Sapphire 7970GE Toxic Review

[lavaheadache]

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

Are you referring to yourself?

Blowing hot air over products you'll never own? I'm confused

 

[BallaTheFeared]

BTW, I reported your post

Of course you did, what else would a [caring member of the community] do?

Balla, I've had it up to here with your trolling. You clearly don't want to be here, so please enjoy this extra long vacation. Perhaps when you come back, you can act like an adult?
-ViRGE

 

[ViRGE]

As for the rest of you, I trust you guys can continue to discuss the Toxic review in a meaningful manner now that Balla cannot troll you? Otherwise I'm going to have to close this topic.

-ViRGE

 

[The_Golden_Man]

I think it will all come down to how much the Toxic card costs. If the Price is right, this card can probably have a chance at winning over some buyers.

 

[lavaheadache]

I would definately buy it if I didn't already have a Lightning. I'm always game for higher out of the box performance.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

I fear it will be very expensive due to 6GB Vram

 

[minitron]

They could have added 50% more VRAM, up to 4.5 Ghz, and I'm sure it would perform identically, consume less power, and cost less money.

Then again VRAM sells video cards.

 

[SirPauly]

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.

Did they clearly?

How objective was it not to discuss the mip-map limitation with the 58XX series, when many were offering the AF flower as superior quality of their filtering? How about the inclusion of transparency and SSAA for DirectX 10+? Flexibility with transparency? What about if someone likes Stereo 3d or GPU Physics? More performance? DirectX 11 leadership? Strong tessellation?

The key was the 5XXX series as a whole was compelling, had many strengths, strong performance/value but certainly did not offer clear leadership over Fermi --- as a whole, imho.

 

[lavaheadache]

I would take a Fermi over Cypress, However for 6 months at the time of Cypress release you didn't have any other choice

 

[Silverforce11]

In general this generation is the closest both companies have been with each other in terms of performance. It's very surprising given completely difference architectures and the evolution of such engineering from two different companies somehow manage to meet head on in outcome.

It's also the only generation in recent times where i seriously considered going back to NV. Sadly the reference gtx670 is going for well over ~$100 USD than the custom cooled 7950.

 

[AdamK47]

There would be an actual performance gap if Nvidia would simply release the consumer GK110. They've decided to sit on it though.

 

[Silverforce11]

There would be an actual performance gap if Nvidia would simply release the consumer GK110. They've decided to sit on it though.

Somehow i doubt very much NV is sitting on it instead of releasing this killer GPU if they... you know, could.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I didn't touch this topic because I knew what to expect. The ge cards don't surprise me and that's all I will say.

 

[guskline]

This is a very powerful "niche" gpu ideally suited for multi-monitor setups.

 

[piesquared]

It's an awesome card, and only gets better with updated drivers and modern games.

 

[thilanliyan]

Great performance...but too bad power consumption on Tahiti cards is not so great. I guess with all the extra compute stuff (which I am thankful for due to bitcoin mining) it was bound to happen.

 

[blackened23]

There would be an actual performance gap if Nvidia would simply release the consumer GK110. They've decided to sit on it though.

That isn't true, it isn't ready and won't be for a while. It just taped out in April or May? Which means, if its free of defects it takes 9 months to a year for a product to be released.

 

[RussianSensation]

Did anyone notice that in the review the 1200mhz setting was from the factory? It appears that's just BIOS turbo setting on the card using the Sapphire Button.

So the Toxic is essentially 1200mhz HD7970 GE out of the box before overclocking. With an overclock they got 1280mhz, which is very good. Very few 7970s can do that reliably on air (we are talking MSI Lightning). At 1280mhz, that would beat an air cooled 1300-1325mhz GTX670/680 card without voltage mods and 1400mhz GPU speed. It seems the GE cards may be binned a bit better but whether the premium for this card is justified is another story.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

Did anyone notice that in the review the 1200mhz setting was from the factory? It appears that's just BIOS 2 setting on the card using the Sapphire Button.

So the Toxic is essentially 1200mhz HD7970 GE out of the box before overclocking. With an overclock they got 1280mhz, which is very good. Very few 7970's can do that on air (we are talking MSI Lightning). At 1280mhz, that would beat an air cooled 1300-1325mhz GTX670/680 card without voltage mods and 1400mhz GPU speed. It seems the GE cards may be binned a bit better but whether the premium for this card is justified is another story.

Wow. Even I as a Nvidia fanboy have to admit this card looks impressive

 

[RussianSensation]

Wow. Even I as a Nvidia fanboy have to admit this card looks impressive

Too bad those performance gains over the 680 are not happening in BF3. I think BF3 and SKYRIM lured a lot of buyers towards GTX670/680 series.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

Too bad those performance gains over the 680 are not happening in BF3. I think BF3 and SKYRIM lured a lot of buyers towards GTX670/680 series.

Skyrim is a very poorly optimized game. It's CPU limited even by the best CPU's as a result.

Even if I run 2x GTX 670 SLI, 1920x1200 and 2600K@4.4GHz, it will dip below 60FPS in some areas when using everything maxed out. Way to fix it is to set shadows from Ultra to High. It has poor SLI support too.

 

[3DVagabond]

Too bad those performance gains over the 680 are not happening in BF3. I think BF3 and SKYRIM lured a lot of buyers towards GTX670/680 series.

Too bad they didn't test BF3. This is at 1050MHz and the 7970GE has made up the stagger. @ 1200MHz or 1280MHz the difference would likely be substantial.

Skyrim, I don't think would have made much difference. At least going by TPU's charts, where the game appears to be frame limited by something else besides the GPU.

I predicted someone would tell us that GK110 will be faster.

GK110 isn't ready yet. nVidia isn't sitting on it for some reason. Even if they weren't releasing it to us, they would be using it in the HPC arena instead of the dual GK104 piece.

 

[master_shake_]

i love how awesome Nvidia's newest dx11 cards are at dx 9/10 and how meh they are at dx 11 titles.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

AMD is topping the charts, in noise and power consumption.

I'm sure your cards are very power efficient and would be very quiet if they were air cooled.

 

[3DVagabond]

I'm sure your cards are very power efficient and would be very quiet if they were air cooled.

We need to wait for sites that do a better job of real world results to find out about the power usage and noise. 3DMark with the mic 2cm from the top of the fan and measuring power draw at the wall isn't the best way to do it. TechPowerUp will measure the noise at 1mtr while gaming. They will also measure min, max, max gaming, etc. power usage of the card itself. Then we'll have a better idea.

I'm pretty certain that the 7970GE @1200MHz will not sip power under load. I'd be real surprised though if the Dual-X cooler isn't actually quite quiet in real world usage.