AMD Radeon HD 7970 Video Card Review @ [H]

Megan Fox? That nasty tatted up actress. I would rather deal with a professional slut, Paris Hilton.

I'm going to basically end this conversation for everyone and put it like this. Mark my words, the GTX 780 will cost about the same and be faster than the 7970. This will happen shortly. So, all this talk is basically pointless. Everyone knows it's pretty much true so, with that said, I'll try and not make any more comments on this thread and limit my time to just reading.
 
That's_Corporate said:
i think what everyone is getting caught up on is the price
but once you realize that price is SOLELY the result of how competitive the product is, $549 is a perfect price for it. by the same logic, expect a price adjustment once some competition from nvidia gets to the market.

AMD answers only to shareholders - not enthusiasts.
if you owned AMD stock, would you be pleased if they passed up on $100 of profit on each 7970 they sold "just because"? of course you wouldn't.
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I know right? Good luck telling the share holders you released a card at $380 that performs 20% better then the competition, only because *in a whiney voice* well thats we've always released cards at *end whiney voice*

I just hear a lot of bitching going on in this thread. Performs way better and uses less wattage! I know for sure I'm not looking forward to using dual PSU's so this brightens my day they are still using less power then those hogs at nvidia.

And I've heard the Physx and Cuda thing all along, if thats your thing then go Nvidia, stop trying to un justify ATI with their price because they exluded that.
 
heatlesssun said:
nVidia had it problems with Fermi no doubt but the 580 did a great job for over a year. I think the 7970 will not enjoy that kind of longevity as top dog.
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We are going off of "assumptions" here. I don't play that game but some do, and forget about how horrible Nvidia did with their Fermi release. Remember the 580 is a re-release of the 480, which was a fiasco in the mean time. Honestly I'm suprised ATI didn't try to drive for the home run and hike their prices then.
 
That's_Corporate said:
yes, and the 7970:
is cheaper
scales better
runs cooler
uses less power
overclocks like a boss

all on premature drivers

so... in what way is it worse than the 1-year old 580?
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I never said it was worse than a one year card, I'm saying that those things had better be true versus a year old card at this price especially. I would leave out the scaling if you're referring to Crossfire as a point of superiority at the moment. There's at least two big titles, Skyrim and Batman AC where the scaling blows right now.
 
heatlesssun said:
I never said it was worse than a one year card, I'm saying that those things had better be true versus a year old card at this price especially. I would leave out the scaling if you're referring to Crossfire as a point of superiority at the moment. There's at least two big titles, Skyrim and Batman AC where the scaling blows right now.
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Yea, hopefully they do a better job with scaling, the 69XX series was a phenominal improvement over the 58XX cards. Hopefully they can do a better job this time around.
 
heatlesssun said:
I think I see a lot more AMD fans complaining about the price of the 7970 than nVidia fans.
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Prove it. Repeating the same baseless nonsense on every post is not going to make it true.


P.S: Also repeating that tired nonsense of bad yields is getting old. Let me quote Anandtech since they have a bit more credibility than you:
Power consumption is very good thanks to TSMC's 28nm process. At idle the 7970 uses less power than any other GPU we tested, including the old Radeon HD 3870. Under load it can consume more power than its predecessor, but it ends up being more power efficient thanks to the level of performance it's able to deliver. GPU temperatures are also quite reasonable. Assuming what we have seen is representative of mass production silicon, TSMC's 28nm process appears to be quite healthy.
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They priced the card at $549 because it has no competition, not because of yields. Economics 101.
For the people that cannot afford this top of the line GPU there will be the 7870/7850 which will bring performance similar to the 6970/6950 but at a lower price.
 
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I see a lot of whining about the price in this thread and find it annoying from a business perspective. The 7970 is fairly priced compared to its nearest competitor, the 580, since it is faster and more power efficient. Once Nvidia releases their new parts, ATI will in all probability drop the price to something closer to what 6970's go for these days. In the end, I see a situation where Nvidia will have the very top spot again when they do release their cards, but ATI will have made good money in the mean time and have a very respectable card that is not as fast, but competitive. This is not dissimilar to the 580 vs 6970 situation that was previously the case. Also ATI's margins are usually higher than Nvidia, so they probably have more room to play with the price, but want to maximize profits while they can.

