7950 vs GK-104

[Justinat0r]

I was reading through some articles speculating on the release of the Radeon HD 7950, and said that it would be in the $450 range. They said that a lot of people might wait for the 'GK-104' because it's supposed to be around the same price point $399.99 vs $449.99, and run 20% faster than a GTX 580.

Is this just wild speculation or is this really going to be the case? Obviously, the cards haven't been released yet so we can't know for sure what is what until then, but I am pretty new to the video card world and want to know if baseless speculations often fly around before releases or it's likely that the GK-104 will really be that fast? Because in that case, I'd just wait for that card instead of picking up a 7950 for $450.

Some information I was able to dig up, which I am sure most of you have seen:

And what I could find about the 7950:

1792 stream processors, 28 GCN compute units
112 TMUs, 32 ROPs (derived)
384-bit GDDR5 memory interface
3 GB memory, memory clock around 5.00 GHz


I'm quite torn, I know that both cards would suit my needs just fine (heck I'm pretty sure the GK 106 would be fine), but I can't decide if I want to shell out the extra $50-100 for the 7950, or if it even will be worth the extra $50-100.

I'd like to reiterate, I'm not asking for fortune tellers to give me an answer, I realize I can't get this answered in any meaningful way until the release of both cards, but I wanted to get your impressions to see how you *THINK* it will turn out.

 

[Arzachel]

The chart you posted is false and wrong in so many ways it's not even funny. Seems like Nvidia are cooking something up for late March/early April, if you're willing to wait.

 

[Arkadrel]

http://www.fudzilla.com/graphics/item/25563-kepler-to-come-out-in-early-q2-2012

basically April or later, for kepler, and rumors are buttom to top launch.
So this card could end up being launched later than April.

And its all just rumors... (spec wise so far)

_____________Geforce 580 vs GK104:
shader clocks: 1540 vs 905 (-41%)
CUDA cores: 512 vs 576 (+12%)
Core clocks: 770 vs 905 (+17%)
Texture units: 64 vs 96 (+50%)
memory bandwidth: 192GB/s vs 230GB/s (+19%)
Geometry engines: 16 vs 12 (-25%)


If the shader clocks didnt drop,
youd be guessing this would be ~30% faster than a 580 or so going from specs.

With the shader clock drops, Id expect about ~20-25% drop in performance though,
from the -41% lower shader clocks.

I guess it is possible this ends up around 5-10% faster than a 580.
Going by the specs of this card, I seriously doubt this will be anywhere near 20% faster than a 580.


***edit:

Im not saying the specs are real, or that they arnt.
If they are made up for page hits by some rumor site, they are just the ones that did the most realist looking rumored specs so far (that said, gain of salt, could still very likely turn out to be false info).

 

[blackened23]

That chart is a proven fake at chiphell and OCN, , nobody knows when gk104 will arrive (nvidia HOPES h1 2012, but in the words of Huang at CES: "what we hope for and what happens may not align". Take that for what you will

 

[-Slacker-]

^A gtx 760 that beats the living crap out of a gtx 580? You don't need chiphell or OCN to prove it's fake, you just have to look at the specs.

 

[Keysplayr]

Scoop up what you want now. Unless you can wait for the few months until Kepler is supposed to arrive.
How I "think" it will turn out, is GK104, which will probably be Nvidia's mid range card much like what a GTX560Ti is to the GF1xx series. Not unreasonable to think that GK104 will have 768 CUDA cores, essentially doubling the GTX560Ti. Maybe GK100 will have doubled GTX580 with 1024 CUDA cores. Who really knows, it way to early to tell. We can guess and it's fun to do so, but if you have the itch now, you might as well buy something that suits your needs now.

 

[SirPauly]

Speculation and rumor mongering is fun in forums but when, what seems raw speculation has a picture of raw bologna on it, well, I find it odd.

 

[Keysplayr]

^A gtx 760 that beats the living crap out of a gtx 580? You don't need chiphell or OCN to prove it's fake, you just have to look at the specs.

Well, a GTX560Ti beats the living crap out of a GTX285, right?
It is far from unreasonable to think a GTX760Ti (if it's called this) would beat down a GTX580.
If Nvidia is indeed adopting a 2 year "tick-tock" type strategy like Intel, then GTX280 was a tock, GTX285 was a tick. GF100 was a tock. GF110 was a tick. GK100 should be a tock.
I know these aren't all 2 year, so maybe the strategy just started with the GF100 series.

