Sapphire 7970GE Toxic Review

[Kippa]

Are then any benchmarks with the opencl luxmark? I'd be interested to see if having 6gb of ram made any difference in gpu processing with regards to rendering as opposed to the standard 3gb version.

 

[3DVagabond]

Performance there is crazy good, even though the game suite sucks like you mentioned. Its compared to overclocked 680s as well....

Why people aren't gobbling up 7950/70 and O/C'ing them themselves is beyond me. Especially the 7950 that will likely do +/- 90% of the performance of this card for ~$350 (or less) In all likelihood we're looking at $600 for this card when it's released.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Its using like 50-55 watts more than the 680 reference does per the chart at http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/48...tion_toxic_6gb_video_card_review/index17.html

Although I will say, the warning is heeded. I really truly care about power consumption when I have an overclocked processor and 2 GPUs with a 1200W PSU, that 10 cents saved per month will add up over the years. Seriously, who cares? Its a good showing and performs crazy good, even though I would never buy that card it looks nice. I would definitely consider it if I wanted to blow a paycheck on a 5x1 surround setup.

Since i'm a mere mortal without 6 screens i'm pretty darn happy with Kepler.

Which is the highest reference 680 we've ever seen, using 70 more watts than the overclocked phantom card. :thumbsup:


13db louder too, crazy difference there like a morning dove vs a high speed freight train.

AMD is destroying the charts when it comes to obnoxiously loud cards.

 

[Olikan]

13db louder too, crazy difference there like a morning dove vs a high speed freight train.

AMD is destroying the charts when it comes to obnoxiously loud cards.

meanwhile, the safire card is way cooler than the 680... just turn down the fan

anyways...we can allways watercool it, right? :whiste:

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Do the fans spin overly fast at stock? Seems like a design flaw, though I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. Speaking of cases, it's a special something to see a after market case heater perform so poorly, though to be fair to Sapphire they're trying to move over 250 watts. At least they can take something from this, the 680 Lightning is a card they can aspire to, cool and quite, fast, power efficient, a work of art.

Hotter cards use more power, it's already using as much as a first run leaky 480.

We? Ha, good one.

 

[piesquared]

As expected Tahiti wipes the floor with kepler, and that's with outdated games and 12.1 drivers. The meager power increase is insignificant considering the massive compute performance over the 680. Kepler gets completely slaughtered and beaten into submission (although they neglect to show the disparity in this review).

 

[BallaTheFeared]

It's too bad they lost in the most important game in the test suite.

If you can't win in Heaven, you can't win in sales.

As a consolation prize for 150+ more watts they were finally able to beat out that old sly dog the GTX 670, a mid range gpu that was cut down to make more versions. :awe:

 

[blackened23]

Nice, this is going to be one of THOSE threads again :thumbsup:

 

[chimaxi83]

He can't help himself, obviously. Even we, Nvidia video card owners, can INTELLIGENTLY discuss great AMD performance. I guess when you have GTX 470 SLI, the heat gets to your head

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Mid-range 28nm performance is not "great", it's mid-ranged.

I'd downgrade to a 680 but it would cost too much.

 

[HurleyBird]

If you can't win in Heaven, you can't win in sales.

Just stop posting. Please.

 

[chimaxi83]

Mid-range 28nm performance is not "great", it's mid-ranged.

I'd downgrade to a 680 but it would cost too much.

But it'll pay for itself with all the power you'd save, O Champion of Power Consumption.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

But it'll pay for itself with all the power you'd save, O Champion of Power Consumption.

It's too slow to be considered an option on it's own, if I was going to heavily downgrade I'd just go with a tablet.

 

[lavaheadache]

honestly, haven't we had enough of you bringing us all into the mud? There is really no need for the type of crap you bring into these forums. All I see is yet another Wreckage type poster. Every couple years another one you guys pops up and just drones the same thing over and over.

