AMD Radeon HD 7970 3072 MB

[qubit]

Originally Posted by cadaveca

It's a weird launch...given the overclcoks, you'd think they'd have gone for the "First consumer 1GHz GPU" to match the Guiness record of Bulldozer, or something.

Yes, that does seem odd, I reckon it might be to do with yields. Perhaps 925MHz are a lot better than 1000?

[johnnyfiive]

badass card.

[Kaotik]

Originally Posted by W1zzard

i rebenched the hd 5970 and uploaded new summary graphs with the corrected results

At least 6870 results are still borked, even if the 5850 comparison could be explained, there's simply no explanation, whatsoever, ever, never, that it would be slower than 6850 in anything, yet in all resolutions it's the same speed, and at 1024x768 6850 is over 3% faster than 6870

[Steevo]

Is the cooler mounting the same as a 5870? And possibly the VRM cooler?

[Jeffredo]

Originally Posted by Steevo

Is the cooler mounting the same as a 5870? And possibly the VRM cooler?

One can hope. If Kepler isn't all we hope for I have an Arctic Cooling Accelero Twin Turbo II I'd like to make use of on an HD 7900 series - if the mounting holes are compatible.

[Swamp Monster]

I like how other tech besides GPU in these cards evolves too. Anyone noticed that MOSFET package type has changed? Are they using IR DirectFet now?

[Dj-ElectriC]

[NAVI_Z]

gonna wait till more mature drivers come out. i hope these scale better than the 5xxx series cards for crossfire n eyefinity.

[R_1]

Originally Posted by Swamp Monster

I like how other tech besides GPU in these cards evolves too. Anyone noticed that MOSFET package type has changed? Are they using IR DirectFet now?

Old ones were golden with like +95 efficiency and extremely low voltage ripple, so they used small SMD capacitors with them. New ones are cost-effective and needed 470-1000mF capacitors. Also spacing is different and you cant mount bolted radiator on top of them. So second best thing, after full cover water-block for after-market cooling will be Arctic thermal glue of or some sticky no-name pads.

[eidairaman1]

Now if we could just get the CPU Side to Dev and Manufacture and Execute with Precision like the GPU side does...

[Delta6326]

Originally Posted by qubit

Yes, that does seem odd, I reckon it might be to do with yields. Perhaps 925MHz are a lot better than 1000?

maybe they will come out with something like the 4890 like 7980

[Melvis]

Finally a card worthy to upgrade to from a 4870X2, god i can keep up with a 6950 ffs

I find the card very impressive, good in every way apart from "possible" price, but meh that will drop.

Well done AMD

And also well done wizz, excellent review, good amount of games which i like to see.

[pantherx12]

Eating my words as I speak disregard what this post said before XD

Performance scaling on a per game basis!





(edited and removed my old post because apparently my at a glance maths is crappy and these cards are better than expected lol)



1920x1080
AVP : +26.26
Batman AA :+ 62.55
BFBC3: +51.57
Battleforge:+ 32.57
COD4:+11.81
CIV5:+43.73
Crysis:+33.51
Crysis2:+56.26
Dirt3:+15.64
Dragonage2:+19.14
Hard reset :+34.14
Metro:+27.23
Stalker cop:+40.07
Starcraft 2 :0.93
Shogun 2 :+39.51
Skyrim:+5.95
Wow: - 6.5 that's minus 6.5 so to be absolutely clear
3dmark 11:+47.43
Heaven:+97.81 (wooo improved tessellation)


These cards are great!
(In engines that actually take advantage of GPU horse power)


I was WRONG about only expecting a 25% improvement!

As usual average out the result ( what most people look at) makes the cards look shit because of a few bad results( This applies to nvidia cards to by the by, INb4 fan boy comments)


The leaks got the games wrong but damn they were bang on about performance 25-50% improvements with a few surprises : ]

[SK-1]

Originally Posted by W1zzard

i rebenched the hd 5970 and uploaded new summary graphs with the corrected results

On top of things as usual

[mastrdrver]

Originally Posted by Assimilator

So multi-monitor setups still run at max memory clocks (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/31.html) and higher vCore, hence negating much of the benefit of the new lower power draw at idle.

Not impressed.

I don't know about 5xxx or 6xxx series cards. Over on Anand, Ryan stated that if you use the DP connection on the 7970, then the clocks do not go up but stay at the low clocks.

