[OpenGL guy]

Originally Posted by Alexko

Is the "white paste" what comes from the stock Sapphire model? That would be an unfortunate oversight by Sapphire.

Sample size of 1?

[Alexko]

Originally Posted by OpenGL guy

Sample size of 1?

Point taken. Still, I think this warrants further investigation, at the very least.

[no-X]

Originally Posted by Alexko

Is the "white paste" what comes from the stock Sapphire model? That would be an unfortunate oversight by Sapphire.

No, Sapphire 7970 with the white paste (probably cheapest silicon-based thermal grease) is more or less an example of a card, which was already tested by several sites and lent for one more review. It was disassembled many times, so the thermal compound isn't the original one. These "travelling" samples can result in pretty biased reviews.

It's also a hint for users, who are going to repalce the stock cooler, to use the best available thermal grease...

[Alexko]

Originally Posted by no-X

No, Sapphire 7970 with the white paste (probably cheapest silicon-based thermal grease) is more or less an example of a card, which was already tested by several sites and lent for one more review. It was disassembled many times, so the thermal compound isn't the original one. These "travelling" samples can result in pretty biased reviews.

It's also a hint for users, who are going to repalce the stock cooler, to use the best available thermal grease...

OK, thanks. Nothing to worry about, then.

[Andrew Lauritzen]

Originally Posted by fellix

Isn't that similar to how Frostbite 2.0 generally occludes the lit surfaces, with tiled screen-space and running a compute shader pass ahead?

Moved my reply here: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.p...4&postcount=19

[trinibwoy]

Is Jan 31 for the 7950 confirmed? Reviews tonight?

[Alexko]

I don't know, but there's already a pretty uninformative preview out ( http://en.expreview.com/2012/01/30/s...ced/20657.html ) so I'd say that's likely.

[AlphaWolf]

Newegg already has 10 models in stock, so I expect reviews soonish. (The Asus 3slot card is clocked at 900Mhz)

[thatdude90210]

Originally Posted by AlphaWolf

Newegg already has 10 models in stock, so I expect reviews soonish. (The Asus 3slot card is clocked at 900Mhz)

Bloody hell, that thing is a monster.

Priced a little high, $459 to 499 so far. I was hoping to see the single fan ones at $399 and the o/c versions at $450. I guess I'll wait a little longer for the competition to show up, and drive prices down a little. They all look to dump hot air back into the case too, not liking that trend.

[AlphaWolf]

I believe 1.5GB cards should come in at $399, assuming they intend to make them.

As for the clocking, I wouldn't be surprised if they are similar to 7970 in terms of OC, depending how stingy the AiB's are with the PCB.

[mczak]

Originally Posted by AlphaWolf

I believe 1.5GB cards should come in at $399, assuming they intend to make them.

I bet they will unless the competition is not turning up at all or really bad...
Sounds about right, 550$ for HD7970, 450$ for the 7950 and 400$ for the 1.5GB 7950 makes sense to me (not that I'd buy in that price range but compared to GTX 580 sounds like a good deal).

[mczak]

First "real" review I've found:
http://tbreak.com/tech/2012/01/amd-hd-7950-review/

Not very informative but with some OC scores. Just like with last gen Tahiti performance scaling with more shaders looks pretty pathetic (in games, something like 5% for 14% more shader units) - good for everyone trying to save some bucks for not going with the most high-end option .

[trinibwoy]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5476/a...on-7950-review
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphic...cs-Card-Review
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/g...950-crossfire/
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7950/
http://hothardware.com/News/AMD-Rade...11-GPU-Review/

[mboeller]

Originally Posted by trinibwoy

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5476/a...on-7950-review
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphic...cs-Card-Review
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/g...950-crossfire/
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7950/
http://hothardware.com/News/AMD-Rade...11-GPU-Review/

Computerbase has also tested the custom-design Powercolor PCS+. 10% overclocked but only whispering @ 38,5db under load (crysis2). one word: WOW!!

http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/g...sonstige_tests

[AlphaWolf]

It looks they have finally knocked off the 5450 as the performance per watt champion.

[CarstenS]

Given that AMD has pointed out massive driver improvements in their Jan-20-RC11-driver, you should be aware of reviews mixing-n-matching performance numbers with different driver revisions between 7970 and 7950.

