***AMD Radeon HD7970 GHZ Edition - Official Reviews Thread***

[Elfear]

Things get more interesting...

This is good news if true. The db numbers from the Anandtech review were pretty bad.

Overall I'd say AMD did a good job pushing the Ghz edition out the door. A card that ties or beats the competitor for the same price. I'm a little disappointed though at the power consumption. I wrongly assumed that process maturation and binning would allow 1000-1100Mhz from the factory at the same or lower voltage (compared to the regular 7970). Maybe AMD couldn't find enough cards that would boost to 1050Mhz at base voltage. Hopefully we'll see non-reference cards with better power numbers.

 

[MrK6]

Why in AT's review is the 7970 green in the graphs and the 680 red?

Anyway, nothing to see or buy, it's no wonder a higher clocked 7970 is faster than a slower one.

 

[Homeles]

Why in AT's review is the 7970 green in the graphs and the 680 red?

To confuse the both of us.

 

[BFG10K]

I can see it now. Overuse of tessellation was used as cudgel when Fermi came out. Only makes sense that AMD would start using their overarching compute advantage in the same way.

The thing is, this method actually has far-reaching advantages. You get the performance of deferred rendering for lots of lighting, but hardware MSAA/SSAA still works like a normal forward renderer.

As for this card, it’s obnoxiously loud.

 

[thilanliyan]

I live in a van, down by the river.

You power OCed 470 Tri SLI off a car battery??!!

Those 470s must must be one of those Balla eco Double-B editions.

 

[tviceman]

Would like a response on this, http://techreport.com/articles.x/23150/11

Did they edit the article, last paragraph for me is:

"For now, we at least have a fresh reminder of how close the battle for GPU supremacy is in this generation of chips. You can't go wrong with either team this time around, although the mojo is liable to change hands again at any moment. "

Might want to reconsider throwing out the troll moniker. Making up article quotes, if this is indeed what has happened, whiffs of Wreckage worthy material to me.

Edit: After some interneting it seems you are quoting Techpowerup while Will Robinson is quoting TechReport, now I am sure that the troll slam was uncalled for.

Thanks Ves,I figured that was the case but I knew tviceman was just blindly lashing out at a perceived negative comment about NVDA.
Not much chance/likelihood of an apology there tho....:|

I confused techpowerup with techreport, my mistake. The confusion wasn't just in the website's name, though, as techreport had a somewhat similar statement in the opening of it's conclusion page to what Will Robinson quoted from techreport:

AMD has achieved its goal: the HD 7970 GHz Edition is the fastest single-GPU graphics card in the world. Thanks to the 125 MHz higher GPU clock, than that of the regular HD 7970, the card beats NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680 by about 2% averaged over all our benchmarks and resolutions. At 2560x1600 the increase is even larger with 8%

This is was half of my confusion, and in my mistake I went the extra mile to say what techreport's overall final conclusion of the hd7970 XTXLMNOP is:

AMD's HD 7970 GHz edition is priced at $499, the same as NVIDIA's GTX 680. While this might seem enticing at first glance, since the GHz Edition is faster, NVIDIA's card wins at power-draw, noise, and manual overclocking, with the better card overall. I find $499 is just too high to really draw away much attention from the GTX 680, if the HD 7970 GHz Edition was $450 I'd definitely consider it, until that happens I'll happily take a GTX 680, or even GTX 670, which offers better price/performance at not much lower performance.

Which is obviously a different conclusion from what techreport came to. But, as I am sure Will Robinson truly, truly wants us all to believe, techpowerup is obviously pro-Nvidia and their reviews and conclusions are worthless. Bravo.

 

[Dark Shroud]

I'm not sure how someone can claim the Nvidia card wins at manual Over clocking when you can't control anything about the clocks or voltage other than raising the auto-clock limit.

 

[Mistwalker]

But, as I am sure Will Robinson truly, truly wants us all to believe, techpowerup is obviously pro-Nvidia and their reviews and conclusions are worthless. Bravo.

So you admit to making the mistake but neither apologize for falsely calling someone a troll nor do you edit it out of your original post.

Was there ever a time this forum was a community and not a red vs. green battleground?

Performance is really good, other stuff meh. This respin would have been much more interesting if they had used a vapor chamber cooler with a better fan. I really freakin hate AMD reference fans, on the vanilla 7970 it wasn't noisy on auto fan but at manual settings 70% or above...give me some earplugs please....

Its time to retire that POS fan and make something new IMO.

This is my feeling as well, in fact changing up the cooler was a big reason the 580 ended up so much better than the 480 in the heat/noise department. There must be a reason AMD refuses to make the change, but I can't fathom it. It could easily have led to the 7970GE losing in power consumption but competitive in all other metrics, rather than challenging for performance and outright losing everywhere else.

Someone else mentioned that retail cards will likely have different coolers, but even if that's so, these reference cards are the ones being reviewed. All the more reason to show them in the best possible light...

 

[SolMiester]

Why in AT's review is the 7970 green in the graphs and the 680 red?