[W1zzard]

Originally Posted by mastrdrver

I don't know about 5xxx or 6xxx series cards. Over on Anand, Ryan stated that if you use the DP connection on the 7970, then the clocks do not go up but stay at the low clocks.

i used dvi + hdmi with mismatched resolutions.

afaik on nvidia if you run 2x same monitor and resolution it will be able to fall back to normal idle clocks, not sure about ati

[cadaveca]

ATI cards that support DP get higher clocks for multi-monitor use due to flicker noticed under the lowered clocks that a single monitor runs at.

Both the 5-series and 6-series cards exhibit the flicker and higher clocks. Perhaps if the use of DP removes the use of the higher clocks with 7-series cards, perhaps the flicker issue has been fixed, too.

AMD explained that the differing protocols or difference in refresh times between monitors led to the flicker, and that the higher clocks were the fix. Unfortunately there still many users noticing flicker, myself included. Currently it only seems to occur due clock changes. The 5-series card did not use higher clocks for multimonitor use until the 10.1 driver 4 months after the launch, if I remember correctly.

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by cadaveca

ATI cards that support DP get higher clocks for multi-monitor use due to flicker noticed under the lowered clocks that a single monitor runs at.

Both the 5-series and 6-series cards exhibit the flicker and higher clocks. Perhaps if the use of DP removes the use of the higher clocks with 7-series cards, perhaps the flicker issue has been fixed, too.

AMD explained that the differing protocols or difference in refresh times between monitors led to the flicker, and that the higher clocks were the fix. Unfortunately there still many users noticing flicker, myself included. Currently it only seems to occur due clock changes. The 5-series card did not use higher clocks for multimonitor use until the 10.1 driver 4 months after the launch, if I remember correctly.

i run multi monitor and crossfire, and have never had the flicker problems (albeit, crossfire only recently)


my brother had some nasty issues with his card early on, but the new drivers that raised clocks + an updated BIOS solved all his issues.

[mastrdrver]

How do you have the monitors connected to the card (DVI, DP, HMDI)?

[theoneandonlymrk]

ive allways had flicker on dual heads(32"lcd and a 19") but i even get it on one occasionally dependent on clocks, ive heard the best fix(not tried) is to edit your bios clocks to permenantly goto 400 900 afaik in 2d mode and video(hdmi+vga and the hdmi shimers on lines the vga actually tears and stuff with net vid)

OT great review, and lovein the TPU lately, ive missed some life recently,

now thats a concise and full review good stuff

the card looks gr8 too im twitching as i expected / hoped,i might,and my 5870+5850 seems a bit shit now .


also just thinkin aloud but shouldnt the extra compute grunt provide higher (slightly) fps in games that rely on take advantge of opencl/direct compute ingame as the gpu will be taxed less by these tasks.

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by mastrdrver

How do you have the monitors connected to the card (DVI, DP, HMDI)?

one DVI one HDMI - for a while i ran triple with 2x VGA and one DP-> DVI, and all were flicker free.

[Super XP]

Originally Posted by NAVI_Z

gonna wait till more mature drivers come out. i hope these scale better than the 5xxx series cards for crossfire n eyefinity.

They do, they scale great, and in most games almost 2x the performance vs. a single HD 7970. And we are talking about beta drivers. I can only imagine a performance increase with newer drivers.

[theoneandonlymrk]

Originally Posted by Mussels

one DVI one HDMI - for a while i ran triple with 2x VGA and one DP-> DVI, and all were flicker free.

thats good to know mate lookin at your sys specs i am gona be allmost copying ya tomorrow but diff mem and an optimists 960T phenomII

[pantherx12]

Anyone know if the knew eyefinity features a 7000 series only?

Or if it's a software thing.

( talking specifically about independent resolutions)

As if it's only 7000 series only, I MUST have one lol.

Will be able to have a 2.39:1 aspect set up

[cadaveca]

Originally Posted by Mussels

one DVI one HDMI - for a while i ran triple with 2x VGA and one DP-> DVI, and all were flicker free.

Might be the use of VGA that saved ya. Using dual DVI now, anytime the clocks switch, say for youtube acceleration, the secondary monitor flickers(I'm currently only using 2 monitors). The same also happens using DP with just two. Using DP + DVI, and three monitors, either with 1 DVI or TWO, I get the same flicker.


Before the clock-change fix, the flicker was almsot random, so it's definitely better, but it's not 100%.

Based on how the display output works, I think the ability to use different resolutions is a 7-series only feature, but here's hoping it's not.