AMD Rolls Out new HD 7950 BIOS, Expects Existing Customers to Look the Other Way

[Chickenfeed]

Don't touch HIS unless you are okay with warranty and customer service that's all talk and no walk. Those guys are seriously just a bunch of greedy, unethical ass clowns. They couldn't pay me to touch their products. Tired of these useless Chinese companies and their bait and switch tactics. If you are going to sell something at a retail level, support and stand behind your product. Otherwise GTFO.

[LordEC911]

Don't touch HIS unless you are okay with warranty and customer service that's all talk and no walk. Those guys are seriously just a bunch of greedy, unethical ass clowns. They couldn't pay me to touch their products. Tired of these useless Chinese companies and their bait and switch tactics. If you are going to sell something at a retail level, support and stand behind your product. Otherwise GTFO.

You do realize almost every tech company, especially AIBs, are "useless Chinese companies," right?

[Lanek]

The main issue for purchasers is the IceQ's price. It typically comes at a significant premium. Hopefully, that will change with the Boost Edition though.

I ask me what you mean as "premium" ... 99% of the review of the 660TI are with custom cards, so if you mean premium = custom AIB cards ( overclocked or not ) ... You have just to look the 660TI review threads here for understand what i mean.. and watch the link

I ask me even how so much review got 660TI reference results when they have not even write anything on them, but was just use their AIB custom models. ( MSI, Gigabyte, EVGA etc ) ..

I dont know but when you write an article about a new product release, you write first the artcile about this reference product, then you use the custom AIB overvlocked for show the difference, you dont add the reference card results as a subline in the score ..

I dont speak about your review, you was the only one to use a standard 660TI by Evga but about other reviewers. I still ask me how Hilbert and reviewers have the result of the " standard, reference 660TI in their benchmark, without even make an article a review about them, when they had 3-4 reviews about custom AIB cards .

[SKYMTL]

I ask me what you mean as "premium" ... 99% of the review of the 660TI are with custom cards, so if you mean premium = custom AIB cards ( overclocked or not ) ... You have just to look the 660TI review threads here for understand what i mean.. and watch the link.

I think I understand what you mean....not sure though. However, in my experience, HIS IceQ cards are much more than $10-$15 more than the reference version. There are some that are well priced but not that many. The reason for this is HIS's use of the IceQ heatsink on what are typically highly overclocked cards.

I ask me even how so much review got 660TI reference results when they have not even write anything on them, but was just use their AIB custom models. ( MSI, Gigabyte, EVGA etc ) ..

I believe many downclocked their cards. We used an actual reference design (the EVGA one) and flashed the BIOS to EVGA's reference BIOS.

I dont know but when you write an article about a new product release, you write first the artcile about this reference product, then you use the custom AIB overvlocked for show the difference, you dont add the reference card results as a subline in the score ..

Totally agree with you there. Our roundup will be coming next week. I'm also working on putting together a HD 7950 Boost Edition roundup but that is proving to be quite hard since all of the board partners seem to have very limited supply of the card right now. Hopefully that will change in the coming weeks.

I dont speak about your review, you was the only one to use a standard 660TI by Evga but about other reviewers. I still ask me how Hilbert and reviewers have the result of the " standard, reference 660TI in their benchmark, without even make an article a review about them, when they had 3-4 reviews about custom AIB cards .

That's something you should ask them. It is a good question though...

[Chickenfeed]

You do realize almost every tech company, especially AIBs, are "useless Chinese companies," right?

Some actually make an honest effort in foreign markets however. HIS is just not among them and definitely not the only one. Their obligation to some markets is next to nothing outside of product presence. As much as I dislike Apple, they still support their products and honor their warranties. It just nice to have the peace of mind that If something goes wrong that support is readily available and helpful.

[Andrew LB]

At same time, if you was seen the quality of Nvidia drivers for 600 series today .. ( no seriously, just make a ride on some threads )

( I admit this can stand as i defend amd, but well, we could say too when things go wrong on Nividia side ..)

The vast majority of GTX 680 owners had cards and drivers that worked just fine. The stuttering issue was only experienced by a minority of very loud voices, who were of course encouraged by ATi owners. I found it interesting how when anyone would suggest the stuttering was not a problem everyone had and and then give some tests to run as to help determine whether or not there was any common hardware between affected machines, the people in question would ignore all the suggested tests and then claim we either are intentionally ignoring my own card stuttering (which it never did) or was too stupid to see it stutter. lol. I left that thread because I knew it was a farce.

[Ket]

Some actually make an honest effort in foreign markets however. HIS is just not among them and definitely not the only one. Their obligation to some markets is next to nothing outside of product presence. As much as I dislike Apple, they still support their products and honor their warranties. It just nice to have the peace of mind that If something goes wrong that support is readily available and helpful.

I know what you mean, I once bought a Palit X1950Pro and when it screwed up Palit didn't reply to any of my emails or support tickets. I eventually got hold of a guy who worked for Palit in the US, he emailed around in order to get somebody to respond to me and when they eventually did all I got was a email written in extremely poor english which I couldn't understand at all. As such, I've never bought a Palit card again, have warned people off them and will continue to do so. As for HIS though, I've never heard anything good or bad about them really.

[raghu78]

Totally agree with you there. Our roundup will be coming next week. I'm also working on putting together a HD 7950 Boost Edition roundup but that is proving to be quite hard since all of the board partners seem to have very limited supply of the card right now. Hopefully that will change in the coming weeks.

Try and include cards like Sapphire HD 7950 950 Mhz edition in your roundup as they are in the same price point of USD 350 and the clocks are even better than the HD 7950 Boost edition.

