nVidia: "We expected more from the 7970"

[MrTeal]

Here's another bench, 470s in SLI @ 900 core, nothing crazy...

A 50% OC isn't anything crazy? Maybe with a full coverage block, but I'd love you see you toss the stock coolers back on and hit 900MHz in SLI.

I'd be surprised if the 7970 doesn't drop in price once Kepler is fully launched, but as it stands now it's the fastest single GPU out there. Comparing the price of a new card a couple weeks after launch and saying it's a crap value because you were able to buy two 470s used or heavily discounted for less money and they can be OC'd to beat the 7970 is useless because
1) You can't get the 470 new through most retailers.
2) If you could, you couldn't just go get it at the price you paid.
3) Even if you did, you'd need a dozen horseshoes up your rear to get two of them to 900MHz.
4) You're still consuming considerably more power than a single 7970.

The closest you could come now to your setup would be to buy the 560-448, and two of those would cost the same as a 7970. They would be faster in games where scaling is good, but they'd be hotter, louder, draw more power and you'd still have to deal with a multi-GPU setup. That might not matter to you, but it would to most people.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

850 in sli with the stock coolers, but blower coolers like the 470 reference and 7970 are awful. I'm not sure how people really deal with them.

I'm not advocating anyone buy 470s, far from it. That ship sailed awhile ago when they were below $200 often to be found for $150.

Power draw won't become a factor unless I keep these cards over a decade, at least not to make up for the price difference.

There are always better values out there than the top cards, that goes without saying. The point was more to the fact that the 7970 hasn't blown anything away, it's still close to the 580 in performance, and easily eclipsed @ 1300 core by 470s.

So to the point of this thread, Nvidia was expecting to have to beat something much faster than what AMD delivered. I'm not the only one who is unimpressed by the performance of the 7970 and disgusted by it's value for a 28nm next gen product.

It is what it is though, but unless Nvidia falls flat on their face this is a $300 or less card in a few short months.

 

[JTsyo]

A lot can change in 2 months. When Kepler releases, AMD will probably have something else to release at that point.

 

[thilanliyan]

850 in sli with the stock coolers, but blower coolers like the 470 reference and 7970 are awful. I'm not sure how people really deal with them.

Doesn't that pic show the GPU clocks at 950MHz, not 850MHz? Am I missing something?

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Here is a on air 900 core run, wasn't in SLI but there was a 9800GT sitting on top of it.

You have to remember I never spent money on a case, so I don't have to worry about air flow like so many had problems with when the 4 series first came out.

 

[96Firebird]

A lot can change in 2 months. When Kepler releases, AMD will probably have something else to release at that point.

I keep hearing people say this, but how many actually believe it? It didn't happen in the last two generations, and I'm not sure if it happened before that (I didn't really pay attention then). What are the odds of it happening this time?

 

[thilanliyan]

Here is a on air 900 core run, wasn't in SLI but there was a 9800GT sitting on top of it.

So what's up with the pic above that one?

You said 850MHz on AIR...is it 850MHz or 950MHz like the pic shows? You can actually do 950MHz? And on AIR?

 

[BallaTheFeared]

No the most I ever did on air was like 915, but not in SLI, I never had both cards on air at the same time. Only had one on air and one on water at the same time, now both are on water.

950 on air in SLI would be something else lol.

 

[thilanliyan]

No the most I ever did on air was like 915, but not in SLI, I never had both cards on air at the same time. Only had one on air and one on water at the same time, now both are on water.

950 on air in SLI would be something else lol.

You still haven't answered my original question. In the post you said 850MHz but your pic shows 950MHz. Is the pic wrong? Your post wrong?

 

[BallaTheFeared]

No my post was directed at 900 not being crazy, since there is more to be had. 950 is getting pretty crazy thou. 970 is my limit, the lights flicker

Edit: This is the best I can do with SLI on air as far as proof goes I think, 9800GT sits below the 470 which is on air, it doesn't block the fan as much as another 470 would, it only covers about half of it.

@stock (notice gpu3 (9800GT) 64C max temps in Vantage

@800 core (9800GT still there) 73C max temps in Vantage

 

[thilanliyan]

No my post was directed at 900 not being crazy, since there is more to be had. 950 is getting pretty crazy thou. 970 is my limit, the lights flicker

I never asked WHY you posted. I'm asking about WHAT you posted there. You STILL didn't answer the question...so it seems like you don't WANT to answer my question. It isn't a difficult question. Want to give it another shot at answering?

 

[Vesku]

Well, BallaTheFeared, I wouldn't consider your card scenario "average" in any way. I know if I threw 2 GTX 470s into my case I'd probably be lucky they didn't overheat trying for 800-850 core.

