About to pull the trigger on a 7970, any final thoughts?

[BlackZero]

what was your gpu score in vantage? I cant see it as im not at home and on a crappy connection =/

38,813.

 

[DOM]

I just received my MSI 7970 OC and it has an ASIC quality of 75%. That should in theory mean good overclocking results with a balance between good air cooling and water cooling, haven't tried to see how far it overclocks yet.

I did notice that there's noticeable coil whine. I also read somewhere that it may go away after a few days? In any case, some benchmarks at the graphics card's stock clocks.


Unigine Heaven 3.0

Spoiler

http://s5.postimage.org/j5eaoyzrp/heaven_max.jpg

3dmark 11 - Default settings

Spoiler

http://s5.postimage.org/uzhg8v8np/9931_3d11_standard.jpg

3dmark 11 - HWBot (Modified tessellation)

Spoiler

http://s5.postimage.org/3q62ud7kl/11420_3d11.jpg

3dmark Vantage

Spoiler

http://s5.postimage.org/rwgq5htp1/37318_vantage.jpg

3dmark 06

Spoiler

http://s5.postimage.org/dor1guh05/35255_3d06.jpg

3dmark 05

Spoiler

http://s5.postimage.org/wwe6dfzbp/44720_3d05.jpg

3dmark 03

Spoiler

http://s5.postimage.org/alqbdh21h/135276_3d03.jpg

all i see are red X

but the links show up in the quote lol

 

[Melvis]

38,813.

Wow thats impressive. I only got 33000 with Crossfired 7870's ima have to look into that more.

 

[Widjaja]

If I knew there would be graphical problems with the drivers in DX9 titles I would not have gone for AMD this time round.

If you choose to go with AMD, you may encounter flickering/black poly artifacting in certain DX9c titles.
Skyrim and Starcraft 2 were one of the most reported but there are more affected titles out there.
There's a big thread on it at Guru 3D and numerous reports.

The artifacting has reduced significantly with the latest 12.11 beta 11 drivers but is still there on occasion.

My Brother had a couple of 7970s but has since sold them for a GTX680.
Mainly due to superior performance in FSX and prefers the AA options of nVidia.

 

[fullinfusion]

Yup, performance scaling issues and possible microstuttering problems.

Bull shit! I've never had anything but great luck running single card dual gpu's!
You and Black Panther must be lacking some hardware to run those cards Im thinking!?

It's the bloody 2 card cross fire cards that are a problem most of the time

imo, that is.

 

[BlackZero]

all i see are red X

but the links show up in the quote lol

Sounds like images are blocked on your end.

Wow thats impressive. I only got 33000 with Crossfired 7870's ima have to look into that more.

Performance wise they are comparable but CPU overclocks and HT can make a big difference in vantage.

If I knew there would be graphical problems with the drivers in DX9 titles I would not have gone for AMD this time round.

If you choose to go with AMD, you may encounter flickering/black poly artifacting in certain DX9c titles.
Skyrim and Starcraft 2 were one of the most reported but there are more affected titles out there.
There's a big thread on it at Guru 3D and numerous reports.

The artifacting has reduced significantly with the latest 12.11 beta 11 drivers but is still there on occasion.

My Brother had a couple of 7970s but has since sold them for a GTX680.
Mainly due to superior performance in FSX and prefers the AA options of nVidia.

Nvidia cards have their own host of issues, and the 7870 (particularly sapphire) had a bad batch IIRC. In any case, if you are unhappy with card/driver performance in certain games etc. then go ahead and change, but please, no unnecessary bashing.

 

[Widjaja]

Nvidia cards have their own host of issues, and the 7870 (particularly sapphire) had a bad batch IIRC. In any case, if you are unhappy with card/driver performance in certain games etc. then go ahead and change, but please, no unnecessary bashing.

This is not bashing.
This is my personal experience and my brothers with the 7xxx series.
It is warrented that, there maybe a chance of this happening to the OP.
Better to be mentioned rather than have the OP end up going through pointless RMAs while AMD trys to resolve the problem.

The Sapphire 7870s did indeed have an issue which is now resolved which was a hardware issue.
This issue is with certain DX9 games is across the spectrum of the Southern Island GPUs with the state of the current drivers.

If I was 'bashing' I would have said, AMD have bad performance, get much hotter, overheat and are known to fail.
Graphics are far superior with nVidia etc etc without any evidence.

Ever since I have been on these forums I have owned ATi/AMD cards and have been completely happy with the performance until now.
I personally am sticking it out with my card until the start of next year as I still hope the issue gets resolved.

Then I will have a go at nVidia again where my last experience was less than desirable but that was down to a bad batch of 8800GTs.

 

[BlackZero]

This is not bashing.
This is my personal experience and my brothers with the 7xxx series.
It is warrented that, there maybe a chance of this happening to the OP.
Better to be mentioned rather than have the OP end up going through pointless RMAs while AMD trys to resolve the problem.

The Sapphire 7870s did indeed have an issue which is now resolved which was a hardware issue.
This issue is with certain DX9 games is across the spectrum of the Southern Island GPUs with the state of the current drivers.

