Radeon HD 7000 Revealed: AMD to Mix GCN with VLIW4 & VLIW5 Architectures

[tbone8ty]

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphic...ew-Tahiti-28nm

[cold2010]

HD 7970 in this game does not get a great value over the GTX 580!!

[Lanek]

http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-ra...-7970-review/1

Guru3d is up too.

[Lanek]

HD 7970 in this game does not get a great value over the GTX 580!!

yep it depend the game, drivers surely, for example, guru3d have got a strange thing in Dirt2, whatever they have used as setting, performance was allways 105fps.. and some graphic corruption.

Dont forget, theres only 1 driver available, a beta ( who seem not fully stable in some cases ). ( thoes games have been a lot tweaked on drivers since their release.. i cant remember 1 driver from both camp who was not improve framerates or fix trouble along 2011)

[Vipeax]

Sick? (first is my own 6970, not high clocked due to the games I play atm not needing it, but you get the point probably)

[radier]

Hmmmm...

[Olivon]

I'm not really impressed ...

[Vipeax]

I'd say there is hope for better drivers Olivon. Some games are just a FPS rapefest over both the 6970 and the GTX580.
Also,

[SKYMTL]

Hmmmm...

BF3 performance varies wildly from one level to another. By far the hardest level on GPUs is Rock and a Hard Place.

[cold2010]

anandtech

At the same time the 7970 is not the 5870. The 5870 relative to both NVIDIA and AMD’s previous generation video cards was faster on a percentage basis. It was more clearly a next-generation card, and DX11 only helped to seal the deal. Meanwhile if you look at straight averages the 7970 is only around 15-25% faster than the GTX 580 in our tests, with its advantage being highly game dependent. It always wins at 2560 and 1920, but there are some cases where it’s not much of a win. The 7970’s domination of the 6970 is more absolute, but then again the 6970 is a good $200 cheaper at this point in time

[Vipeax]

Seems I'm the only one who is unwilling to use Arkham City just yet. IMO, the built in benchmark is nowhere near indicative of actual game performance and finding a good spot to benchmark with is a total pain in the butt due to the game's auto save system....

You are such a Badman . It was a good review .

Also, my current list so far:
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://icrontic.com/article/amd-radeon-7970
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/

[minpayne]

Don't forget how the HD5870 looked at the beginning, compared with the GTX285



There's still room for driver improvements!

[Philip_J_Fry]

wow the difference between anad and toms hardware's BF3 bench is huge @ 1080p. 97 vs 72 and 69 vs 65??

[mindfury]

HD 7970 in this game does not get a great value over the GTX 580!!

My understanding is that BF3 isn't using display lists. Generally speaking, though, we still have a lot to learn from GCN (even though the driver / 3D software teams have pulled an incredible feat off here - thanks guys!). I don't know what rev of the review driver Anand used, but we found about another 5% half way through the review cycle. Additionally we are finding things out right now such as the VLIW opimised FXAA code that DICE graciously implemented under an AMD path is now not as optimal as the NVIDIA FXAA path with GCN!

Lots to learn.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.p...postcount=1847

[bill_d]

hmm anyone see a CFX review yet

[owikh84]

I'm drooling for 7970 CF

[LexDiamonds]

I don't know how anyone could not be impressed by what AMD has pulled off here.... Forget the green team for just a second (even thou AMD does now have the de facto fastest single card). They have increased performance over %40 from their previous flagship, all while consuming LESS power on a NEW architecture. I'm damn impressed and this is coming from someone who hasnt owned an ati/amd card since a x1900xtx.

This all being said, until next gen consoles (ie- next gen games) come out, I just dont have the need for more than my heavily OCed 560Ti for my 1920x1080 display. Witcher2, Civ5, Skyim, etc. have all run maxed out and fantastic.

edit: 486th post. Woot!

[Lanek]

wow the difference between anad and toms hardware's BF3 bench is huge @ 1080p. 97 vs 72 and 69 vs 65??

Different places tested ..... and specially one thing, FXAA.... DCL



When im not totally impressed by the results, im not disappointed at all... when you see the gain in some games ( still hard to get a panel.. ).. and maybe the low gain in some .. i see a lot of potential behind it.


About BF3 from anandtech:

Quote:
The big question of course is why are we only seeing such a limited lead from the 7970 here? BF3 implements a wide array of technologies so it’s hard to say for sure, but there is one thing we know they implement in the engine that only NVIDIA can use: Driver Command Lists, the same “secret sauce” that boosted NVIDIA’s Civilization V performance by so much last year. So it may be that NVIDIA’s DCL support is helping their performance here in BF3, much like it was in Civ V.