We get it already. You hate AMD, you think this gen sucks and tri sli 470's are the best thing ever. You really don't ever have to post in any one of these types of threads ever again since we get it.

 

[lavaheadache]

Mid-range 28nm performance is not "great", it's mid-ranged.

I'd downgrade to a 680 but it would cost too much.

It's funny that you think a 680 would be a down grade to you. Power consumption would be wayyyyy lower and since that is one of the 3 things you bash the 7970 for, it must be important to you.

You would have higher vram allowing for heavy mods in Skyrim and such.

I also imagine you would have smoother frame rates and probably higher minimums too.


Out of curiousity, what does a heavily overclocked 470 consume for watts?

 

[3DVagabond]

Don't feed the trolls, please. For everyone else, thanks for contributing to the thread.

I'd like to see Luxrender results as well. They've shown results on the original reference cards and GCN is pretty impressive. I'd like to know how it scales with clocks, scales with multi-card, does it use crossfire or just multiple cards, what difference, if any the amount or speed of memory makes, the speed and quality difference when compared to CPU rendering, etc...

Power usage is higher with Tahiti, We all know that. For those who are truly concerned with it there is hope, IMO. We've seen where AMD has said they learned from Pitcairn. Pitcairn is very efficient and is still pretty strong in compute. Sea Islands should be greatly improved, if that's the case. That said, if you are concerned with compute, Tahiti is actually quite efficient compared to Kepler with up to 4x the performance with ~20% more power usage. Besides, I can't imagine that very many gamers who buy these cards are too concerned about an extra ~50 watts, more or less.

To compare it with GF100, which I've seen a few people do, remember the gtx-480 used almost 2x the power of the 5870 and the 5870 still was reasonable at compute. It was beaten by the Fermi architecture, but not by the same levels that Tahiti beats Kepler. GK110 might change all of that, but I'm pretty confident it won't be as efficient a gaming card as GK104.

In the mean time, the improvement in performance from the original numbers back in December to now is pretty impressive. I don't recall a new architecture maturing this much in 7 months before. (Although, I'm sure one of you "old timers" around here will point out where I'm wrong, if there was. )

 

[chimaxi83]

It's too slow to be considered an option on it's own, if I was going to heavily downgrade I'd just go with a tablet.

You're beyond clueless dude. Lost cause, but good job derailing and thread crapping. Par for the Balla course.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

It's funny that you think a 680 would be a down grade to you. Power consumption would be wayyyyy lower and since that is one of the 3 things you bash the 7970 for, it must be important to you.

You would have higher vram allowing for heavy mods in Skyrim and such.

I also imagine you would have smoother frame rates and probably higher minimums too.


Out of curiousity, what does a heavily overclocked 470 consume for watts?

Performance would be halved though, I can't really justify losing half my frame-rates, not when overall it will cost me considerably more to own just one.

I haven't played Skyrim since I beat it a month after it released, I ran a few good mobs in triple and a ton at 1080p, but that ship has sailed and I've moved on to other games. Perhaps in another 3-6 years this will be a valid point.

You'd be imagining wrong though, don't confuse SLI with CF.

Well I ran two 470s at 950 core with an i5-2500k at 5.2GHz for a very long time on a 840 rail. Assuming the i5 was pulling around 300, that leaves around 540 watts for the two 470s to play with, so around 270 watts each?


Nobody wants to hear the Fermi type logic against the 7970, which isn't surprising when you hear your own logic spoken back to you used on a product you support it starts making less sense.

So let's instead talk about what purpose this card serves, it's a card for multi gpu, multi screen setups. Has AMD ever figured out their MS woes with 7 series? Not the last time I checked, so what purpose does this hardware serve when the the story behind AMD has been and seemingly always will be good hardware with poor software support?

It's a brave world out there, I'm just not sure the people praising it actually are the people who would even consider the card in question in the first place.

Edit: How many people in this thread are 3+ card users with 3+ screens? That's what this cards intended audience is.