(Forgive my use of ATI instead of AMD. Old habits die hard.)
 
It's Nvidia we're talking bout :eek: You think they'll come out with a faster card and price it same price as 7970 ahahahah *dies laughing* If it's that much faster it'll be 650$ +
 
heatlesssun said:
I never said it was worse than a one year card, I'm saying that those things had better be true versus a year old card at this price especially. I would leave out the scaling if you're referring to Crossfire as a point of superiority at the moment. There's at least two big titles, Skyrim and Batman AC where the scaling blows right now.
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and they ARE true versus a year old video card, so what's your point?

"at this price"?
they are not the same price - the 3GB 7970 is cheaper than a 3GB 580

crossfire performance IS a point of superiority, when the game in question is not an nvidia optimized title. skyrim is CPU bound and batman AC is a driver issue. i think the best title to compare these top-tier PC cards is BF3.
 
I'm disappointed - mildly. There's some interesting amnesia going on here, because we (should) all know that there was a 70 to 90% performance increase in the last real generational leap - 4870 to 5870. People were actually mad that there wasn't a 100% performance increase.

And here we're sitting on the threshold of a new generational leap, die shrink and all, and we're seeing...15-25% average gain over the GTX 580, according to the Anandtech review. There's no way to spin that as impressive.

However, it does bring nice new features inherent to the architecture, including the amazing scaling and power usage. The scaling would be more impressive if AMD's driver team didn't seem to drop the ball on CF support for every major release in the last six months, but maybe they will improve.
 
That's_Corporate said:
"at this price"?
they are not the same price - the 3GB 7970 is cheaper than a 3GB 580
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Price is irrelevant right now, anyway. These are not even out for public consumption yet, and when they do it will likely be a limited number and the prices will skyrocket even higher.
 
Not much of an upgrade from a gtx 580 but fast nonetheless.
 
they didn't need to double performance, they needed to reclaim the performance crown, and they did.


lost in the shuffle is that they released a top tier product on the new process, when was the last time they did that? they almost always work out the kinks with the value cards.
 
Trimlock said:
We are going off of "assumptions" here. I don't play that game but some do, and forget about how horrible Nvidia did with their Fermi release. Remember the 580 is a re-release of the 480, which was a fiasco in the mean time. Honestly I'm suprised ATI didn't try to drive for the home run and hike their prices then.
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I don't know what game you're referring to. All I'm saying is that I bought my 580s and I got over a year of top end performance out of them. When I add that to the stability I've experienced running three of them and being a big S3D gamer I feel like I got my money's worth. So now there is a new big bad boy out, turn the page.
 
Lorien said:
Prove it. Repeating the same baseless nonsense on every post is not going to make it true.
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Read the thread in its entirety. I have no problem with the pricing of the 7970. As many AMD fans have pointed out correctly, top end nVidia fans have paid more for nVidia cards than AMD fans have for flagship AMD cards for a few years now. I've paid >$500 each for the last 9 GPUs from nVidia I've purchased, so this price is very much in line with what I would expect from a top end GPU and anyone who has purchased new flagship nVidia GPUs over the years has the same experience.
 
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I still don't get the AMD drivers gripes, I used to think it was a crossfire thing but since I have been running crossfire for the better part of the year, and have had zero issues(other than shogun 2 being a pain in the ass) I think the driver thing is 100 percent bullshit.

both sides of the fence have put out questionable drivers, but for some reason AMD gets blasted over and over and Nvidia gets talked up. I guess I need to run an sli rig to make a direct comparison.
 
Hopefully this drives down the price of 580's, was thinking of picking up a second one for some SLI action :D
 
It is amazing pathetic how many Nvidia fanboi's are in this thread. 90% of the posters seem to have latches onto this "only 20% faster" bullcrap. The 7970 can run games at higher resolutions, with higher settings, including AA, while running cooler and using less power then the 580. Given Nvidia's track record lately, whatever they release is going to use more juice (probably a lot more), be quite a bit hotter, be much noisier, and be 10-20% faster then the 7970. Of course if Nvidia releases a card thats 20% faster all the fanboi's will be screaming at the top of their lungs how great 20% is...
 
