AMD Radeon HD 7950 Gets Turbo

[3DVagabond]

He's not wrong though. AMD's credibility has been greatly challenged lately due to the 7970GE and to a lesser extent the 7750 900MHz.

Can you explain, Virge? I know they weren't quick to arrive, but they are as advertised (except a bit cheaper).

 

[thilanliyan]

I'll stick to overclocking my 7950 manually thanks. Man I really hope this gpu boost thing is not here to stay. I don't need anyone to hold my hand while overclocking. I'm very glad I don't have to deal with the voltage limitations imposed on geforce 6xx owners...i really hope AMD doesn't go in that direction with their next cards.

 

[chimaxi83]

I'll stick to overclocking my 7950 manually thanks. Man I really hope this gpu boost thing is not here to stay. I don't need anyone to hold my hand while overclocking. I'm very glad I don't have to deal with the voltage limitations imposed on geforce 6xx owners...i really hope AMD doesn't go in that direction with their next cards.

So true, volt modding my card wasn't worth the trouble lol, especially with a bottlenecked memory bus. Oh well, 7970 incoming 😎

Off topic: Computerbase.de does some pretty great reviews :thumbsup:

 

[RussianSensation]

My comments

It's true that HD7970 GE edition was paper launched. But what's that have to do with this week? AMD explained that it took longer than expected for AIBs to launch GE editions since many of them already had factory pre-overclocked 7970 cards to begin with.

It's ironic he keeps claiming that GE edition is a mythical card since it's widely available in Canada at NCIX and Newegg.ca has at least 3 versions. At the same time the availability of GTX680 was scarce less than an hour after launch and that persisted for almost a month, and yet that card was included in launch reviews?

Yes, the GE was a paper launch but now that they are available, the price is well below the MSRP of $499. The GE edition was already for sale in the Uk for a while as well, at prices ~ GTX670. So it's now available at least in the US, Canada and the UK. What's the problem?

Off topic: Computerbase.de does some pretty great reviews :thumbsup:

:thumbsup: Noise levels for 10 reference cards in the review, time vs. FPS graphs, dual monitor power consumption in idle, GPGPU section, dropped resolutions under 1080P.

 

[Lonbjerg]

It's true that HD7970 GE edition was paper launched. But what's that have to do with this week? AMD explained that it took longer than expected for AIBs to launch GE editions since many of them already had factory pre-overclocked 7970 cards to begin with.

It's ironic he keeps claiming that GE edition is a mythical card since it's widely available in Canada at NCIX and Newegg.ca has at least 3 versions. At the same time the availability of GTX680 was scarce less than an hour after launch and that persisted for almost a month, and yet that card was included in launch reviews?

Yes, the GE was a paper launch but now that they are available, the price is well below the MSRP of $499. The GE edition was already for sale in the Uk for a while as well, at prices ~ GTX670. So it's now available at least in the US, Canada and the UK. What's the problem?



:thumbsup: Noise levels for 10 reference cards in the review, time vs. FPS graphs, dual monitor power consumption in idle, GPGPU section, dropped resolutions under 1080P.

But no frametimes...BIG oversight.

 

[Grooveriding]

SkyMTL is an admitted nvidia fanboy. He's said as much. So that may explain some of it. That said, I have generally found his actual reviews to be decent and not give a skewed picture of things.

It's only in his opinionated rants or word play that you can see his bias. Which explains his crying over this new 7950 bios.

Computerbase.de is probably the best site for video card reviews, followed by anand. My two favourites, I give the nod to computerbase for their exhaustive testing and the way they present the data in ranking cards.

 

[RussianSensation]

But no frametimes...BIG oversight.

They have a full page dedicated to frame curves with videos for the sections tested. Wouldn't having frame curves and frame times (ala TechReport) be somewhat redundant? Also, as far as I am aware, only TechReport includes frame times consistently in their reviews.

 

[ViRGE]

Can you explain, Virge? I know they weren't quick to arrive, but they are as advertised (except a bit cheaper).

Sure.

7970GE: According to AnandTech, the 7970GE was originally expected to launch "until next week [June 29th] and widespread availability isn’t expected until July." The 7970GE wasn't actually available until August.