All-fresh-benchies:
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,86...fikkarte/Test/

[trinibwoy]

Originally Posted by mczak

I bet they will unless the competition is not turning up at all or really bad...
Sounds about right, 550$ for HD7970, 450$ for the 7950 and 400$ for the 1.5GB 7950 makes sense to me (not that I'd buy in that price range but compared to GTX 580 sounds like a good deal).

AMD definitely has to think that current Kepler rumors are bunk if they feel comfortable pricing the 7950 for $449. That's a $50 discount for last years performance. They must be pretty confident that GK104 in April won't threaten Tahiti's perf/$.

[eastmen]

Originally Posted by trinibwoy

AMD definitely has to think that current Kepler rumors are bunk if they feel comfortable pricing the 7950 for $449. That's a $50 discount for last years performance. They must be pretty confident that GK104 in April won't threaten Tahiti's perf/$.

Its faster than a 3GB geforce gtx 580 in the majority of prices and till december that gtx 580 would have fetched around $600 bucks . $450 for last years $600 performance and 70w less at load its not bad at all.

Heck the gtx 580 3 gig is still going for $550

[jimbo75]

Originally Posted by trinibwoy

AMD definitely has to think that current Kepler rumors are bunk if they feel comfortable pricing the 7950 for $449. That's a $50 discount for last years performance. They must be pretty confident that GK104 in April won't threaten Tahiti's perf/$.

While possible - and it's something I had also assumed up till now - they can always point to the 580's price as proof that they were faster and cheaper at the time. Plus a 3-month gap isn't quite as damning as what happened with G200 and rv770 a week later.

[gamervivek]

TPU, hexus, and techreport got ~45% increase in core clocks with a small voltage increase. Very Very Impressive. Easily bests getting 890 on my 4850.(and the power and temp deltas are waaaay better)

Hexus puts in rightly:

Ay, caramba! The overclocked HD 7950 easily catapults a HD 7970 and matches the twin-GPU GeForce GTX 590. A 30 per cent jump in performance represents a whole new class of GPU, let alone an overclock on a cutting-edge model.

[fellix]

A design flaw in XFX's custom double-fan cooler for their 7900 boards could lead to overheating VRM: http://www.hardware.fr/focus/59/xfx-...rclocking.html

[Broken Hope]

Looks like I'll be waiting a little longer to upgrade my 5870, these cards are still around £50 too much, I know AMD want to make money and such, but surely if they had cheaper cards more people would buy them hence greater profit overall?

At the moment they seem to be pricing themselves just a tad too high and a lot of people are waiting on upgrading to see what Nvidia bring to the table, or waiting for the eventual price drops which I can see happening.

I've yet to see a single retailer in the UK sell out completely on the 7900 series, now this is either because yields are great and they have tons and tons of cards, or because prices are too high and they aren't selling as well as they could, I'm currently guessing it's the 2nd option.

Though wondering where the rest of the cards are going to fit into the lineup if the 7970 and 7980 are priced the way they are, that leaves the 7800 series being equal to or slightly better than the current 6970/6950 and yet being more expensive.

[RobertR1]

Originally Posted by CarstenS

Given that AMD has pointed out massive driver improvements in their Jan-20-RC11-driver, you should be aware of reviews mixing-n-matching performance numbers with different driver revisions between 7970 and 7950.

All-fresh-benchies:
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,86...fikkarte/Test/

For the 2 PC games that I play, BF3 and Skyrim, the 7900's just don't provide much of a benefit to upgrade over my GTX580 I was really hoping the drivers would show big boosts in those game.

Mainly BF3. Skyim is fine actually, esp with Skyboost or 1.4beta

[Kaotik]

Originally Posted by Broken Hope

Looks like I'll be waiting a little longer to upgrade my 5870, these cards are still around £50 too much, I know AMD want to make money and such, but surely if they had cheaper cards more people would buy them hence greater profit overall?

They seem to be selling out on regular basis atm, so no.
(Based on the fact that while most shops start to have some stock of some brand, the brand in stock keeps changing all the time since the last one in stock gets sold out quite quick

[mczak]

Originally Posted by CarstenS

Given that AMD has pointed out massive driver improvements in their Jan-20-RC11-driver, you should be aware of reviews mixing-n-matching performance numbers with different driver revisions between 7970 and 7950.

All-fresh-benchies:
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,86...fikkarte/Test/

That's true though I think for this time at least most sites got it, some even discussing performance improvements due to driver separately (anandtech, ht4u for instance).