Anandtech is awesome at some things, but top of the line video card reviews is not one, for one very simple thing: they only test single monitor, which quite honestly tends to be a waste of the power of these cards, hence why they didnt see much of an improvement.

And here it seems that so many posters didn't bother to take notice at the fact that the 580 used was overclocked so it is OC vs base clock, a base clock that as reviewers have found is actually on the very conservative side of things.

As for the 3D thing, actually yes AMD does 3D, it has for a while. A little worse than Nvidia but not too much worse as some say, and that was a statement issued from a bunch of games tested at tom's directly (which is a pro nvidia side according to some, i dont agree with that to be honest), and in this new generation they have a couple of extras on that side, some software and thus available to all the line and some directly in hardware:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7970-benchmark-tahiti-gcn,3104-4.html
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review/7

We will have to wait and see about those.


And as for Nvidia's answer coming soon, well, no report has been able to put them closer than 3 months behind, and still it seems that they are going with a middle range card first, so i wouldn't put many hopes on it (and getting a full card ready takes more than 3 months)
 
OK, I just slogged through *twelve* (I kid you not!) reviews of AMD's new 3d flagship, and...*drum roll*...even though I read the [H] review first, it was...(tension mounts, sweat is pouring in rivulets from the creased brow of Brent Justice as he bites his nails to the quick)...*trumpet blast*...as I am about to testify...as I am about to swear...it was...nothing less than...

...the best danged HD 7970 review on the entire Internet...! And I "kid you not" about that, either! Congrats...;)

I was absolutely stupefied--nay, mortified--by the fact that, unless my peepers are worn worse than I currently perceive, aside from [H], only one other review site (out of the entire twelve (12) that I slogged through) bothered to report on and to try and quantify the HD7970's performance at Eyefinity resolutions of 5760x1200 or less. Hardware Heaven was the only other site that I read that bothered to test the Eyefinity feature of the HD 7970. Even so, [H] was quite thorough, I thought, compared to the coverage afforded the feature by HH, but at least HH made *some effort* to test and demonstrate the feature. No one else did, as far as I read.

It's difficult for me to understand why any so-called hardware product-review site, in reviewing the first new gpu architecture from AMD/ATi in years, might reach the conclusion that Eyefinity was a feature of such unimportance to "gamers" that its presence in the HD 7970 should be mentioned but otherwise ignored (such a trite term, "gamers"--we should all be called "The Magnificent Ones," or something equally appropriate.) [H] was the best of them all in terms of this particular product review, and of course, failing to explain and test Eyefinity as a significant feature of the HD 7970 was a mistake [H] did not make.

More points for [H] here...while most review sites were simply content to directly compare the GTX 580 to the reviewed HD 7970, without mentioning the fact that the stock 580 has no multi-monitor support ROOB at all, [H] of course did not make that mistake, but rather explained that the only way to directly compare a GTX 580 to an HD 7970 was to find and compare it to a custom GTX 580 that did actually support some form of multi-monitor gaming ROOB. Thanks much for doing a great job of making all of that clear. I couldn't agree more.

I don't know how anyone could read this review and come away thinking that the 7970 was overpriced without also thinking that nVidia's year-old GTX 580 was even more overpriced. What's going to happen is that nVidia is going to have to drop the MSRPs of the 580's now in order to stay competitive--and when they do you can bet the 7970's will follow. At the moment, even a custom 580, as nice as the Galaxy 580 was that you used for comparison in this review, will not be able to sustain asking prices above those of the 7970's. At the moment, however, it looks to me like the 7970's are priced right where they should be for AMD to manifestly deserve driving in the winners' circle in terms of price/performance & feature support.

Personally, I prefer one large-ish monitor, 27"-30", but that doesn't in any way alter the fact that in terms of the HD 7970, as your review makes clear, the gpu isn't really stretching its legs until it hits 2560x1600...and the testing @ 5760x1200 is certain proof of that characteristic of the gpu. Also, I don't have any statistics on this, but I'd wager that there are more people running AMD 3d cards with multi-monitor driver support than there are people running Crossfire X. The 7970 proves beyond a doubt that performing Eyefinity gaming is not something that *requires* Crossfire X. I think your review pretty much proves exactly that point.