7750 900MHz: It has never truly shipped. If you check Newegg there's a single 900MHz card, and that's actually a custom XFX SKU that predates AMD's announcement.

To miss a launch by a month+ is really, really bad. That's not a minor delay, that's AMD either intentionally lying, or being completely unable to control their partners. Either way it brings AMD's credibility on future cards into question.

 

[AnandThenMan]

7750 900MHz: It has never truly shipped.

Not sure what you mean by this. I can drive 3 miles from my house and buy one tomorrow if I wanted to. Amazon.com sells them as do just about every other etailer. The card is also widely available at Walmart in the U.S.

 

[RussianSensation]

To miss a launch by a month+ is really, really bad. That's not a minor delay, that's AMD either intentionally lying, or being completely unable to control their partners. Either way it brings AMD's credibility on future cards into question.

Well they could have done what NV did with GTX680 launch but then it would be in a state of OOS for almost a month. Instead you can go right now and buy a 1050mhz HD7970 easily. Not only that but for < $460 one can buy a non-reference card that comes with 3 free games. While 1 month late, it's cheaper and has a games promotion that was supposed to apply only to non-GE cards.

Also, while AMD is 1 month late with official GE cards, MSI Lightning and PowerColor Vortex II were available for a long time with 1070-1100mhz clocks. We know that GE is just a factory pre-overclocked 7970 XT chip, which means for anyone who doesn't overclock, both the MSi Lightning and Vortex II were available between $450-520, which is very close to GE MSRP pricing.

I am not sure how "bad" it really is that AMD is 1 month late with GE, considering NV was 3 months behind with GTX670/680 as 7970 launched Jan 9th. Technically, NV is now 6-8 months late with GTX660Ti/660/650. AMD paper launched the GE, but NV missed half of this generation by not having a single desktop GPU for sale < $400 since January 9th. That's ridiculous. In any other generation, this would have been viewed as a completely failure on our forum. You can't just launch a $300 GTX660Ti 8.5 months into a new generation and call that a winner of any kind. NV had > 6 months to see what the competitor has! It's worse than Fermi in some ways. It's a no show for 3 Quarters of 2012 < $400 level and then despite launching late, the Kepler cards don't offer any overclocking, performance or VRAM advantages that Fermi had over Cypress.

In other ways, every single day HD7970 GE is for sale, NV's GTX680 refresh is late as well.

Not sure what you mean by this. I can drive 3 miles from my house and buy one tomorrow if I wanted to. Amazon.com sells them as do just about every other etailer. The card is also widely available at Walmart in the U.S.

imo 900mhz HD7750 is not the story here though, but the fact that HD7750 didn't have a Kepler competitor and there isn't one in sight for another 2 months. They tried to position GT640 as a competitor at $99 but that's pure comedy. Soon we'll start talking about HD8000 series and NV isn't even done launching 1st generation Kepler cards.

 

[ViRGE]

Not sure what you mean by this. I can drive 3 miles from my house and buy one tomorrow if I wanted to. Amazon.com sells them as do just about every other etailer. The card is also widely available at Walmart in the U.S.

ATM, just so we're clear, I'm talking about the 83W 7750 clocked at 900MHz, not the original 75W 7750 clocked at 800Mhz. The latter has been available forever; the former has never shipped as a normal AMD partner SKU. Are you sure the 900MHz card is available locally and that it's not an XFX card?

 

[ViRGE]

Well they could have done what NV did with GTX680 launch but then it would be in a state of OOS for almost a month.

Appreciate the feedback RS, but it's not the same thing. I'm not talking about production, I'm talking about credibility.

NVIDIA launched the 680 in March and said supplies would be tight (similar to past launches), and that's exactly what happened. Everything NVIDIA has promised they've delivered on, which is exactly what the "normal" situation should be. The fact that the 680 was in short supply for a time sucks, but that's immaterial to whether NVIDIA upheld their promises.

AMD on the other hand has had problems now with two separate product launches. They are not upholding their promises. And it should be noted that these are not production issues, since both parts are just new SKUs based on existing boards and chips. This is also what makes all of this so frustrating since there's no good reason that these parts are late, because their partners have been sitting on the product for ages.