Also, $300 GTX 580 equivalent on 28nm. Get to it NVIDIA, I want this on my desk by Monday.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I never asked WHY you posted. I'm asking about WHAT you posted there. You STILL didn't answer the question...so it seems like you don't WANT to answer my question. It isn't a difficult question. Want to give it another shot at answering?

Are you asking if it was on water? If so the answer is yes, if not I'm not sure what you're asking

Well, BallaTheFeared, I wouldn't consider your card scenario "average" in any way. I know if I threw 2 GTX 470s into my case I'd probably be lucky they didn't overheat trying for 800-850 core.

Also, $300 GTX 580 equivalent on 28nm. Get to it NVIDIA, I want this on my desk by Monday.

Try it without a case

 

[Vesku]

Try it without a case

Wish I could, sadly I'd expect it to have an accident in short order (clutter, pet dog etc).

 

[thilanliyan]

Are you asking if it was on water? If so the answer is yes, if not I'm not sure what you're asking

Let's try again then.
YOU posted: "850 in sli with the stock coolers" and then showed a pic with the GPU clocks at 950MHz.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=32910132&postcount=227

There's a discrepancy there...I am wondering WHY there is a discrepancy there between the text in your post and the pic in your post. Can you clarify?

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I just told you, so let me try again.

The picture wasn't meant for you.

It was meant for MrTeal who said 900 core was crazy, which is why 950 was shown since it's quite a bit crazier at that level than 900 thus 900 not so crazy.

Perhaps I should have put the picture before saying that, to avoid confusion, but no 950 core in SLI on reference air with 470's is something I can't imagine would be possible unless you were playing outside in the winter.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

Almost everyone expected more from 7970 so that is not really surprising. If they set the clocks higher the cards would look a lot better, wonder why they didn't do that, obviously the headroom is there.

They clocked them high enough so that they could beat the GTX 580 by a decent margin. Later when Nvidia releases their next gen card AMD will come out with a card with higher clocks, something like a 7980, to counter it.

 

[thilanliyan]

I just told you, so let me try again.

The picture wasn't meant for you.

It was meant for MrTeal who said 900 core was crazy, which is why 950 was shown since it's quite a bit crazier at that level than 900 thus 900 not so crazy.

Perhaps I should have put the picture before saying that, to avoid confusion, but no 950 core in SLI on reference air with 470's was something I can't imagine would be possible unless you were playing outside in the winter.

Okay now I see, yes the pic there makes it look like you were SHOWING the "850 in SLI" that you stated.

I find it hard to believe that 900MHz for a 470 is common and I don't think it is, even on water. Even 850MHz is nothing to scoff at.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Dude, that would really suck. Intel will not make high performance graphics like AMD/nvidia, so we're stuck with intel for high performance CPU's.

What about the GPU? Intel has no reason to push for high performance GPU's. If iGPU's take over and put amd/nvidia out of business, we're screwed. We're already seeing that sandy bridge is
stealing SUBSTANTIAL revenue from both companies! It really does suck for enthusiasts like us - amd and nvidia will not be able to sell mid range or low end discrete cards. That may well put
both out of business, or force them to seek profits in other ways.

Again, it sucks.

Actually the state of PC gaming would drastically improve if Intel took over with iGPU's. Console gaming would be effectively finished if Intel's iGPU's took over. Every processor release from Intel would be a new console generation.

Game developers would have 1 platform to code games for if everyone was using the same intel processor/iGPU. Highly optimizing games for a single processor/iGPU would basically remove all the silly driver issues we deal with these days, and allow for unified gaming ecosystem.

I can see this happening for sure someday.

 

[bryanW1995]

Probably close to it, once the high end parts are out.

Nvidia have been known to shoot for 2x the speed in flagship cards after a die shrink and architecture redesign in the past, so it wouldn't be a very big stretch to see 2x the 580 hitting later in the year, especially if they maintain large GPU sizes of late. Something of that magnitude would comfortably beat the 7970.

AMD have held back with their clocks on the 7970 you can tell, most of them overclock a huge amount even on the stock cooler without issue so they're holding out, almost certainly to counter Nvidias release with a refresh of the series.

Thing is, if I was an AMD customer I'd be pretty irritated knowing i'd bought the highest end part and it was really being held back to just give AMD a stab at a 2nd win later in the year, while you can mod the card and OC it to see those gains that's kinda besides the point.