For those who don't need that much high-resolution horsepower, in the coming months we'll see versions of the 7000 series emerge, with the new architecture, which don't serve as high a resolution at as high a frame rate, but which will cost appreciably less, too. Looks like AMD has all of the bases covered with the 7000 series.

So thanks again, Brent, for this review, as for me it was the most informative of any that I read today!
 
There's a lot of bad reviews out there that's for sure. The worst part is other sites are linking to those reviews as if they were valid. Vr-zone for example proclaimed that PCI-e 3.0 did nothing for performance. Yet we have this:

It's one thing to post a hastily typed review to get more page views, but at least get your shit together and do proper research.
image2zy.jpg
 
Revdarian said:
As for the 3D thing, actually yes AMD does 3D, it has for a while. A little worse than Nvidia but not too much worse as some say, and that was a statement issued from a bunch of games tested at tom's directly
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AMD has just added Eyefinity and Crossfire support to their drivers for S3D, something nVidia has had for 18 months and it's not too much worse? I don't blame AMD for not giving S3D much love, it's very niche and it's pretty much reviled around here, but AMD just doesn't support S3D to a significant degree, nothing like nVidia that develops its own hardware. Deus Ex: HR did support H3D on AMD cards before nVidia's but support was added for nVidia cards a couple of months later. Other than than that game everything else touting S3D support specifically supports 3D Vision by name.
 
WaltC said:
I was absolutely stupefied--nay, mortified--by the fact that, unless my peepers are worn worse than I currently perceive, aside from [H], only one other review site (out of the entire twelve (12) that I slogged through) bothered to report on and to try and quantify the HD7970's performance at Eyefinity resolutions of 5760x1200 or less. Hardware Heaven was the only other site that I read that bothered to test the Eyefinity feature of the HD 7970.
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While it is certainly possible to find 12 sites that skipped Eyefinity in their reviews, it is hard to miss unless you don't want to see it.

More:
http://www.overclockers.com/amd-radeon-hd-7970-graphics-card-review/
Or for the international readers:
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/848-15/benchmark-battlefield-3.html
http://nl.hardware.info/reviews/2472/30/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review-battlefield-3-i7-3960x
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/2011/test-amd-radeon-hd-7970/18/
 
Wow, I still wish I had a gaming PC right now as this video card would be going into it.

Pretty impressive from my point of view as it gives you the fastest performance available right now, runs cooler, and uses less power than anything else. Who cares what nVidia might be coming out with at some point, when we are talking about what you can buy right now. Considering the rumors of how low quantity these GPU's will be initially, the $550 price tag makes sense when they will have no problems selling every single video card that can be produced.
 
550 card for today's console ports is insane. AMD drop those prices before Nvidia eats your lunch.
 
PersonalJ said:
I think I'll wait for a price drop.
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Agreed, AMD went to 700 then down to around 350 now their trying to get the price point high again. This card should be in the 350 to 400 range. Core has been shrunk. Entry level 6970 were in that range. adding a gig of memory from 2 gigs doesn't justify it either. I think AMD is testing the water.
 
Lorien said:
There's a lot of bad reviews out there that's for sure. The worst part is other sites are linking to those reviews as if they were valid. Vr-zone for example proclaimed that PCI-e 3.0 did nothing for performance. Yet we have this:

It's one thing to post a hastily typed review to get more page views, but at least get your shit together and do proper research.
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VR-Zone tested PCIe 3.0 impact for gaming, which is what most people care about, and found that there was no difference. I don't see the problem as long as their review clearly stated that's what they were testing, and it did. How many people actually do encoding on their GPUs?
 
chithanh said:
While it is certainly possible to find 12 sites that skipped Eyefinity in their reviews, it is hard to miss unless you don't want to see it.

More:
http://www.overclockers.com/amd-radeon-hd-7970-graphics-card-review/
Or for the international readers:
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/848-15/benchmark-battlefield-3.html
http://nl.hardware.info/reviews/2472/30/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review-battlefield-3-i7-3960x
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/2011/test-amd-radeon-hd-7970/18/
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Yeah, the 590 is really the competition for a 7970 not the 580. And the 7970 is a couple hundred cheaper to boot.

