7970 GHz edition incoming!

[shaynoa]

i just visualized amd fanboys all falling on there swords as they looked to the heavens for a miracle that is all to late in coming,,don't worry it all happend in my head , but it would make a great cartoon sketch
believe it or not o use amd it is better coded for the game i play
shaynoa

 

[nOOky]

I'm just glad the new nvidia card is out, the competition is there from both camps, and hopefully it will bring the prices down. A war like this is always good for the consumer.

 

[Cookie Monster]

I don't understand what you're trying to say. He compared stock 7970 to his OC7970 nowhere did he mention gtx680 in that comparison.

Im trying to say that its pretty much impossible for someone to overclock his/her HD7970 from stock clocks to 1125/1575 with only a 10W increase in power consumption (it could be possible if you could keep your temps really low so power consumption is reduced but even then 10W seems like a very low number). If that was the case, AMD wouldn't even have released their top end card with such low clocks.

 

[blastingcap]

AMD, it's not too late to salvage goodwill among gamers who hate you for raising prices in December-March. It's not too late to save face, AMD. Cut your prices to remain competitive. Do it. Do it now. Be a champion of the people.

7970 - $450
7950 - $400 (3GB)
7950 - $350 (1.5GB)
7870 - $260
7850 - $225

 

[Lepton87]

Im trying to say that its pretty much impossible for someone to overclock his/her HD7970 from stock clocks to 1125/1575 with only a 10W increase in power consumption (it could be possible if you could keep your temps really low so power consumption is reduced but even then 10W seems like a very low number). If that was the case, AMD wouldn't even have released their top end card with such low clocks.

yeah it's strange. I always thought that power consumption goes up linearly with clock-rate. Maybe he bumped up against cpu bottleneck with that overclock but stock card wasn't fast enough to do that. Hard to say without knowing how he tested power consumption,

 

[Lepton87]

AMD, it's not too late to salvage goodwill among gamers who hate you for raising prices in December-March. It's not too late to save face, AMD. Cut your prices to remain competitive. Do it. Do it now. Be a champion of the people.

7970 - $450
7950 - $400 (3GB)
7950 - $350 (1.5GB)
7870 - $260
7850 - $225

It's only in the USA that gtx680 is cheaper. In other parts of the world it is the exact opposite but I'm all the way for price cuts.

 

[Makaveli]

I think all of you should check out this review if you haven't seen it yet. It has Overclocked numbers for both cards

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/nvidia-geforce-gtx-680.html

 

[MrK6]

Thats quite a bold claim. What I am seeing is a 30W (stock)~100W(overclocked) difference when comparing power consumption of the HD7970 to a GTX680 from different reviews. This number varies depending on what cooler your using because keeping the temperature low can reduce power consumption. With the reference cooler, Id think youd see more than 10W difference if clocked at those levels.

Power consumption only scales linearly with clock speed. The huge power consumption numbers you typically see from overclocking come from voltage increases (which scales quadratically), not clock speed increases. Check out my data on it: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...FlmUGVQMUZReHI0bFg4czR1Z3AwdXc&hl=en_US#gid=7 . Also, temperatures reduce resistance (which is how they primarily apply their reduction to power consumption) linearly as well. While my 7970 is water cooled, running at higher, air-cooled temperatures won't result in much change.

 

[blastingcap]

It's only in the USA that gtx680 is cheaper. In other parts of the world it is the exact opposite but I'm all the way for price cuts.

My price suggestions are for USA. If you want to talk about other countries that is fine, but it is irrelevant to me and most posters on here.

AMD YOU KNOW 7970 IS INFERIOR NO MATTER IF YOU RELEASE A GIGAHERTZ EDITION... SEARCH YOUR FEELINGS, YOU KNOW IT TO BE TRUE. DROP PRICES NOW!

 

[dust]

I think all of you should check out this review if you haven't seen it yet. It has Overclocked numbers for both cards

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/nvidia-geforce-gtx-680.html

looks like people switched a little too soon from 7970:hmm:

 

[Lepton87]

Power consumption only scales linearly with clock speed. The huge power consumption numbers you typically see from overclocking come from voltage increases (which scales quadratically), not clock speed increases. Check out my data on it: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...FlmUGVQMUZReHI0bFg4czR1Z3AwdXc&hl=en_US#gid=7 . Also, temperatures reduce resistance (which is how they primarily apply their reduction to power consumption) linearly as well. While my 7970 is water cooled, running at higher, air-cooled temperatures won't result in much change.

