AMD Radeon HD 7900 Reviews

Great stuff! I was suprised by the thermal images - I was expecting at least some of the designs to be pushing out hot air to the back, which would result in higher second HD temps, but none of designs show such results. So I guess the hot air is being released towards the side panel after all?

 

they really need to do something about the backside of these cars. They look burning hot !

 

60 degrees "burning hot" ?

lol. I dare you to touch your PWM heatsinks on your MB during OCCT/Prime burn-in tests

Then come back to me about "burning hot"

 

It looks like over 80 in that review though.

 

Looks like the initial buzz was right, the Sapphire 7950 OC is the 7950 to get, in terms of cool and quiet. I ordered one from Amazon last night. I wasn't sure I was going to upgrade this cycle, but Mass effect 3 in Eyefinity pushed me over the top. I want to finish Shepard's story in all its glory.

 

Did any site do separate core only / memory only overclocking benchmarks on either 7970 or 7950?

 

Has any site benched AMD's Leo demo on HD7970 and HD7870?

Just curious if that will show the "ALU advantage" of Tahiti, since Leo is "ALU centric".

 

MSI HD7970 Lightning - http://vr-zone.com/articles/msi-r7970-lightning-review/15270-1.html

What is really interesting here is the performance of all the 7900s with 8.960 betas compared to the gtx580 ... looks like some wild amd performance driver...

etc..

 

Not really, just 12.2 or 12.3 preview used for most Lightning reviews.

 

Nah, it's 8.950.5 at http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/03/20/msi_r7970_lightning_video_card_review/2 and unspecified "AMD Catalyst "March 2012" with Latest CAP" at http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...-card-review-test-system-and-methodology.html
But the performance in those vr-zone tests (it's not just bf3) are a lot better than the others.
Unless something is wrong there it smells of a "welcome to kepler" driver.

 

Reminds me of the THG leaks yesterday:
http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-rad...ocking-benchmarks-and-conclusion/14308-4.html

One card going up, the other one conveniently going down.

 

Perhaps you should've read the entire review or at least the system specs...

MSI GTX580 Lightning extreme used in 7970 launch review: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127589
Core Clock: 832MHz
Effective Memory Clock: 4200MHz


ASUS GTX580 Direct CU II used in MSI 7970 Lightning review: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121429
Core Clock: 782MHz
Effective Memory Clock: 4008MHz

 

Newegg now has HD 7970s $10 (Sapphire) and $20 (HIS) below MSRP. Are we going to see more price movement?

Still no GTX 680 in stock at the moment, although I suppose they might be appearing and selling-out before I can notice them.

 

If the 680s are appearing and selling their auto notify sucks or the quantity that is coming in is very small.

 

MSI 7970 Lightning review. Sturdy build quality and great temp and noise characteristics, but Max OC wasn't that great at least on their sample, still if I was buying a 7970 this would be a good candidate.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/msi-radeon-hd-7970-lightning-review

 

ZeroCore doesn't seem to work with Eyefinity, and idle power ends up 30W over the GTX 680's for the HD 7970: http://techreport.com/articles.x/22890/9

That's pretty bad.

 

And 680 burns through 50 watts with 3 displays attached all by itself already.

 

Apparently the display used by Scott enumerates DP audio. ZeroCore will not enable if audio is enabled as this can still need to be on even if the display is blank.

 

Can DP Audio be disabled in Windows and ZeroCore then enable if you don't want the audio?

 

And what about normal idle power? I.e. with displays on. The review shows a 36W advantage for the GTX 680 in this case.