If I was 'bashing' I would have said, AMD have bad performance, get much hotter, overheat and are known to fail.
Graphics are far superior with nVidia etc etc without any evidence.

Ever since I have been on these forums I have owned ATi/AMD cards and have been completely happy with the performance until now.
I personally am sticking it out with my card until the start of next year as I still hope the issue gets resolved.

Then I will have a go at nVidia again where my last experience was less than desirable but that was down to a bad batch of 8800GTs.

I do believe AMD had very high sales this year, at least going by the number of people with AMD cards in their system specifications on various forums. As such, the proportionally higher people with issues, compared to previous years, possibly makes it look like there's a bigger problem than what really exists.

 

[Melvis]

Bull shit! I've never had anything but great luck running single card dual gpu's!
You and Black Panther must be lacking some hardware to run those cards Im thinking!?

It's the bloody 2 card cross fire cards that are a problem most of the time

imo, that is.

I would have to agree here, i ran a 4870X2 for many yrs and it ran perfectly, then when i went Quad fire, 2x 4870X2's it still ran very good, i was surprised.

Performance wise they are comparable but CPU overclocks and HT can make a big difference in vantage.

Yea thats what my guess would be as i only ran them once on 12.10drivers with my 965. See the difference once my 8350 turns up

 

[Widjaja]

I do believe AMD had very high sales this year, at least going by the number of people with AMD cards in their system specifications on various forums. As such, the proportionally higher people with issues, compared to previous years, possibly makes it look like there's a bigger problem than what really exists.

I'm sure they did with the prices nVidia were selling their first 6xx series at.
AMD sold their cards for a great price this year which lead a lot of people to buy them.
Most of these people did not known about the DX9 issue before buying.
Myself included.

I started with the 12.8 drivers and saw very few artifacts in Skyrim which was the only DX9c game I played.
The others have been DX10+ based which exhibit no image corruption at all.
So I looked at the problem as just teething problems.
Then I installed the 12.10 drivers and it became much worse in Skyrim and affected Tribes Ascend.
All 12.11 betas exhibited the same issue until 12.11 beta 11 which resolved a lot of what I was seeing in the previous drivers.
Even more than 12.8.

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

You want a solid reason not to go AMD? Meaningless frames rates, it's not just a Windows 8 issue http://techreport.com/review/24022/does-the-radeon-hd-7950-stumble-in-windows-8

 

[Melvis]

You want a solid reason not to go AMD? Meaningless frames rates, it's not just a Windows 8 issue http://techreport.com/review/24022/does-the-radeon-hd-7950-stumble-in-windows-8

I realy dont see anything meaningful in that review to be honest. If your games run smooth then they run smooth, regardless what they say. If the problem was that big of a deal then everyone wouldnt be buying AMD cards, and we both know that isnt true, so i think there looking into it just a bit much.

Lets ask the public, does anyone here have a unsmooth experience with there AMD card? desktop and or in games? couse i for 1 havent had this so called issue they are claiming

 

[BlackZero]

I'm sure they did with the prices nVidia were selling their first 6xx series at.
AMD sold their cards for a great price this year which lead a lot of people to buy them.
Most of these people did not known about the DX9 issue before buying.
Myself included.

I started with the 12.8 drivers and saw very few artefacts in Skyrim which was the only DX9c game I played.
The others have been DX10+ based which exhibit no image corruption at all.
So I looked at the problem as just teething problems.
Then I installed the 12.10 drivers and it became much worse in Skyrim and affected Tribes Ascend.
All 12.11 betas exhibited the same issue until 12.11 beta 11 which resolved a lot of what I was seeing in the previous drivers.
Even more than 12.8.

I just played a little Skyrim with my new card and I can confirm artefacts, unless it's tearing due to the much higher FPS. I will test further and in other games, though I did not experience this with my current card, and given the obvious amount of work AMD have put into the 12.11, I feel it's probably fair to let them off for now and see how it goes.


Edit:

This video shows the same issues from Skyrim that I am experiencing.
Skyrim Artifacting with 7970 stock speeds - YouTub...

Hopefully it'll get fixed soon.

 

[Jstn7477]

I have an HD 7950 and while it runs well, almost every game gets some sort of damn artifacts and it's really annoying. The video card (I'm positive it's responsible, changed out just about every part in my PC and the OS) also causes my computer to BSOD after a few days of uptime, usually in the middle of the night but sometimes during the day like 1-2 hours after I left the computer, though the PC does distributed computing on both the CPU and GPU nearly 24/7. Also had a problem where the card incessantly shut its fans on/off every 5 seconds when the screen would turn off, though that might be fixed in the 12.11 b11 drivers. When playing Team Fortress 2, my card likes to randomly go into 2D clock mode and enter a nasty, jittery 60FPS fit with 100% GPU usage, when my display runs natively at 120Hz.