They can "shoot for" whatever they want, that doesn't mean it will happen. They also wanted fermi to be "2x" the performance of gtx 285, but even now with tons of driver improvements/refinements/newer games/etc coming out it still isn't there. And at launch it was closer to 40% faster than gtx 285, much like 7970 is 40% faster than 6970. I think that the issues that have cropped up over the past couple of die shrinks simply aren't going away. Now that we are getting into extremely small nodes with gpus, it is going to become ever-harder to continue eeking out that last ounce of performance, and on the manufacturing side there's nobody other than intel with the $$$/fabs/manpower to keep it rolling the way it has in the past. I think that we're more apt to see 40-60% improvements going forward for both NV and AMD die shrinks rather than the 60-90% that we were able to get at many times in the past.

 

[bryanW1995]

It doesn't get the same love because

1) It's a flagship product
2) It costs way more than the 460
3) Overclocking should NEVER be taken into account

For $550, I want AMD to release the card at 1125 MHz. I want warranted performance out of the box, not luck of the draw. And those of you that are thinking they held the card back so they could have a refresh ready... this is utter bullshit. No company operates like that. If the 7970 could perform all of it's tasks at 1125 MHz, pass QA, and last for the warranted period, it would have been released as such.

Unless you're Anandtech , in which case it's ok to use an overclocked gtx 460 for a comparison test, right? Let's face it, many users do overclock their products, whether it's gpus, cpus, iphones, ti-35 plus calculators, etc, so why wouldn't you take excellent overclocking performance into account when making a pricing and/or purchasing decision?

 

[tviceman]

Anandtech's own Ryan Smith wrote a great analysis of the situation: http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=31520674&postcount=28 . It's great to see what kind of performance multi-threading rendering in the drivers can lend, but it's pointless to use as a comparison until both companies are on the same page. If you're a Civ 5 buff, then it's good to see the tests regardless, but if you're designing a limited benchmarking suite, there are better games out there. It's just weak if you're going to use any form of scientific process to analyze the cards.

I've read that before, and I read over it again just now. Some of the last few sentences summarizes the article perfectly:

So in conclusion, the reason NVIDIA beats AMD in Civ V is that NVIDIA currently offers full support for multi-threaded rendering/deferred contexts/command lists, while AMD does not. Civ V uses massive amounts of objects and complex terrain, and because it's multi-threaded rendering capable the introduction of multi-threaded rendering support in NVIDIA's drivers means that NVIDIA's GPUs can now rip through the game. This is the true power of DX11. When properly implemented in both drivers and games, DX11's multi-threaded rendering capabilities are going to allow developers to push a lot more stuff out to the GPU without immediately bottlenecking the CPU.

Nvidia was able to integrate multi-threaded rendering into their drivers, substantially improving the performance of the game. You said exactly that "it has been proven that Nvidia coded Civ V to run better on it's GPU," whereas that isn't really the case, is it? It has never been documented or discussed that Civilization V itself was coded to run specifically better on Nvidia's hardware. Nvidia improved their drivers by incorporating a DX11 feature that AMD's hardware should also be capable of doing.

So do you still think it is unfair to show benchmarks of Civilization 5 when comparing Nvidia and AMD hardware because Nvidia's driver team has enabled a DX11 feature that is and should be available on ALL DX11 hardware? Or do you still think that there are very specific enhancements within Civilization 5 itself that takes advantage of Nvidia hardware and excludes AMD hardware?

 

[bryanW1995]

Let's not go OT, but thankfully I do have water.

31C load @ 900 core, silly silly water coolers

But, um, couldn't you just put a 7970 under water and also get that same 57% overclock? Any dx11 high end gpu with a 57% overclock in sli/xfire is going to trounce a stock 7970.

 

[bryanW1995]

For $550 I expect it.

This is key, and this is also where much/most of the 7970 criticism has come from. Price it at $369 and it's viewed as god's gift to gpus, price it at $469 and it's probably around a fair value, but at its current price it's just not considered that strong of a value compared with prices for slightly slower cards. In the distant past, there was a huge premium for the top performing gpu, but nowadays with much better xfire/sli/sandwich card performance and scaling it's much harder to command the huge premium for cards like 7970. Of course, they're selling all that they can make right now, and at some point Nvidia will come out with something better, so you can make the arguement that AMD has actually priced it too LOW.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

But, um, couldn't you just put a 7970 under water and also get that same 57% overclock? Any dx11 high end gpu with a 57% overclock in sli/xfire is going to trounce a stock 7970.

Most 7970's that I've seen on water hit 1300 core, which is a 41% overclock, I actually compared my cards to those results a few times. LP2 is against a 1300 core 7970, and Shogun 2 still shows 470s being 23% faster (assumed since that user didn't want to share all their settings, mine were maxed).

No question the 7970 is a nice card, but the setup you're talking about with a full cover block is going to run you at least $675 for the card and block alone.