[W1zzard]

I dont speak about your review, you was the only one to use a standard 660TI by Evga but about other reviewers. I still ask me how Hilbert and reviewers have the result of the " standard, reference 660TI in their benchmark, without even make an article a review about them, when they had 3-4 reviews about custom AIB cards .

I can only speak for TPU. I used the ZOTAC card which uses the reference PCB and flashed an NVIDIA reference design BIOS to it. As SKYMTL mentioned, downclocking or similar trickery won't give correct results.

[SKYMTL]

Try and include cards like Sapphire HD 7950 950 Mhz edition in your roundup as they are in the same price point of USD 350 and the clocks are even better than the HD 7950 Boost edition.

The issue with that is quite straightforward: none of the board partners are willing to sample reference HD 7950 cards right now since they are officially End of Life. The Boost Edition will be the only game in town once inventory of the original card is sold out.

[raghu78]

The issue with that is quite straightforward: none of the board partners are willing to sample reference HD 7950 cards right now since they are officially End of Life. The Boost Edition will be the only game in town once inventory of the original card is sold out.

You mean to tell Sapphire would not give a sample of the Sapphire HD 7950 950 Mhz edition. then i guess the Sapphire HD 7950 Vapor-X is the only card which sapphire would give you a sample of. I think the sapphire hd 7950 vapor-x and the sapphire HD 7950 950 Mhz edition have the same clocks. so if you include the HD 7950 Vapor-x that would be useful.

[SKYMTL]

You mean to tell Sapphire would not give a sample of the Sapphire HD 7950 950 Mhz edition. then i guess the Sapphire HD 7950 Vapor-X is the only card which sapphire would give you a sample of. I think the sapphire hd 7950 vapor-x and the sapphire HD 7950 950 Mhz edition have the same clocks. so if you include the HD 7950 Vapor-x that would be useful.

Yup, that would be in any Boost Edition roundup.

However, so far it looks like availability of these Boost Edition cards is REALLY hit and miss. I can only find a single SKU (PowerColor) at one retailer (Newegg). That hardly seems like a "launch" to me...

[BababooeyHTJ]

The issue with that is quite straightforward: none of the board partners are willing to sample reference HD 7950 cards right now since they are officially End of Life. The Boost Edition will be the only game in town once inventory of the original card is sold out.

So there will be boost edition versions of current non-reference cards?

I would be interested in the bios on the boost edition of the Sapphire 950mhz.

[naokaji]

However, so far it looks like availability of these Boost Edition cards is REALLY hit and miss. I can only find a single SKU (PowerColor) at one retailer (Newegg). That hardly seems like a "launch" to me...

Well, a standard 7950 can be had at newegg for 319.99$ while the ones with custom coolers and factory oc are mostly somewhere between 350$ and 400$, but at 400$ we are already in 7970 territory, so dunno, but maybe some card manufacturers are deliberately holding back on the boost edition so they can get rid of some stock of the existing custom 7950 models first?

[SKYMTL]

Sapphire version was just posted: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814202003

$370.

[BababooeyHTJ]

I'm talking about this card. 7970 pcb with a full on 950mhz stock clock.

[Ket]

Why not just flash the MSI 7970 vBIOS on your card and get 1010/1375 clocks? You have a MSI 7950 anyway right?

[BababooeyHTJ]

I would rather stick with a 7950 vbios. I don't know for sure what side effects having a 7970 bios on my card will have. I would rather not risk it for 60mhz.

[SKYMTL]

I'm talking about this card. 7970 pcb with a full on 950mhz stock clock.

As I mentioned above, the HD 7950 without Boost has reached EOL status.

[BababooeyHTJ]

As I mentioned above, the HD 7950 without Boost has reached EOL status.

Yes, I got that part. I'm just wondering if there is going to be a refresh of the current top end sapphire 7950. Well, a bios update really.

My current 7950s run at 950mhz our of the box.

[SKYMTL]

I am sure all of the board partners will be coming out with comparable Boost Edition clocks on their custom cards.

[tbone8ty]

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/23447#0

7950 (including those with Boost) drops from $349 to $319.
7870 GHz Edition drops from $299 to $249.
7850 2GB drops to $209, and the 1GB version to $189.


Nice!

[SKYMTL]

Should be interesting to see but it does seem odd that AMD is dropping the Boost Edition's price right after launch. I think it will be the HD 7950 reference that drops to that price for the time being to clear out stocks.....but time will tell....

Believe it or not, those prices were already in-place minus the Boost Edition. We had a discussion about them a few pages (IE: Days) ago.


On a side note, PowerColor HD 7950 Boost State review going up in a few hours :

[SKYMTL]

PowerColor HD 7950 3GB Boost State Review

Full retail version.

[raghu78]

Sapphire version was just posted: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814202003
$370.

This is the card users would want to know about. perf, thermals, acoustics and overclocking. anybody who has common sense will pick this card over the ref HD 7950 Boost edition. Also looks like AMD is getting really aggressive with pricing according to the techreport article.

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/23447

The GTX 660 Ti is really sandwiched between 2 cards - one which is slower and once which is clearly faster. And with its 192 bit memory bus and 24 ROPs this card is going to truly struggle with upcoming titles like Crysis 3 and Metro Last Light in 2013. GTX 660 Ti gets hammered once you max out settings in the games. I have always wondered why HWC does not include a 1920 x 1200 Extreme settings section in their reviews. GTX 660 Ti would be clearly exposed even at 1920 x 1200 with those settings.
Frankly anybody who knows about graphics hardware will only consider HD 7950, GTX 670, HD 7970, GTX 680 for the high end. Get a custom design like HD 7950 Vapor-X and overclock it with voltage tweaking and you can see the GTX 660 Ti will be left far behind even if its overclocked. People who get carried away by all this marketing and get a GTX 660 Ti are surely going to feel they made a wrong decision next year.