But in any case, this is probably the only benchmark that’s really under delivered for the 7970. 5% is still a performance improvement (and we’ll take it any day of the week), but this silences any reasonable hope of being able to use 1920 at Ultra settings with MSAA on a single-GPU card for the time being.

[Vipeax]

Btw, anyone else a bit confused by the 5970 performance ratio on the 7970 review? Right next to the 5870 and below the GTX480.


Human error I guess.

[Chickenfeed]

Any clue if non reference models will be available out of the gate ( cooling at least? ) The heatsink leaves a lot to be desired. AMD has failed at the last 5 generations heatsink wise ( save for the 5 series which I found bareable ) I've had to put everything on water or aftermarket cooling to put up with mine. Id love to see one of these with a solid sink with 2 92 fans, then it would be great. I'm still surprised how little difference there is from 1.5 - 3gb vram though. Obviously it will shine for multi monitor use though.

[Lanek]

Any clue if non reference models will be available out of the gate ( cooling at least? ) The heatsink leaves a lot to be desired. AMD has failed at the last 5 generations heatsink wise ( save for the 5 series which I found bareable ) I've had to put everything on water or aftermarket cooling to put up with mine. Id love to see one of these with a solid sink with 2 92 fans, then it would be great. I'm still surprised how little difference there is from 1.5 - 3gb vram though. Obviously it will shine for multi monitor use though.

I know 100% sure for the 7950,at launch AIB will get the possibility to launch their own models... for the 7970, it will, but i dont know how if they will be able to do it at launch.
Personally outside special model as MSI lightning etc, i dont really watch non reference models, ( first cause i use watercooling, so the cooler is not my interest ), and then reference models are in generally well build for the PWM and so OC. )

[Vipeax]

X-fire:
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/review...onclusion.html

Conclusion

The key aspect that we can take away from this 7970 CrossFire gaming evaluation is that AMD already have their new card on a solid footing. In all but one of the games tested we saw noticeable gains when adding a second 7970 and in every test we were able to play at 5760x1080 without any compromises in detail levels, most even with anti-aliasing.

It is also worth noting once again that the 7970 has advanced power technology which is able to power down our second card completely when not gaming. This offers considerable power savings over competing architectures where the second (or additional cards) draw power, even when in desktop mode.

[tajoh111]

The performance results are on the lower end of peoples expectations. Definitely a nice improvement over the 6970 but compared to the gtx 580, it is not really that great performance wise. It does not create enough of a gap in pure performance to make nvidia feel last generation. In battlefield 3, the defacto AAA graphic intense game, it fails to look that much better than last generation. Nvidia can counter this launch with a 50-75 dollar price drop and it would be competitive with the pricing. If the 7950 lowers its clocks, I expect similar speed to the gtx 580. It is kind of slow for next generation, atleast compared to the 5870 vs the gtx 280. The price is not the least bit aggressive though. The price of the dual chip 7990 is going to be off the charts.

The most positive thing about this launch is the power consumption numbers(which will make the dual core chip highly possible) and it seems to have fixed AMD problem with tessellation. The most negative thing about this card, atleast for the consumer is the price. However this is a good business move for AMD.

Unless Nvidia next chip is a complete failure, I expect Nvidia next card to atleast cause a price drop from AMD. GK104 doesn't sound like a 550 dollar chip and I can't imagine it being atleast 15% faster than the gtx 580.

[paulbagz]

Impressive imo as there is a lot of OC headroom on these cards and these benches are with very primitive drivers.

Can't wait to see non reference cards + better drivers.

Also want to see 3GB 580s (ala DCUII/Lightnings) up against these 7970s.

-PB

[Lanek]

Funny to see at this resolution ( HH cfx test ) the 7970 allready nearly match 580SLI in Shogun2, F1 2011 ...... and have excellent scaling ( outside Skyrim, but with all the problem have got Nvidia and AMD for have it work with previous generation, im not really suprised about the negative scaling )


I think i will take 2 just for the fun... i like the OC room, and watercooled this will surely close the deal of 1200+mhz. ( something we have rarely see without Dice )... I like the fun to see drivers improve performance over time. And the computing gain is really good. Then i will see what happend with Nvidia, maybe i will be able to compet to myself in both camp. ( lol )

Only prob, i need a warthog hotas, and it is cost nearly the same.. maybe only one gpu first, then the second some week after..