and not bout the 7970 Gigahurtz edition... Sigh.

[Kallenator]

Lol guys, both FXAA and MLAA are crap. SMAA > all other shader based AA methods.

I can vouch for this in Bf3 as well. The FXAA injector is nice too though and does not really fall short of the SMAA injector, however the FXAA does indeed support FAR more adjustments which is nice.

The nonsense though that FXAA is somewhat blurry is just a fallacy, you dont say a windshield is blurry when it's dirty... the FXAA Nvidia seem to support out of the box is just badly configured thats all.

The MSAA in BF3 is crap, same with the Post AA, it blurs the image so damn much, makes it hard to see enemies. Wheter this is because how the MSAA algorithm works or whatever I do not know.