Not counting me of course

 

[AnandThenMan]

Balla craps all over a thread again, fantastic.

 

[3DVagabond]

Balla craps all over a thread again, fantastic.

Balla is on my ignore list. So, unless someone quotes him, I don't have to put up with the rhetoric. Rather than be annoyed by the dribble, others should try it. It takes a bit of getting used to, but once you have, it works real well.

This is what happens when AMD has the fastest GPU. All the side distractions come out. It doesn't change the fact that Tahiti is now faster. Next comes the, "GK104 is a a midrange chip. GK110 will kill it."

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Balla craps all over a thread again, fantastic.

How many people in this thread are 3+ card users with 3+ screens? That's what this cards intended audience is.

Not counting me of course

Just another person blowing hot air over a product they'll never own.

 

[Rezist]

I don't think anyone who bought a GTX 4xx series (not including 460's) cards could ever look at AMD fairly, I mean AMD with 5xxx cards clearly took that round. Of course GTX 5xx changed it.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I don't think anyone who bought a GTX 4xx series (not including 460's) cards could ever look at AMD fairly, I mean AMD with 5xxx cards clearly took that round. Of course GTX 5xx changed it.

I bought my card in November of 2010 for $180 on Newegg, a 5870 in November of 2010 was $340.

At the time the 470 was going for ~$245 and was competing directly with the 6850.

The 6850 is slightly slower at stock, and the 5870 is easily thwarted by the overclocking performance of the 470 and tessellation.

The 470 wasn't the best card, nor was it perfect or without flaws. However on a site like Anand where blanket statements and pay to win logic are commonplace, there is no room for actual discussions of pros/cons.

Only fan base arguing, people crying and calling others fanboys because instead of pawning over a company they point out anomalies in the matrix.

If you haven't noticed I poke at both the 680 and the 7970, however the biggest outcry and qq fest by far results in my pointing out the obvious problems with the 7970. 680 isn't much better or better really, just an awful generation and it's sad to see how pathetic this forum really is when people can find ways to praise getting bent over by large corporations feeding them garbage generational performance increases with huge power consumption numbers due to retardly high clock speeds instead of designing better cards with more cores and less clock speed (which would cost more).

It's more like a cheerleader competition around here than it is a tech site.

 

[chimaxi83]

It's more like a cheerleader competition around here than it is a tech site.

Your pom poms are clearly the fluffiest.

If only you discussed the topic without the sarcasm, bashing, crapping and derailing, and pretending to care about power consumption. Its literally ALL you do here, and you only do it to web fight. Pathetic. You must enjoy those vacations bro :thumbsup:

 

[lavaheadache]

I bought my card in November of 2010 for $180 on Newegg, a 5870 in November of 2010 was $340.

At the time the 470 was going for ~$245 and was competing directly with the 6850.

The 6850 is slightly slower at stock, and the 5870 is easily thwarted by the overclocking performance of the 470 and tessellation.

The 470 wasn't the best card, nor was it perfect or without flaws. However on a site like Anand where blanket statements and pay to win logic are commonplace, there is no room for actual discussions of pros/cons.

Only fan base arguing, people crying and calling others fanboys because instead of pawning over a company they point out anomalies in the matrix.

If you haven't noticed I poke at both the 680 and the 7970, however the biggest outcry and qq fest by far results in my pointing out the obvious problems with the 7970. 680 isn't much better or better really, just an awful generation and it's sad to see how pathetic this forum really is when people can find ways to praise getting bent over by large corporations feeding them garbage generational performance increases with huge power consumption numbers due to retardly high clock speeds instead of designing better cards with more cores and less clock speed (which would cost more).

It's more like a cheerleader competition around here than it is a tech site.

Since in this particular post you bash our community as a whole I think you should find your way out and leave us and our pathetic forum be.

**edit**

BTW, I reported your post as it seems that you think very poorly of us people in here and maybe your better off elsewhere