My systems with NVIDIA cards (4 series or older) never BSOD and can run fine for weeks on end. When I RMA'd my first 7950 due to a fan failure after 3 weeks of owning it, I had a GTX 460 1GB in my computer at the time and Tribes: Ascend felt a lot smoother. Never had any framerate issues with TF2 either on that card. I've also not been able to get Steam for Linux Beta's TF2 to launch without an OpenGL error (or even get the drivers to install "properly" with my 7950 system) yet NVIDIA's Linux drivers automagically worked on my other system.

I hate to be angry at AMD for what should be a kickass card, but my experience with it has not been 100% delightful. My 5770 and 6950 worked quite well for me, but this 7950 has been quite a downer (not to mention that my XFX DD 7950 games at 87c and sounds like a jet engine). I should have payed up for the 670 but I didn't want some more expensive card that only had 2GB of RAM, 256bit bus and stripped away GPU compute grunt, but in the end, my games do run (though not flawlessly) and World Community Grid runs well on the 7xxx cards so it's not anywhere near a total loss. If GK110 were out (and not some insane wallet raping price like $700), I would have gladly chosen it.

Sorry for the rant, but I hope the OP's incoming 7970 serves him better than what I described above about my 6 months with my 7950.

 

[OnePostWonder]

Since a lot of relevant information has already been posted in this thread, let me say this...

When I read your thread title, I thought to myself, "Geez, what the heck did the 7970 do to you?"

 

[BlackZero]

Since a lot of relevant information has already been posted in this thread, let me say this...

When I read your thread title, I thought to myself, "Geez, what the heck did the 7970 do to you?"

I should have included 'no pun intended' in the title.

 

[eidairaman1]

I say go for the 7970 dude

 

[Widjaja]

I just played a little Skyrim with my new card and I can confirm artefacts, unless it's tearing due to the much higher FPS. I will test further and in other games, though I did not experience this with my current card, and given the obvious amount of work AMD have put into the 12.11, I feel it's probably fair to let them off for now and see how it goes.


Edit:

This video shows the same issues from Skyrim that I am experiencing.
Skyrim Artifacting with 7970 stock speeds - YouTub...

Hopefully it'll get fixed soon.

I play Skyrim with Vsync on and the artifacts were still there with previous drivers.
I have not played it much with the latest betas but have found no artifacting during that session of gameplay.
In saying the Guru3D thread on this issue reports more 79xx users reporting the problem than the 78xx users this time round.

I also hope the DX9c issue gets resolved soon as this problem has been going on for too long.

 

[Tonim89]

My rig has a Diamond 7970 ref. design and i can't see ANY issues that people report in the forums over the web. Everything works really fine, and I have no problems with 'smoothness' while I play... Every single game tested runs perfectly well, the same it was in all my previous nvidia cards (this is my first radeon).

The only complain I have is the noise, thanks to the reference cooler. But I bought knowing it was that way (the store my uncle got it for me had no other model).

 

[3870x2]

I the base 7950, and at 1180MHZ (a 40% overclock) It doesn't go over 60c usually. This is probably helped due to the H80 I have pushing air out of the case very nicely.

About my clocks, I just went to 1120, then 1180 (stock on RAM clocks, I just don't see improvement from elevating those clocks) on day one, stress tested, and have never crashed. I figured 1180 was a great clock to stay at, so I have never pushed it further.

 

[eidairaman1]

My rig has a Diamond 7970 ref. design and i can't see ANY issues that people report in the forums over the web. Everything works really fine, and I have no problems with 'smoothness' while I play... Every single game tested runs perfectly well, the same it was in all my previous nvidia cards (this is my first radeon).

The only complain I have is the noise, thanks to the reference cooler. But I bought knowing it was that way (the store my uncle got it for me had no other model).

Good thing is you can put aftermarket cooling on that are designed for the reference mount cards anyway.

 

[Tonim89]

And this is what i plan to do, get an aftermarket cooler, like an Acellero or a Twin Frozr, but here in Brazil is hard to find this kind of stuff.

I got lucky to get this 7970, 'cause my uncle lives in USA and was coming to Brazil, so I asked him to bring a videocard for me. The only store near his house was Microcenter (great prices!), and they sell the HD 7970 only in the ref. models, that's why I could not choose a custom model.

And the price REAAAAAALLY worthed it! The card costed me 379 bucks before the last price-cut by AMD. Here in Brazil it costs R$ 1600, something around US$815!

 

[eidairaman1]

Well send him the currency that is needed to purchase the part and then ship it to you since you have a connection in the US

And this is what i plan to do, get an aftermarket cooler, like an Acellero or a Twin Frozr, but here in Brazil is hard to find this kind of stuff.

I got lucky to get this 7970, 'cause my uncle lives in USA and was coming to Brazil, so I asked him to bring a videocard for me. The only store near his house was Microcenter (great prices!), and they sell the HD 7970 only in the ref. models, that's why I could not choose a custom model.

And the price REAAAAAALLY worthed it! The card costed me 379 bucks before the last price-cut by AMD. Here in Brazil it costs R$ 1600, something around US$815!

 

[BlackZero]

all i see are red X

but the links show up in the quote lol

Seems there might have been an issue with the image host. I've replaced the links.

 

[Nordic]

I am very happy with my 7970. Glad you are too.