[gongo]

Convince me....
Got some spare cash...some spare time...price drop finally...
Currently on 6950 unlocked to 6970..overclocked to 900/1375....on 24" 1200p display..playing BF3 mp...some slowdowns in big set pieces....pretty much the gaming i do these days....until Company of Heroes 2! *finally* ^_^ v

What am i missing from GCN...overclocking to 1Ghz...and zerocore power saving...? Next gen consoles minimal specs is rumored to be Tahiti levels...mobile Tahiti levels imho...

Should i wait for GCN 2.0....aka Sea islands in about 6 months time? What u-arch improvement will it bring..? 5870 -> 6970 was not a big leap..well with tessellation it helps.. will GCN 2.0 brings more shaders without breaching AMD small die strat. on the same 22nm process? will AMD finally decide on more than 2 tris per clock...? Will it fall back to 256bit bandwidth...but 4GB..?

[gongo]

Mr Dave...sell me....sell the B3D readers and lurkers on the HD7970 reborn....

BTW guys...what quirks are present in 7970....when i went from 4870 to 6970..AMD lowered the idle clocks...fixed the screen flashing GDDR5 problem...made the fan noise tolerable...has a solid back plate....i consider 6970 a very nice piece of engineered hardware...

[Babel-17]

HD 7950 owner here, only quirk I noticed coming from a HD 6870 was that playing videos requires a somewhat surprising amount of effort from the gpu (MPC Home Cinema with hardware acceleration). Even my voltages go up to the 3d level.

On the other hand I can just play downloaded videos with The VLC player and neither the cpu or gpu barely notice the hit.

Only rumor I remember about the 8xxx series was that it would maybe have a 20% improvement in performance. I suppose yields and power consumption would get some loving.

I'd say wait a few more weeks, maybe some 7950's with massive stock overclocks will become available or some redesigned 7970's will hit the shelves.

Btw, running that HD 7950, a HIS iceq (not the turbo), in a Dell XPS 8300. Nice job from both nVidia and AMD making available powerful cards that work with non-elite power supplies.

[Grall]

I personally would wait, amass more money for the (undoubtedly more expensive) upcoming, next generation of GPUs. This one's maybe not getting long in the tooth exactly, but it's not new and exciting either, and the 7xxx series is a bit meh performance-wise compared to 6xxx, except for GPGPU stuff which most of us don't use much.

8xxx - and whatever NV will bring out to match - will hopefully be a bit more exciting.

[karlotta]

I went from a 6970 to a 7970 and was able to increase my Resolution, AA , AND get 20+ more FPS.Also went with a 3rd party cooler (MSI lightning) so its much quieter. No Meh at all.

[swaaye]

I have a 6950 too and I'm definitely not getting in on this generation. I don't see the need for more speed at all. I'll wait until I see what the new consoles do to game complexity.

[gongo]

Originally Posted by karlotta

I went from a 6970 to a 7970 and was able to increase my Resolution, AA , AND get 20+ more FPS.Also went with a 3rd party cooler (MSI lightning) so its much quieter. No Meh at all.

This!
Some how the combination of...ghz overclocking and newest drivers...7970 reviews shows a perf drive up from >35% faster on average to >50% over 6970...pretty swell!

But what is holding me back..is the perf. at 2560x1600p...it hovers around 40fps on average....im expecting to move to 30" 1600p display in the next quarter...Need a hint at where 8970 will stand for QHD gaming.....?

Has AMD hit the limit of 22nm..? Will we see more raw shader power to drive 1600p games at 60fps....or GCN 2.0 will be a more price friendly lineup....however with the big Kepler looming...who thinks we are in for a treat with 22nm part deux? A mix of price and performance...the battle of HD4000 vs GTX200 again?

[eastmen]

I havea 6950@6970 speeds. I was going to go 7970 but looking at the slate of games i'm purchasing this year... X-Com ... I don't think there is a need so I'm going to hold off till the 8x00 series. The next game i think I'd want better performance with is bioshock and thats in febuary/march . By then we should have a clearer picture of the next generation of cards .

[no-X]

Originally Posted by gongo

Has AMD hit the limit of 22nm..? Will we see more raw shader power to drive 1600p games at 60fps....or GCN 2.0 will be a more price friendly lineup....

Do you mean 28 nm? Anyway, I think the essential question is whether HD8k will bring some architectural changes (e.g. FPS/SP efficiency improvement) or the only difference will be more CUs + some minor HW changes / new software features.