Anyway, nothing to see or buy, it's no wonder a higher clocked 7970 is faster than a slower one.

lol, yeah, wondered that myself

 

[Final8ty]

PC Perspective: http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/AMD-Radeon-HD-7970-3GB-GHz-Edition-Review-Taking-GTX-680

Tomshardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition-review-benchmark,3232.html

Lab501: http://translate.google.co.uk/trans...a=X&ei=_IbkT6WpAqmm0AWUtLGnCQ&ved=0CF0Q7gEwAA

VR-Zone: http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-rad...st-from-overclocking-and-drivers/16362-2.html

HT4U.net: http://translate.googleusercontent....iti_2/&usg=ALkJrhju1DpoACxVYQfIaZLlKySYKMLtnQ

Computerbase: http://translate.google.co.uk/trans...a=X&ei=SIvkT-HVJafE0QXrtLSHCQ&ved=0CFMQ7gEwAA

Tweaktown :http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/47..._ghz_edition_3gb_video_card_review/index.html

 

[hawtdawg]

Does this thing overclock any higher than a reg 7970?

 

[Will Robinson]

I confused techpowerup with techreport, my mistake. The confusion wasn't just in the website's name, though, as techreport had a somewhat similar statement in the opening of it's conclusion page to what Will Robinson quoted from techreport:



This is was half of my confusion, and in my mistake I went the extra mile to say what techreport's overall final conclusion of the hd7970 XTXLMNOP is:



Which is obviously a different conclusion from what techreport came to. But, as I am sure Will Robinson truly, truly wants us all to believe, techpowerup is obviously pro-Nvidia and their reviews and conclusions are worthless. Bravo.

Actually TechPowerup is a pretty good site that I read from time to time.
Could you please post the quote of me dissing it and their reviews?

If not then I'll standby while you think of some other way of making it my fault.

 

[Silverforce11]

The thing is, this method actually has far-reaching advantages. You get the performance of deferred rendering for lots of lighting, but hardware MSAA/SSAA still works like a normal forward renderer.

As for this card, it’s obnoxiously loud.

Nobody here seems to appreciate what directcompute can mean for games, well here it is.

It's great that devs are incorporation more dx11 features, thats something we should all like to see. If you don't want to see advancement, go enjoy consoles.

And no, the Ghz edition don't seem to OC any better. It's just a gimmick, re-setting the bar higher because at release they set it way too low. Most 78xx and 79xx with some voltage have no problems reaching 1.2ghz, no point folking out extra for "Ghz" unless u think downloading trixx and clicking "overclock" is hard.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I'm not sure how someone can claim the Nvidia card wins at manual Over clocking when you can't control anything about the clocks or voltage other than raising the auto-clock limit.

You can raise the memory clock and it sticks all the time. The memory clock does not change.

 

[birthdaymonkey]

Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/06/recapturing-the-mojo-amds-radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition/

This one is interesting because they put an emphasis on frame draw time rather than pure FPS. Usually I read Ars for its more general content, but I thought this was one of the better (or at least the most original) reviews I've seen.

 

[Termie]

Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/06/recapturing-the-mojo-amds-radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition/

This one is interesting because they put an emphasis on frame draw time rather than pure FPS. Usually I read Ars for its more general content, but I thought this was one of the better (or at least the most original) reviews I've seen.

That's actually a reprint of the TechReport article.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/23150

 

[birthdaymonkey]

That's actually a reprint of the TechReport article.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/23150

Hehe... oops. I guess it wasn't too original after all!

 

[RaistlinZ]

Does this thing overclock any higher than a reg 7970?

Nope.

 

[hawtdawg]

Nope.

So is there any reason whatsoever to get a GE over a regular 7970 if I'm going to max it out?

 

[piesquared]

You can't get a GE reference card anyway, the chips are going to partners. So if your question is is there any reason to get a custom designed card i'd say wait and see for yourself what the chip is really capable of.

 

[DaveSimmons]

If you want a guaranteed GHz, it's the one to buy since AMD is doing the "golden sample" GPU binning instead of you needing to trust a card maker to get it right. You also don't have the uncertainty of whether a random lower-binned chip will OC that high.

 

[lopri]

Some models (regular 7970) are now down to $419 AR. I decided to wait a bit longer until it reaches $400 with no rebates. 670/680 leaves an impression of G92 (manufacturing-wise) and it has a potential to be very cheap and ubiquitous. By the time I pull the trigger I probably could grab both for a litte more than what early adapters paid for one. (No offense to early adapters whatsoever, you have every right to enjoy every moment of visual pleasure)

 

[railven]

Any word when the Beta 7 drivers will start to circulate, or would I infer based on the name I have to wait until July?

 

[RaistlinZ]

1200/1700 per sig below. Stock Sapphire with 74.1% ASCI.

1.200v core
1.650v mem

Afterburner used.

 

[ShintaiDK]

If you want a guaranteed GHz, it's the one to buy since AMD is doing the "golden sample" GPU binning instead of you needing to trust a card maker to get it right. You also don't have the uncertainty of whether a random lower-binned chip will OC that high.

I dont think the GE cards are "golden smaples" or the best binned.

It looks more like some are failed HD7970 that didnt fit TDP/Voltage and was doomed to be HD7950. While others are ofcource good bins. Even the idle voltage is 100mv higher on the GE cards.

Had it been the best binned all around you wouldnt need the voltage increase as they do plus TDP. Not to mention the downclocking under too heavy load.

Not to mention the cards are utterly jetengine dustbusters.

The 7970GE is without question the loudest single-GPU video card we have seen in quite some time, and that’s nothing for AMD to be proud of. Everyone’s limit for noise differs, but when we’re talking about single-GPU cards exceeding 60dB in Metro we have to seriously ponder whether it’s something many gamers would be willing to put up with.

Its certainly not a planned release. More like a kneejerk reaction.

Anyone wanting the best HD7970 card would stay away from the GE edition and buy something like the MSI Lightning or the Gigabyte Windforce instead.