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Amd 7970 still decent

M

melted829

Junior Member
Got the 7970 at launch and was wondering if it's still considered a decent gaming card. I know Tahiti is sort of old hat now. But it supports dx12 and seems to still work ok. Would it be worth it to upgrade or is it still a good card??
 
It is still a very decent card, I would just wait 2016 for 14/16nm and HBM2 cards.

You made 4 years with it, another 6 months or so is nothing.
 
If you need more grunt, the 7970 has around 25-30% extra performance untap that you can get from OC it.

7970 + 30% performance is NO slouch even today.
 
have to agree with the above posters.

the 7970/280x is no slouch even after 4 years from release.

i run 2 with a 2500k and it just tears through gta v.
 
It's still pseudo-high end. Easily the best value in graphics cards we've ever seen if you bought it in the first year.

And everyone was complaining it was too expensive when it launched as well 😛
 
HurleyBird said:
It's still pseudo-high end. Easily the best value in graphics cards we've ever seen if you bought it in the first year.

And everyone was complaining it was too expensive when it launched as well 😛
Click to expand...

Really? Didn't it compete against a $1000 Titan that gets beats by a 970 today?
 
poofyhairguy said:
Really? Didn't it compete against a $1000 Titan that gets beats by a 970 today?
Click to expand...

No, 7970 was out, then the 680 competed with it. ~$500.

The better value card is the 7950 though, that thing pulls 40-50% OC like a beast and it was only 5% shy from a 7970 clock-for-clock. I got it for ~$330 at release and it was spanking my 670 in all the newer games.
 
Congrats, you got the best GPU that was released in this decade without knowing it!

I would OC it heavily as others have suggested. Maybe get a custom waterblock or a custom cooler like the Artic ones if noise is an issue. I wouldn't invest in a new GPU at this stage.

If you want to go to 1440p and above, I'd say upgrade. If off-again, on-again 1080p gaming is your primary usecase then I wouldn't even be sure if a GPU upgrade next year would make a ton of sense since I don't expect a dramatic increase in visual fidelity.

I'm going to upgrade pretty aggressively because I'm moving to a 165 Hz 1440p monitor from my current 1080p 144 Hz one, and even today a 980 Ti can't sit at 100+ fps stable on 1080p at some AAA games like Witcher 3 or Crysis 3. So even if I had my old monitor, I'd needed to upgrade next year anyway. Now you add 1440p and it's even more aggressive.

But far from all people have such a bleeding edge preference and your needs may actually be covered by your current GPU. People sometimes over-upgrade over what their actual needs are. Be honest with your true needs.
 
no matter how good these old gpus are, we are now seeing 390 at the price of 230$ kinda hard to pass up if you are still on 7970 cards.
 
AMD knocked it out of the park with Tahiti and Hawaii. They have aged incredibly well. Congrats for having one.

There are certainly upgrades available, but unless there is something specific you want to do that you can't do today, it is hard to make a recommendation.
 
melted829 said:
Got the 7970 at launch and was wondering if it's still considered a decent gaming card. I know Tahiti is sort of old hat now. But it supports dx12 and seems to still work ok. Would it be worth it to upgrade or is it still a good card??
Click to expand...

I'd say it's pretty decent for 1080P gaming and more so if you have yours overclocked to 1.15Ghz+. 7970 OC ~ 280X or even faster and that's better than what most PC gamers have or what most are buying today.

perfrel_1920_1080.png


If you are happy with its performance, just wait until 2016 to upgrade. Otherwise, if you are considering upgrading, I'd recommend GTX970/390 as the bare minimum. If you have been using 7970 for this long, honestly you could probably survive on it for 1080P until 980Ti/Fury X level of performance can be had for $399 in 2016. As others suggested, just overclock it to last you another 6-7 months.
 
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I maintain a hobbyist benchmarking channel, in which I benchmark everything I got.

I have uploaded many 7950 videos during the past year, among others.

https://www.youtube.com/user/toutagamon/search?query=7950+benchmark

All vids that are less than one year old, are digitally recorded with an external recorded as well.

See if you see anything you may be interested in. I use 1.1Ghz for the video card (skip the crossfire ones so you don't get confused), so it would be pretty close to your 7970. Actually maybe a bit faster, but you still would get better performance if you overclocked.

It is not a top performer, especially when I compare it with my 970, but hey for its age, it's doing great. I believe it will be the new 5850 and even more so, due to it having 3GB of Vram.

Be warned for spicy wallpapers though, heheh.
 
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nothing REALLY new and worth upgrading to imo. Wait to see what the 2016 has to offer. Next gen promises some nice things.
 
I bought one at launch too, been a great card for almost four years now. It's still a solid performer for 1080P (I game at 19x12), especially with an overclock. The 3GB of vram really gave this thing legs. With a light overclock it's roughly equivalent to GTX780 performance.
 
Its not just the 7970 that isn't a slouch but even my 7750.That card still allowed me to play GTA V at 30fps at normal quality at 900p.
And ofcourse max settings in games like Life is Strange and all TellTale games. Even games like Mad Max at mix of medium and high at 30-40fps. I haven't tried more demanding games like Witcher 3, Dragon Age Inquisition, Far Cry 4, Shadow of Mordor, etc though.
Its the magic of GCN architecture.
 
Riding my 7950@1100Mhz all the way to node shrink GPUs. Feels good having picked the right horse that generation.
 
I will admit that going from my 7970 GHz to my GTX 970 wasn't a huge jump on my framerates. I got more from less heat in the case and the bonus of Nvidia-specific stuff (like finally seeing all the blowing around Physx trash in Batman).
 
My upgrades are based more on node changes than model numbers or revisions.
28nm cards today aren't _that_ much better than 28nm cards from 2+yrs ago.
GCN was and still is competitive imo
This stuff is highly subjective however.
 
I've been struggling with this too.

I have a 1080p TV but tend to use 1440p VSR because it ends up looking a tad better than 1080p + AA (jaggies being my biggest issue in many games) and I have a 7950 that I grabbed for ~£210 and has been a stalwart for over 3 years now.

Looking at the market in the UK, the 970 and 390 are ~£250... they don't feel quite like the VFM move like my 7950, my 6870 and even before that my (early adopter) 512mb 4870 felt like.

So this post makes me feel like overclocking my 7950 again and skipping the upgrade until either 1) super ebay deal because Black Friday and Cyber Monday were *huge* GPU disappointments for these cards or 2) some new generation that pushes prices to make it worth my while.

Thank you for quelling my GPU urges 🙂
 
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