They can easily update the product line by adding 20-25 % CUs (10 -> 12 for updated Cape Verde, 20 -> 24 for updated Pitcairn and 32 -> 40 for updated Tahiti) and raise clocks by 10 %. There's also a lot of space for faster GDDR5 - Cape Verde uses 4,8 Gbps and Pitcairn 5,0 Gbps. They could switch to 5,5 or 6,0. I expect such "new Pitcairn" would measure around 230 mm² and perform comparably to GTX 670.

I think that the configuration depends on whether HD8k will be their last 28nm product of if there should remain some space for 28nm HD9k.

[Malo]

Will your current CPU be an issue at all? I'd hope you wouldn't get a 7970 only to find it's starved by the performance of the rest of your system?

[swaaye]

Originally Posted by gongo

This!
Some how the combination of...ghz overclocking and newest drivers...7970 reviews shows a perf drive up from >35% faster on average to >50% over 6970...pretty swell!

I upgraded from a 8800GTX to the 6950. That is more of the kind of upgrade I go for. Crysis runs 3-4x faster (Ultra and 1920x1080), and that was even with my Q6600 @ 3.0 at the time.

Another thing I am thinking about these days is AMD's future. That is one troubled company. Plus I have not been impressed by some of their major driver debacles in the last 12 months.

[Grall]

Originally Posted by Malo

Will your current CPU be an issue at all?

With almost all flatpanels capped at 60fps the CPU is almost never an issue really, unless when it comes to intentionally unoptimized games like early versions of Skyrim, etc.

[gongo]

Originally Posted by Malo

Will your current CPU be an issue at all? I'd hope you wouldn't get a 7970 only to find it's starved by the performance of the rest of your system?

Im currently at 4Ghz i7...first gen though..not a problem i would think...seen the 3DMark11 scores of GF660Ti..dats one fast budget gpu...AMD has to cut more! Yippee!

[Alexko]

The GHz Edition has just popped up on Newegg, $50 cheaper than anticipated, so both faster and cheaper than the GTX 680: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...CE&PageSize=20

Not bad.

[green.pixel]

Wait until 660 Ti hits and then decide.

[Davros]

why? I don't think a 660 will match a 7970 if a 680 is slightly slower

[swaaye]

Wait until HD8000 and then decide. Sometimes exciting things happen with the second generation of a manufacturing process, especially when it's also the second generation of a new architecture.

[eastmen]

Originally Posted by swaaye

Wait until HD8000 and then decide. Sometimes exciting things happen with the second generation of a manufacturing process, especially when it's also the second generation of a new architecture.

that was my plan. Hopefully the hd8000 launches around bioshock infinites release

[rpg.314]

Originally Posted by gongo

What am i missing from GCN...overclocking to 1Ghz...and zerocore power saving...? Next gen consoles minimal specs is rumored to be Tahiti levels...mobile Tahiti levels imho...

You have been listeining to the wrong rumors.

[green.pixel]

Originally Posted by Davros

why? I don't think a 660 will match a 7970 if a 680 is slightly slower

AMD's driver problems mainly. If someone's buying now, anything above 670 is a waste of money for little perfomance gain.

[lanek]

Originally Posted by gongo

This!
Some how the combination of...ghz overclocking and newest drivers...7970 reviews shows a perf drive up from >35% faster on average to >50% over 6970...pretty swell!

But what is holding me back..is the perf. at 2560x1600p...it hovers around 40fps on average....im expecting to move to 30" 1600p display in the next quarter...Need a hint at where 8970 will stand for QHD gaming.....?

Has AMD hit the limit of 22nm..? Will we see more raw shader power to drive 1600p games at 60fps....or GCN 2.0 will be a more price friendly lineup....however with the big Kepler looming...who thinks we are in for a treat with 22nm part deux? A mix of price and performance...the battle of HD4000 vs GTX200 again?

For 2560x1600, this completely depend the game and settings used. Ofc if you use DOF and MSAA instead of AAA on Metro2033, you can forget to push 60fps at this resolution on a single card. It depend too ofc of where it is tested .. Skyrim or Dirt3, will not be a problem. at all:

(just for give an example ).







But for be safe, a big OC or CFX and SLI are really needed at this res.

There's many ways reviews are done, some use the same settings at all resolution. some adapt a little bit the settings ( use 4xMSAA at 2560x1600, and 8x at 1920x1080 ).

Originally Posted by green.pixel

AMD's driver problems mainly. If someone's buying now, anything above 670 is a waste of money for little perfomance gain.

Actually for be honest, the GTX6xx series drivers are not as good so far, not totally bad too, but i see many complain of bugs, crash, performance problems, clockspeed problem, flickering, corrupt on BF3, problem of gpu acceleration on different media encoder, problem with 3 monitors ( with surround or not, red screen, flickering ) etc etc ( we can hope they will be fixed overtime. )