 

[Lonyo]

Even if the specs were true, I don't know where you got the $399 vs $449 from.

A GK104 at $399 with 1.5GB RAM should surely be compared to an HD7950 with 1.5GB RAM, which should cost $399 based on what's made the rounds.
A 3GB RAM HD7950 which costs $449 isn't really a fair comparison...

 

[Arkadrel]

what seems raw speculation has a picture of raw bologna on it, well, I find it odd.

I C wut u did thar!

Noun

baloney (plural baloneys)

1. (countable) A type of smoked sausage; bologna.

Noun baloney (uncountable)

1. (uncountable, chiefly US, slang) Nonsense.

Basically your saying the person that made the picture, as a joke added a baloney sausage to it, so people would know it was made up.



I kinda agree, why else put a baloney sausage on a picture? with rumored specs?
Its basically just someone pulling a joke, for free page hits on his rumor site.

 

[Arzachel]

Scoop up what you want now. Unless you can wait for the few months until Kepler is supposed to arrive.
How I "think" it will turn out, is GK104, which will probably be Nvidia's mid range card much like what a GTX560Ti is to the GF1xx series. Not unreasonable to think that GK104 will have 768 CUDA cores, essentially doubling the GTX560Ti. Maybe GK100 will have doubled GTX580 with 1024 CUDA cores. Who really knows, it way to early to tell. We can guess and it's fun to do so, but if you have the itch now, you might as well buy something that suits your needs now.

Actually 768 cores is quite unreasonable for the GK104 part baring huge changes to the arch. AMD got 1.7x scaling going from 40nm to 28nm. A midrange part wouldn't be slightly smaller than a GTX580 with slightly lower power draw.

your

That's "you're" if you want to be pedantic.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

If GCN overclock scaling extends to the 7950 I fully expect it to be around 20-30% faster than a gtx580 when it's screaming along at 1200 core clock. Based on AMD scaling their cards to perform around -15% of each other it should be about 10% faster at stock clocks than a gtx580. Not bad at all, and it will really push nvidia to lower gtx580 prices.

 

[Keysplayr]

Even if the specs were true, I don't know where you got the $399 vs $449 from.

A GK104 at $399 with 1.5GB RAM should surely be compared to an HD7950 with 1.5GB RAM, which should cost $399 based on what's made the rounds.
A 3GB RAM HD7950 which costs $449 isn't really a fair comparison...

Not necessarily. This "could" be the case, but it would depend solely on performance before saying one should surely be compared to another. Don't forget, there is speculation that the GK104 will "supposedly" be a mid range card with 3 tiers of cards above it.
GK104 - GTX760
GK100 - GTX770
GK100 - GTX780
GK100 - GTX790 (Dual GPU)

I'm just throwing things out there of course, but this could be what the lineup will be.

 

[Arkadrel]

ITS A FAKE

I cant belive I never noticed that Balogey sausage before....

 

[Will Robinson]

LOL @ the "Aritmetic" performance....
Even NVDA's well known spin factory usually gets the spelling right so this one must be a privateer operation.:sneaky:

 

[Crap Daddy]

This is the most uninteresting launch of new cards in looong time. There is no game out there that can destroy a mainstream card and I don't see any game that'll be released this year to be one. These new cards are still DX11 so any of the previous generations will do just fine in this department. So, for gaming purposes launching a new set of cards is pretty useless... but they have to. AMD puts out a high-end card priced at an unprecedented 550$ while NV is dead silent about it's next gen cards. They are preoccupied with Tegra and the mobile stuff. So, move along nothing to see.

 

[Lonyo]

Not necessarily. This "could" be the case, but it would depend solely on performance before saying one should surely be compared to another. Don't forget, there is speculation that the GK104 will "supposedly" be a mid range card with 3 tiers of cards above it.
GK104 - GTX760
GK100 - GTX770
GK100 - GTX780
GK100 - GTX790 (Dual GPU)

I'm just throwing things out there of course, but this could be what the lineup will be.

The OP was talking about a presumed GK104 which is 20% faster than the GTX580 and 1.5GB RAM at $399.
Where that fits in the overall lineup doesn't matter.