[H] review was good, but I liked the widescreengaming review the best. It actually convinced me on the card since they showed a 94% improvement over my 5870 in eyefinity! (Acutally more than 100% cause I only have 1GB vram & they used the 2GB model)

Without a multi-monitor setup, I don't see the use for this much processing power.
 
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Uncle said:
Agreed, AMD went to 700 then down to around 350 now their trying to get the price point high again. This card should be in the 350 to 400 range. Core has been shrunk. Entry level 6970 were in that range. adding a gig of memory from 2 gigs doesn't justify it either. I think AMD is testing the water.
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stupid crap like this makes me realize amd fucked up the 6970 pricing and should have charged more.

You seriously think that the fastest single gpu card on the planet should cost less than the competition that performs worse? gtfo with that bullshit.

This entire thread is full of some of the dumbest posts I have read on this site, and trust me, some of you post some really stupid shit.
 
Trimlock said:
I know right? Good luck telling the share holders you released a card at $380 that performs 20% better then the competition, only because *in a whiney voice* well thats we've always released cards at *end whiney voice*

I just hear a lot of bitching going on in this thread. Performs way better and uses less wattage! I know for sure I'm not looking forward to using dual PSU's so this brightens my day they are still using less power then those hogs at nvidia.

And I've heard the Physx and Cuda thing all along, if thats your thing then go Nvidia, stop trying to un justify ATI with their price because they exluded that.
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People are just butthurt crybabies, overall. Doesnt matter if they're teenagers, adults, or consider themselves [H], they're actually just [H] on hardware and mentally. And that doesn't even include the Nvidia fanboys...
 
sdlvx said:
Really? Because I'm calling Kyle and Brent out on their shit?

A standard GTX 580 costs about $500. a 7970 costs $549. A Galaxy MDT GTX 580 costs about $600.

http://www.amazon.com/Galaxy-1536MB-DDR5-Graphics-58NLH5DI5TXX/dp/B006J41VS6

So, [H] managed to take a card that everyone thinks is $500, compare it to a card that's $549 with a card that's actually $600 and better performing than the $500 card.

Do you see what the problem with this is?

Everyone will look at how the overclocked MDT will perform since it's simply referred to as a GTX and they'll think that the $500 card comes a lot closer to the 7970 than it really does.

In reality, [H] has produced a review where people are disappointed because they think a $500 card is only marginally faster than a $550 card, except that the $500 card is actually a $600 card.

So, instead of the feedback of this review being about how the 7970 beats a card that costs $50 more, we're talking about a 7970 that is only somewhat faster than a $500 card. There is no $500 GTX 580 in the [H] review.

This is complete and utter shit what Kyle has done.
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Then GET THE FUCK OUT and leave. Go over to the bloatware OCN forums and go cry there.
 
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heatlesssun said:
I don't know what game you're referring to. All I'm saying is that I bought my 580s and I got over a year of top end performance out of them. When I add that to the stability I've experienced running three of them and being a big S3D gamer I feel like I got my money's worth. So now there is a new big bad boy out, turn the page.
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My quote was from someone basing their ignorant opinion on the price ased on the assumption that kepler would be out soon. Which I do not put much faith in at all. I'm not trying to degrade the 580 at all since it is a work horse gpu, glad you got your monies worth out if it.
 
Falkentyne said:
Then GET THE FUCK OUT and leave. Go over to the bloatware OCN forums and go cry there.
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I swear there are a ton of selective memories in this thread arent there? H has always compared based on price point, im glad they went with the more expensive nvidia card. 3gb vs 3gb. They never said oc vs oc only...
 
Trimlock said:
I swear there are a ton of selective memories in this thread arent there? H has always compared based on price point, im glad they went with the more expensive nvidia card. 3gb vs 3gb. They never said oc vs oc only...
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The Galaxy GeForce MDT GTX 580 has only 1.5GB of VRAM. The AMD Radeon HD 7970 has 3GB.
 
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