But 925 to 1125 is a 21% increase so I would expect power consumption to also increase 21%. An increase of 10W is way less than 21% increase.

 

[Tempered81]

Its faster at stock but doesn't scale as well per mhz beyond stock. Clock speed means nothing without good scaling per mhz.

I've been testing them all day. Don't misinterpret this as a slight, I love the cards and they are awesome - VERY quiet at stock and quieter than 7970.

However when comparing Max OC and dual GPU, I think the 7970 is even or even wins in some games (all crysis games, metro 2033, witcher 2). So its not as black and white as you're suggesting, but I think we all agree that AMD needs to lower prices because all web comparisons are done at stock! However for someone with an OC'ed card, the 7970 wins in many cases because it scales much better per mhz past stock than the 680 does.

Nice man. Some awesome video cards you've got there. Cool to hear some input from someone who has both 680 SLI and 7970 CF. Can you post some fraps numbers too?

Your impression is they're about equal in those titles.. where does 680 lead big at? What are some of the advantages of the 680's? Hows the TXAA & drivers?

 

[Zebo]

Won't help much. the 680 is still better in every other area. Maybe it'll cost $479 instead of $449 though. They make an extra $30.

 

[Tempered81]

But 925 to 1125 is a 21% increase so I would expect power consumption to also increase 21%. An increase of 10W is way less than 21% increase.

power consumption depends 98% on the voltage. he could clock 925 to 1125 and if he didn't change voltage, power could remain almost the same within a margin of error. If he kept it at 925, and raised the voltage, he could add another 100 watts to the board

 

[dust]

My price suggestions are for USA. If you want to talk about other countries that is fine, but it is irrelevant to me and most posters on here.

AMD YOU KNOW 7970 IS INFERIOR NO MATTER IF YOU RELEASE A GIGAHERTZ EDITION... SEARCH YOUR FEELINGS, YOU KNOW IT TO BE TRUE. DROP PRICES NOW!

ROFL I hope you'll make them hear you eventually!

 

[Zebo]

AMD, it's not too late to salvage goodwill among gamers who hate you for raising prices in December-March. It's not too late to save face, AMD. Cut your prices to remain competitive. Do it. Do it now. Be a champion of the people.

7970 - $450
7950 - $400 (3GB)
7950 - $350 (1.5GB)
7870 - $260
7850 - $225

There is that too when they tried to rape us when they had top dog. Many won't forget. nV's top cards as of late are always $500. The 480, the 580, the 680 - AMD got all uppity. Especially that mid range card 7870. Since when has the mid range been $359?

 

[blastingcap]

power consumption depends 98% on the voltage. he could clock 925 to 1125 and if he didn't change voltage, power could remain almost the same within a margin of error. If he kept it at 925, and raised the voltage, he could add another 100 watts to the board

I thought power increased by the square of voltage, but linearly compared to clock? There are other parts to a GPU than core (memory, and maybe fans though they tend to speed up as temperatures increase) but I would expect that a 21% increase in core speed would result in more than a marginal increase in wattage... like 18% even if it's not 21% Or am I missing something?

 

[Gloomy]

Is this GHz Edition going to be some new reference card or something the AIBs are cooking up? That name is so lame. I might be alone in thinking this but it needs to be a 7971 or something. What's even the point of having numbers in the name if they're just going to keep adding random monikers?

 

[-Slacker-]

no, not really.

SLI scales much better


http://tpucdn.com/reviews/ASUS/HD_7970_CrossFire/images/perfrel_2560.gif

http://tpucdn.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_680_SLI/images/perfrel_2560.gif

That's on 680 with day 1 drivers. So how about them apples??

Haven't looked in detail at the reviews, but have you considered these points?:


-Are all the games in both reviews the same?
-Are there any games where crossfire or SLI performance is cripple for either card?
-If yes, have there been patches or driver updates that have fixed said issues inbetween reviews?
-Same premise as above - are there any games with these problems that run at more than 120 fps at 1600p on a single card, in which case multi card performance wouldn't be very useful and would skew the overall result?

Also, the Asus HD 7970 review is form january 8 so, like the gtx680 review, close to launch day.

 

[blastingcap]

AMD, the people have spoken! Drop prices now! We will not think less of you for it. In fact, we loved you for the hd 4870 even though it was slower than the gtx 280. If you believe in love, drop your prices now!

needs to be at least 1100 mhz to be worth the trouble... And like others said, some sort of price reduction to go along with it

seconded.