I was correcting him based on the fact that there will be a 1.5GB HD7950 which should cost $399, so comparing it to a 3GB card isn't entirely fair and adds an extra unnecessary $50 cost to the relative AMD card vs the entirely hypothetical NV card.

 

[Keysplayr]

LOL @ the "Aritmetic" performance....
Even NVDA's well known spin factory usually gets the spelling right so this one must be a privateer operation.:sneaky:

Yeah I mean it could have just been created by a web site editor just to get hits. Wouldn't be the first time.

 

[Keysplayr]

The OP was talking about a presumed GK104 which is 20% faster than the GTX580 and 1.5GB RAM at $399.
Where that fits in the overall lineup doesn't matter.

I was correcting him based on the fact that there will be a 1.5GB HD7950 which should cost $399, so comparing it to a 3GB card isn't entirely fair and adds an extra unnecessary $50 cost to the relative AMD card vs the entirely hypothetical NV card.

Well, how fast is 7950 "presumed" to be in relation to a GTX580?

 

[VulgarDisplay]

This is the most uninteresting launch of new cards in looong time. There is no game out there that can destroy a mainstream card and I don't see any game that'll be released this year to be one. These new cards are still DX11 so any of the previous generations will do just fine in this department. So, for gaming purposes launching a new set of cards is pretty useless... but they have to. AMD puts out a high-end card priced at an unprecedented 550$ while NV is dead silent about it's next gen cards. They are preoccupied with Tegra and the mobile stuff. So, move along nothing to see.

Since when is $550 unprecedented. I swear nobody remembers the days when single GPU's used to cost $800(ish) MSRP...

 

[Arzachel]

This is the most uninteresting launch of new cards in looong time. There is no game out there that can destroy a mainstream card and I don't see any game that'll be released this year to be one. These new cards are still DX11 so any of the previous generations will do just fine in this department. So, for gaming purposes launching a new set of cards is pretty useless... but they have to. AMD puts out a high-end card priced at an unprecedented 550$ while NV is dead silent about it's next gen cards. They are preoccupied with Tegra and the mobile stuff. So, move along nothing to see.

Unprecedented? You seem not to remember the 8800 Ultra, do you?

Well, how fast is 7950 "presumed" to be in relation to a GTX580?

~10% faster give or take a few percent.

 

[Lonyo]

Well, how fast is 7950 "presumed" to be in relation to a GTX580?

Doesn't matter, since the reviews of the HD7950 will be out by the time it launches, and the OP can make his decision then.
Since it's almost certain the GK104 will come after HD7950, the OP was asking if it would be worth waiting, or not waiting, but spending the extra $50 for an HD7950.

I merely said he doesn't have to spend an "extra $50" because there's a 1.5GB version of the HD7950 which should be $399.

Like the OP said, it's all hypotheticals. I just corrected him about one rumour that people are relatively sure about, the price of an HD7950.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Well, how fast is 7950 "presumed" to be in relation to a GTX580?

I would say it will be 5-15% faster than a gtx580. Perhaps more than that depending on AMD's driver team in the next month.

I know it's kind of a broad range, but if you think logically about how the 7970 performs you can kinda extrapolate how the 7950 will perform. If the 7970 was roughly 24% faster than the gtx580 I would expect the 7950 to be -10-15% slower than the 7970.

 

[Keysplayr]

Doesn't matter, since the reviews of the HD7950 will be out by the time it launches, and the OP can make his decision then.
Since it's almost certain the GK104 will come after HD7950, the OP was asking if it would be worth waiting, or not waiting, but spending the extra $50 for an HD7950.

I merely said he doesn't have to spend an "extra $50" because there's a 1.5GB version of the HD7950 which should be $399.

Like the OP said, it's all hypotheticals. I just corrected him about one rumour that people are relatively sure about, the price of an HD7950.

Don't worry, I won't make you swear to anything in a court of law. No conversation. No problem.

@Vulgar Display: Thanks, I'm guessing it will be right around GTX580 performance. Maybe 5% over. Either one of us could be wrong though.

 

[Crap Daddy]

Unprecedented? You seem not to remember the 8800 Ultra, do you?



~10% faster give or take a few percent.

Was talking about AMD and the last few years.