hurleybird
Newcomer
AMD: Southern Islands (7*** series) Speculation/ Rumour Thread
- Thread starter UniversalTruth
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I've read that AMD will release 7970Ghz Edition as well as reference cards. Is this true? If so, when will it hit shelves?
Did they give out the cards with the highest turbo clk? Seems kinda shady
Honestly, would that surprise you?
HardWare.fr has a review of the GTX 690 here and, interestingly, the HD 7970 is now faster than the GTX 680.
Damien says that's because:
- He's now using a retail GTX 680 instead of a press sample,
- AMD has finally fixed their MSAA problem in Batman Arkham City,
- NVIDIA has a problem with Total War Shogun 2,
- Because it's a review for a dual-GPU card, he's used very high settings, with which the GTX 680 has trouble (memory bandwidth & capacity constraints).
So going by HFR's results, the GTX 680 used to be faster and cheaper, now the HD 7970 is faster and cheaper. Gotta love competition.
This is all well and good, but the question is "Why the hell isn't AMD calling them out on it?".
Good question...
THGs 768SPs Pitcairn ES shows some serious per GFLOPs performance: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/768-shader-pitcairn-review,3196.html
... up to ~40% faster than HD 7770 with only 3% more texturing- and computing-performance.
1.5GiB 4.8Gbps @192-Bit could be the perfect back-end for 768SPs, if AMD would be able to do this memory confguration.
... up to ~40% faster than HD 7770 with only 3% more texturing- and computing-performance.
1.5GiB 4.8Gbps @192-Bit could be the perfect back-end for 768SPs, if AMD would be able to do this memory confguration.
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Same reason they seem to be slow to react in everything right now. They just look out of touch. 7950 at least should have got a massive price slash the day 670 came out instead AMD will probably drag their feet for two weeks again and just look like a laughingstock. I am quite sure exactly ~zero 7950's are selling right now.
Overall AMD is in a BETTER position this gen than last as 7970 is closer to 680 than 6970 was to 580. Yet you'd never know it by hardware sites and forums it's perceived as Nvidia in a route. Somehow AMD has really handled things badly.
Another thing they really should have done or should do ASAP is get that default 7970 clock up to 1ghz or even 1050. Tahiti is just leaving so much clock on the table relative to GK104 it's painful, most of these reviews you're seeing 670 probably running ~1100mhz (after boosted) competing with 7970/50 at 925/800. Longer term I feel they may really need to develop a boost copy, but for now at least 7970 ghz edition.
7950, it's not really AMD's fault Nvidia pushed 670 closer to 680 than anybody thought they would, leaving 7950 looking weak, but they need to do something and pronto.
Also the 768 SP part Tom's benched, too bad that doesn't exist, it really would have slotted in a nice price point, honestly probably would have been the perfect card for me. Nothing between the 7770 and 7850 is a huge gap.
Imagine the narrative if the day after GTX 670, AMD announced 7950 is now 299. It would be positive to say the least, instead of as it is with sites calling AMD "marginalized". I realize it's not my money to play with, but as of right now AMD needs to do something aggressive.
AMD already has Turbo on Trinity. I'd be a little surprised if the 7970 GHz edition didn't feature any kind of Turbo.
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thatdude90210
Regular
I remember seeing some pretty promising 7870 o/c results early on, giving the 7970 a run for its money. I would guess that a 7870 with some sort of turbo feature could do some serious damage in the $300 area. That's a price point more mainstream gamers can handle.
If 7970 had launched at $400 instead, your perception would probably be a lot different. They seem to have underestimated NVIDIA's resolve for the top, that a considerably smaller NV midrange chip could beat their new hotness, and they seemingly don't know what to do about NV's sinister pricing games. Perhaps their steadfast pricing is them trying to play on ignorance and continue that "brand building". Maybe some new AMD exec made a kneejerk gamble that NV was hurting and wasn't going to compete well and they don't want to obviously backpedal.
Broken Hope
Regular
I was waiting out for a 7970 but AMD haven't moved quickly enough on pricing so I ended up ordering a 670 which should arrive on Monday, pretty much the same performance as the 7970 but with arguably better drivers and dev support and cheaper too.
Though it's my first Nvidia card so I may just find out there's plenty of problems on the green team too.
Though it's my first Nvidia card so I may just find out there's plenty of problems on the green team too.
Broken Hope
Regular
The 7970 is around £40 more expensive, only around 7% faster at stock and it's not like the 670's don't overclock to around 1250-1300 boost clocks anyway.
I'll take better dev support and better AF over AMDs cards at the moment, both the 600 and 7900 series are a big enough improvement over my 5870 to be a worthwhile upgrade anyway.
That depends on whether retail cards Boost up as much as the press samples.
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Broken Hope
Regular
Will there be any news of a revision on the current 7900 series? If not I'm not sure why someone wouldn't want a 670 over 7970 or 680 at it's price to performance ratio. I've looked at the current 7970 1GHz cards:
SAPPHIRE 7970 OC
Gigabyte GV-R797OC-3GD
ASUS HD7970-DC2T-3GD5
DIAMOND 7970PE53GDD
PowerColor LCS AX7970
etc
And from what I've been reading those clock rates/performance could be achieved at the same TDP of the stock 7970 if there was a revision. Is that not true?
SAPPHIRE 7970 OC
Gigabyte GV-R797OC-3GD
ASUS HD7970-DC2T-3GD5
DIAMOND 7970PE53GDD
PowerColor LCS AX7970
etc
And from what I've been reading those clock rates/performance could be achieved at the same TDP of the stock 7970 if there was a revision. Is that not true?
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Well, if i was in the need to buy a 670, i will for sure take the OC models, not the reference one. ( First cause the quality is really cheap on the reference one )
If Nvidia have set the "warranty turbo boost speed " at 980mhz, and press or early sample do far better, this dont mean all retail cards will do the same.
So if you buy a Gigabyte who got a 1080-1100mhz + turbo boost, you are least sure it will do this.
Now its clear if you test a 670 vs 680 where the 680 OC to 1084mhz most of the time and the 670 do 1100mhz, this is not the SMX disabled who will do a big difference..
Now i ask me if it can cause trouble in SLI, i was reading some trouble thread in some forums with 680.. and i was ask me if it can be linked to the turbo boost clock speed who is not the same on the 2 cards.
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Hnm, I thought there would have been some sort of announcement regarding the newer 7970s taking advantage of the improve fab process from TSMC (IE: 7979 1GHz). Earlier reviews of the 1GHz cards I've seen so far doesn't look like that's the case yet do to the higher power consumption, etc. Being speculation, will newer process GPUs simply replace the current ones instead?
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