AMD's has been showing that they are incapable of fulfilling their promises; this is why their credibility is under question. Given what's happened so far, what's to say the new cards will be available late this week like AMD is promising? As an otherwise happy AMD customer, this is getting painful.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Are you sure the 900MHz card is available locally and that it's not an XFX card?

What difference does it make who makes the card? It is available everywhere, you said it has "never truly shipped" which is simply false. If you want to play semantics and come up with some arbitrary definition of what a shipped product means, then a person could say nothing has "truly shipped".

 

[AnandThenMan]

Appreciate the feedback RS, but it's not the same thing. I'm not talking about production, I'm talking about credibility.

NVIDIA launched the 680 in March and said supplies would be tight (similar to past launches), and that's exactly what happened. Everything NVIDIA has promised they've delivered on, which is exactly what the "normal" situation should be. The fact that the 680 was in short supply for a time sucks, but that's immaterial to whether NVIDIA upheld their promises.

AMD on the other hand has had problems now with two separate product launches. They are not upholding their promises. And it should be noted that these are not production issues, since both parts are just new SKUs based on existing boards and chips. This is also what makes all of this so frustrating since there's no good reason that these parts are late, because their partners have been sitting on the product for ages.

AMD's has been showing that they are incapable of fulfilling their promises; this is why their credibility is under question. Given what's happened so far, what's to say the new cards will be available late this week like AMD is promising? As an otherwise happy AMD customer, this is getting painful.

I honestly don't know how to respond to this. :\

 

[Arkadrel]

I dont get it.... people butthurt over Turbo funktions comeing to AMD cards now?

Maybe it took some time to test the card/chips, and do the bios/driver/software for it.
Sure the org. launch didnt have this, but Nvidia did.

Obviously someone at AMD thought, why dont we offer a simular solution and got to work on it.
Some card had to be the first and that turns out to be the 7950.... meh.

I just hope they do this for all the card lines they have.
Turbo features are obviously here to stay, just like on the CPU side.

 

[toyota]

What difference does it make who makes the card? It is available everywhere, you said it has "never truly shipped" which is simply false. If you want to play semantics and come up with some arbitrary definition of what a shipped product means, then a person could say nothing has "truly shipped".

you really need to pay more attention to what he is saying...

 

[lopri]

The new bios increases the base clock from 800MHz to 850MHz with a turbo frequency of 925MHz.

Umm..? I've been running my 7950 @1050 MHz from day 2.

 

[ViRGE]

What difference does it make who makes the card? It is available everywhere, you said it has "never truly shipped" which is simply false. If you want to play semantics and come up with some arbitrary definition of what a shipped product means, then a person could say nothing has "truly shipped".

In this case it matters because the XFX card predates the new SKU. It's a factory overclocked card, versus a 7750 using AMD 900MHz validated chips and PCBs. In other words, it's not the new 900MHz SKU; it's just a happy coincidence that it's 900MHz.

 

[AnandThenMan]

In this case it matters because the XFX card predates the new SKU. It's a factory overclocked card, versus a 7750 using AMD 900MHz validated chips and PCBs. In other words, it's not the new 900MHz SKU; it's just a happy coincidence that it's 900MHz.

So out of these clock speeds, which are the validated clocks from Nvidia.

967
1098
1019
954
1006
915
941
980

All the above GTX670's are the same price point or within $10 of each other (they have different boost clocks as well). Which have "truly shipped"? I understand what you're trying to get at, AMD "broke a promise" and the 900mh SKU never actually existed. But yet you can buy one.

I don't see how AMD is breaking promises here, they had an entire lineup of 7 series cards while Nvidia was still trying to get their pants on. So either people can nitpick what AMD is saying, or look at what they are delivering to the marketplace.

 

[3DVagabond]

Appreciate the feedback RS, but it's not the same thing. I'm not talking about production, I'm talking about credibility.

NVIDIA launched the 680 in March and said supplies would be tight (similar to past launches), and that's exactly what happened. Everything NVIDIA has promised they've delivered on, which is exactly what the "normal" situation should be. The fact that the 680 was in short supply for a time sucks, but that's immaterial to whether NVIDIA upheld their promises.

