AMD's response to the gtx670

[Don Karnage]

I actually had to google what 4chan was :biggrin:

 

[Dark Shroud]

For the record my link led to a photo of a cat!

As for OP I think it's obvious AMD's response will involve pricing.. it's not that 7xxx is a horrible product, it's competitive, just not worth more than the 6xx's. I'm sure there is a market for 79xx at the right price.

I think once AMD updates the drivers so that the 7900 cards run at 1Ghz or higher it will level the field on pricing. I'm seeing 7970 OC models for $450 and that seems more than fair to me.

Adding faster memory would also be a big help.

 

[Don Karnage]

is 8 Ghz effective memory available?

 

[blastingcap]

Newegg currently has the Sapphire OC 7970 + Three for Free bundle for $450 with free shipping, which is a fair price I think. I expect similar pricing for GHZ edition cards and for pricing to stay in that range vs. 670 at $400-450 for reference and oc variants.

 

[Dark Shroud]

is 8 Ghz effective memory available?

I'm not sure about GDR5 but XDR memory has been out for years now. It just doesn't get used much partially because the company, Rambus, are douche-bags.

XDR DRAM is a high-speed memory IC that turbo-charges standard CMOS DRAM cores with a high-speed interface capable of 7.2Gbps data rates providing up to 28.8GB/s of bandwidth with a single device.

http://www.rambus.com/us/technology/solutions/xdr/index.html

 

[toyota]

7 Ghz effective is the fastest gddr5 available last time I heard anything about it.

 

[3DVagabond]

I'm not sure about GDR5 but XDR memory has been out for years now. It just doesn't get used much partially because the company, Rambus, are douche-bags.



http://www.rambus.com/us/technology/solutions/xdr/index.html

Rambus has so many patents that virtually everyone has to deal with them anyway. It's not available cheap. GDDR5 is and still does the job. Rumors say nVidia is going to use a 512 mem bus on big GK. That's apparently the better solution than XDR memory.

 

[lopri]

I agree with you.

:whiste:

Count me in, too.

 

[tviceman]

is 8 Ghz effective memory available?

7 Ghz effective is the fastest gddr5 available last time I heard anything about it.

Toyota is correct; 7ghz is the fastest gddr5 ram available. Even if their memory controllers, on the whole, can't handle 7ghz, 6.5-6.6ghz seems generally doable as things are now. The point is, Nvidia is going to *need* higher memory bandwidth if/when they decide to update & rebadge GK104 with some sort of respin and higher core clock speeds, otherwise (unless they make incredible optimizations that I am not technically inclined to understand) the performance gain with just higher clock speeds - as has been shown - will not scale well.

 

[titan131]

Why are you surprised? When NV dropped GTX460 prices by $20 the day HD6850 launched, AMD didn't follow suit. AMD has always been less able to drop prices than NV; they have a money-bleeding CPU division and their GPU division is only strong in gaming cards. Meanwhile NV's high-profit HPC/pro graphics divisions can subsidize their gaming division. Not to mention how AMD has tons of debt and NV is essentially debt-free.

Surely AMD and NV's pricing strategy is determined purely by which will make them the most money? U say AMD can't drop their prices so easily because they are bleeding money in their CPU division, so therefore u are saying they would make less money if they dropped their prices? But Nvidia did drop their prices and therefore made less money then they would have done? Is there some award given to the company who sells the most video cards or something? Cuz I'm pretty sure that NV and AMD price their cards wherever they think they will make the most money and I put it to you that the shape of the company has no relevance what so ever to do with their pricing strategy.

 

[Homeles]

I think once AMD updates the drivers so that the 7900 cards run at 1Ghz or higher it will level the field on pricing. I'm seeing 7970 OC models for $450 and that seems more than fair to me.

Adding faster memory would also be a big help.

You make it sound like AMD's going to release a magical driver update that will make everyone's 7970s run at 1 GHz. This isn't going to happen. Not without some potentially serious legal repercussions. Such an update would raise the TDP of the cards, and it could potentially kill a lot of hardware in cases that aren't designed to handle the extra heat. This would affect OEMs most notably.