Do it mitch!

i'm thinking they'd need more than a 75mhz clock to beat a 680. Maybe up to 1100-1150mhz would do the trick. I'm sure a mature process can yield those results without increasing power consumption too much, but they do have to reduce prices as well.

i think we all agree that amd needs to lower prices

on price, amd is losing badly at the moment just like nvidia was when the 4870 came out.

rofl i hope you'll make them hear you eventually!

there is that too when they tried to rape us when they had top dog. Many won't forget. Nv's top cards as of late are always $500. The 480, the 580, the 680 - amd got all uppity. Especially that mid range card 7870. Since when has the mid range been $359?

 

[Zebo]

We loved them more for the 5850 5870s. Legends with legendary pricing.

I'm not saying they should have released 7950 and 7970 that cheap but about between them would have sold A LOT. So many people wouldnt have bothered with 680 since 4-5% is meh and they'd own 7000 series already

Now it's too late. They can still salvage their mid range though with immediate price reducetions on the 7800s.

 

[blackened23]

Nice man. Some awesome video cards you've got there. Cool to hear some input from someone who has both 680 SLI and 7970 CF. Can you post some fraps numbers too?

Your impression is they're about equal in those titles.. where does 680 lead big at? What are some of the advantages of the 680's? Hows the TXAA & drivers?

To be fair the 680 leads big in some titles, Batman: AC, skyrim, very small lead in Saints Row 3 (slight lead, wins by about 5 fps in average) and LA Noire, GTA IV. This is with both setups OC'ed and sli/xfired as far as I can make them both go. 7970 wins big in crysis 1, 2, warhead, metro 2033, Alan Wake, and witcher 2. I play at 2560 resolution with everything at ultra, the biggest lopsided victory was the 7970 in metro/crysis, there are areas where the 7970 is 15-20 fps faster (probably due to VRAM? Not sure). While the 680 has a lopsided victory in Batman: AC.

As far as nvidia advantages, the features are all great, the control panel has a lot of cool stuff. Adaptive vsync is pretty neat, but honestly I didn't care for it too much. It doesn't smooth games out as much as I was hoping with vsync off (didn't notice much difference). TXAA is unsupported so far, it has to be supported by software. The driver has FXAA (!!) - I *love* this feature. I've been begging for this a long time and its finally here. Disadvantages of the 680 - overclock scaling is not as good as I had hoped, and GPU boost depends on the quality of your ASIC ( I believe -- not 100% sure)

Overall, the 680 is a killer card. It definitely doesn't overwhelm the 7970 like some here suggest, because in xfire or overclocked its pretty much dead even -- or the 7970 leads in some titles as well. But for a new purchaser - hands down the 680 is a better buy since it is cheaper and works better "out of the box". If you're a hardcore overclocker and already own a 7970 the 680 is a sidegrade at best, though.

I haven't messed much with FRAPs lately but I can give it a shot. Doesn't it slow your framerate down substantially? Last time I tried it, it really screwed with my fps.

 

[MrK6]

We loved them more for the 5850 5870s. Legends with legendary pricing.

I'm not saying they should have released 7950 and 7970 that cheap but about between them would have sold A LOT. So many people wouldnt have bothered with 680 since 4-5% is meh and they'd own 7000 series already

Now it's too late. They can still salvage their mid range though with immediate price reducetions on the 7800s.

Not that they even care what you're saying, but 28nm production is prohibitory.

 

[Mopetar]

Now it's too late. They can still salvage their mid range though with immediate price reducetions on the 7800s.

Why bother until nVidia actually launches a competing product? The only other viable alternatives are previous generation cards and those will eventually go out of stock. Having the higher prices might slow sales to some degree, but it's better to have inventory in the channel and making more for each sale, than it is to have a completely empty channel inventory because you set the price to low and demand outstripped supply.

I don't have any clue how GK106 is supposed to perform or when we can expect it to launch, so for the foreseeable future, AMD doesn't have any direct competition for the 7800 series, which means we're not going to see price cuts unless inventory really starts to pile up.

 

[Silverforce11]

Stock 7970s need to be $450.
OC 7970s @ 1.1ghz will match gtx680. It can go for $499.
OC 7970s @ 1.2ghz will beat a gtx680. $525.

Higher power use because it has 3gb vram, will sell fine @ those prices.