AMD on the other hand has had problems now with two separate product launches. They are not upholding their promises. And it should be noted that these are not production issues, since both parts are just new SKUs based on existing boards and chips. This is also what makes all of this so frustrating since there's no good reason that these parts are late, because their partners have been sitting on the product for ages.

AMD's has been showing that they are incapable of fulfilling their promises; this is why their credibility is under question. Given what's happened so far, what's to say the new cards will be available late this week like AMD is promising? As an otherwise happy AMD customer, this is getting painful.

I don't dispute what you are saying about AMD being late with the GHz edition 7970 and/or the 7750. You seem to just be giving nVidia a bye though. The 680 was not in tight supply like prior launches. It was OoS in a matter of hours. The launch quantities were gone and I don't believe they were ever in stock, not even one model, for a full 24hr. period for more than a month. (We'll limit this to the North American market as that was the only place the $500 launch MSRP applied. I know we've never been OoS in NZ. They've also always been ~$100 more expensive than the 7970 here, not $50 less.) Do you honestly believe that nVidia weren't aware that this would happen and weren't simply trying to slow AMD's sales?

It's gamesmanship. To be fair to both companies, I don't think either were/are trying to jerk the consumer around, just one another, and we're stuck in the crossfire. nVidia has done this routine to hold the competition at bay numerous times. Remember Fermi? how many times was that supposed to be out any time now, and never got released? Now it appears that AMD is also. nVidia has had product launches to disrupt AMD releases before too. They also sent the HAWKS 2 demo out to reviewers (along with the 460FTW) for the 6870 launch. A game that hadn't even been released, knowing full well that it performed poorly on AMD cards. I don't like these sorts of games either, but it's the way they roll. Most of us are smart enough to not be swayed by it.

You want to talk about credibility? For me, what hurts credibility is people (reviewers, forum members) who know full well that this is what is and has been happening but act like they are surprised and get indignant. Or deny it even after it's happened. Or conveniently forget or misrepresent the past indiscretions of one of the parties. Don't just reserve your disdain for AMD for playing the media. While I'm sure the tech sites don't like being used, and I understand that because it hurts your credibility when you take them at face value when they lie to you, please don't take sides. That won't help your credibility either.

SKYMTL said that AMD wanted them to flash their 7950 review models with the new bios on the promise that the cards will be out in a week or so. He said he wasn't going to do it, and I agree with that. I would probably test the 7950 with both bios and only use the GHz(sic) edition one if they in fact release the cards and/or the bios to the public. Whatever the promise they made was. If they don't then by all means mention that AMD sent a bios update for the review, but since they haven't fulfilled their end of the bargain by supplying product to the market, you aren't going to use them. Just be sure to hold both parties to the same high standard.

Sorry for the wall of text.

 

[Ryan Smith]

Hi guys;

We'll have an article up in a bit, but I thought you might appreciate some quick numbers.

 

[AtenRa]

Thx Ryan,

So an average of 5-6% ??? nothing to get exited about. I prefer to OC my card manually thank you 😉

 

[3DVagabond]

Hi guys;

We'll have an article up in a bit, but I thought you might appreciate some quick numbers.

I see you've already updated the GPU bench

Efficient. 🙂

 

[AnandThenMan]

...snip...

Excellent post. :thumbsup:

I especially agree about the feigned outrage, it is extremely tiring. Hardware Canucks is pulling it right now IMO, to me it just makes them look stupid (and biased). We as consumers are being caught in the crossfire of the PR games, I feel it is the job of review sites to wade through the BS and give us the facts, not chose sides and have selective memories.

Thanks for the sneak peak graphs, 6% is not much but it can mean the difference between being at the top of the graph and being second, which is why vendors do this stuff.

 

[Vesku]

Review site outrage is fine with me, perhaps it will make sure we will be able to disable turbo settings and manually overclock on any AMD cards that come with the feature in the future.

Just installed one of the $310 after rebate 7950s and am running fine at 950MHz stock voltage, I'd tinker for another 100-200MHz but it's high summer and I don't have AC. Might play around with under-volting though.