 

[SickBeast]

You make it sound like AMD's going to release a magical driver update that will make everyone's 7970s run at 1 GHz. This isn't going to happen. Not without some potentially serious legal repercussions. Such an update would raise the TDP of the cards, and it could potentially kill a lot of hardware in cases that aren't designed to handle the extra heat. This would affect OEMs most notably.

Yep, they would never do that. It's the bios that sets the clockspeed anyway. They could do it in the driver, but it's just going to be in the new cards' bios.

 

[3DVagabond]

People will just flash the GHz edition bios to their older cards, if it will improve performance by some metric. They problem with AMD doing some type of update themselves is the cards previously sold haven't been verified to run at those settings. I'm fairly confident (depending on what exactly the new specs will be) most of the old cards will be fine, but it will be up to the owners to decide if they want to update their cards to the same spec. Like unlocking your 6950.

 

[ocre]

Toyota is correct; 7ghz is the fastest gddr5 ram available. Even if their memory controllers, on the whole, can't handle 7ghz, 6.5-6.6ghz seems generally doable as things are now. The point is, Nvidia is going to *need* higher memory bandwidth if/when they decide to update & rebadge GK104 with some sort of respin and higher core clock speeds, otherwise (unless they make incredible optimizations that I am not technically inclined to understand) the performance gain with just higher clock speeds - as has been shown - will not scale well.

are you saying that the mild bump of 75mhz for the 7970 is out of touch for the gk104? The 680 scales very well as the clocks go up. we see reviews of overclocks +175mhz. The 680does show decent scaling on almost every game. perhaps there is one or two games that dont.

Nvidia could very easily release a gk104 that can beat the 1000ghz 7970 while still using less power. We seen it at +175mhz and it scales even with the limited bandwidth". AMD would have to go a lot higher than 75mhz before the gk104 would need a redesign to beat it. AMD is a long way from there, 75mhz isnt near enough.

I am not putting the 1ghz card down. I think it will be a close match to the 680 performance. If amd sells it at the same price as the current 7970s, it would be a steal. A very super cool thing. It would mean more value for us. More performance per dollar than what we have in the price range.

But if they price the Ghz 7970s more than current 7970s then its like meh..... Just an alternative that doesnt really shake things up. AMD really needs to shake up the market!!!!!! thats my vote.

 

[blastingcap]

My newly-arrived replacement dual-fan Sapphire 7970 has default voltage of 1.049V@950MHz stock core clock. I ordered the same card a couple of weeks ago that had a default voltage of 1.112V@950MHz stock core clock (I had to RMA it due to 2D errors). I don't know how often inventory churns, but that, plus how 7870 debuted at 1GHz (it came later than the 7970, once TSMC ramped up 28nm more and presumably fixed some early 28nm problems), plus rumors of better 28nm TSMC yields online, have me thinking that 1GHz-clocked 7970s are inevitable... just bump up stock voltage to 1.112V again and jack up the stock clock to 1GHz+. But at what price?

 

[Zargon]

You make it sound like AMD's going to release a magical driver update that will make everyone's 7970s run at 1 GHz. This isn't going to happen. Not without some potentially serious legal repercussions. Such an update would raise the TDP of the cards, and it could potentially kill a lot of hardware in cases that aren't designed to handle the extra heat. This would affect OEMs most notably.

LOL @ OEM computer manufacturers using 7970's

 

[Grooveriding]

While my experience could be resolution related, the 680 scales much better from higher memory clocks than core.

Overclocking the memory gave me nice gains in FPS, core not so much at all. Totally different from Fermi. Also the memory overclocks pretty well, while the core does not, but that is because you can't give it more voltage over stock I assume.

The best 680s hit 1300, most are about 1250. It's pure luck of the draw based on the core you get. If we could put more voltage through them it would be interesting, maybe it would kill the cards though, got to be a reason the 680/670 has such draconian controls over voltage.

 

[tviceman]

While my experience could be resolution related, the 680 scales much better from higher memory clocks than core.

Overclocking the memory gave me nice gains in FPS, core not so much at all. Totally different from Fermi. Also the memory overclocks pretty well, while the core does not, but that is because you can't give it more voltage over stock I assume.

The best 680s hit 1300, most are about 1250. It's pure luck of the draw based on the core you get. If we could put more voltage through them it would be interesting, maybe it would kill the cards though, got to be a reason the 680/670 has such draconian controls over voltage.

Have you got your 680's under water yet? What are your 24/7 base and memory clocks?

 

[exar333]

LOL @ OEM computer manufacturers using 7970's

Although not that common here (we are enthusiasts right?) many people buy Alienware Desktops or custom high-end boxes. These types of setups oftentimes are right at the limit of their PSUs, and 50-100w extra can make a big difference.

 

[Grooveriding]

Have you got your 680's under water yet? What are your 24/7 base and memory clocks?

They've been under water a while now The base boost clock is different on both of them, one boosts to 1084 and the other boosts to 1110.

With overclocks one can do 1235, the other does 1298. Both are stable with +450 to the memory, one can likely do higher than the other memory wise, but I never took the time to independently overclock the memory.

The issue for me is I get crashing and major stability issues havine each card overclocked to its own individual best clocks, so I have both overclocked to the lesser cards maximum; 1235core.

Water makes no difference for overclocking the cards. I had the same results on air with the difference being temperatures and noise. The cards were pretty quiet to begin with on the ref. air coolers though. Load temps on air would get to about 75-80C in BF3. On water they're generally 39-41C or so.

 

[tviceman]

41 degrees?? LOL! That is ridiculously low. You need to volt mod those suckers!

 

[Grooveriding]

41 degrees?? LOL! That is ridiculously low. You need to volt mod those suckers!

Believe me I have been tempted. There is a relatively 'easy' way to volt mod the 680 if you have a ROG motherboard. Rather than a bunch of wires being soldered, you just just attach one that plugs into a voltage outlet on the motherboard.

It's a very, very tiny location that you attach the wire to on the back of the 680 PCB though and my soldering experience is encompassed by replacing two giant caps on the PCB for my LG246 monitor when it stopped powering on. That was a serious hatchet job that only worked because the points to solder were giant.

I don't have much confidence in being able to attach a wire to the very small location you need to without shorting it to the surrounding pins and killing the card.

I think these cards would really fly on the core with a little more voltage. I think you may be right though in thinking that the gains may not be that huge because the memory could hold it back. The memory is basically at the wall with current OCs. 7000mhz is about as good as it gets.

 

[Silverforce11]

Water makes no difference for overclocking the cards. I had the same results on air with the difference being temperatures and noise.

Need a vcore mod!

 

[N4g4rok]

Going back to some of the comments made about the 7950, I got one of the XFX overclocked models just before the 680 came out. This one specifically.

Can i get any more out of it than what XFX clocked it at? I hadn't even considered Nvidia when i was looking for cards. I generally do just go by brands i've had success with.

If it's hit its wall with overclocking, i'll probably chalk it up as a loss for not waiting for a price drop, but if i can get more out of it, i'll go for it.

 

[tviceman]

Believe me I have been tempted. There is a relatively 'easy' way to volt mod the 680 if you have a ROG motherboard. Rather than a bunch of wires being soldered, you just just attach one that plugs into a voltage outlet on the motherboard.

It's a very, very tiny location that you attach the wire to on the back of the 680 PCB though and my soldering experience is encompassed by replacing two giant caps on the PCB for my LG246 monitor when it stopped powering on. That was a serious hatchet job that only worked because the points to solder were giant.

I don't have much confidence in being able to attach a wire to the very small location you need to without shorting it to the surrounding pins and killing the card.

I think these cards would really fly on the core with a little more voltage. I think you may be right though in thinking that the gains may not be that huge because the memory could hold it back. The memory is basically at the wall with current OCs. 7000mhz is about as good as it gets.

Yeah I keep saying if/when Nvidia decides to refresh & rebadge GK104 this winter or next year, they are going to have to go with 7ghz gddr ram and push their memory controllers as much as possible (to get to as close as possible to 7ghz on standard/reference GK114's) or they just won't be able to provide compelling speed bump from where it's at now.