AMD: Southern Islands (7*** series) Speculation/ Rumour Thread

Oh, mine is just a standard 925mhz, just runs fine at 1.1ghz without any overvolting so I'd assume it could hit 1ghz at a bit lower voltage and it's not like it gets close to TDP outside of furmark anyway.
 
Oh, mine is just a standard 925mhz, just runs fine at 1.1ghz without any overvolting so I'd assume it could hit 1ghz at a bit lower voltage and it's not like it gets close to TDP outside of furmark anyway.

I see now. Thanks. From what I've been reading the new revised 7970 1GHz cards is suppose to have the same voltage, if not lower, then what the current 7970 consumes at 925MHz. But I don't know how true that is.
 
I see now. Thanks. From what I've been reading the new revised 7970 1GHz cards is suppose to have the same voltage, if not lower, then what the current 7970 consumes at 925MHz. But I don't know how true that is.

Just by choose the right Asic, it should allready be easy: the 1120mv have forcibly a lower tdp of a 1175mv chips ( less leakage and voltage ). As it seems the tdp limit is not fixed by chips but by choose the worst case over a lot of cards, Asic ( and voltage ) ... the marge is allready big with the current cards.
 
Just by choose the right Asic, it should allready be easy: the 1120mv have forcibly a lower tdp of a 1175mv chips ( less leakage and voltage ). As it seems the tdp limit is not fixed by chips but by choose the worst case over a lot of cards, Asic ( and voltage ) ... the marge is allready big with the current cards.

So you are saying they are already out and it depends which chip you get? I'm not sure if I'm understanding you correctly or not.
 
So you are saying they are already out and it depends which chip you get? I'm not sure if I'm understanding you correctly or not.


I have got 3 different 7970 ( one who have died ), and it is a common thing the base voltage on the 7970 is different from a card to another ( 1112mv to 1175mv, Vrzone report a 1020mv, but i have never seen one ) .. the Asic quality is giving the base voltage ( higher is the Asic quality, lower is the voltage ) ... I can assume a chip who use less voltage with an higher Asic quality... give too less leakage and so the average tdp of the chip is not the same of the 1175mv ( in general under the 85% Asic quality )..

Basically... if you want make 7970 1ghz with same tdp, you have just to choose the core who have the higher Asic quality and give them 1112mv ... they will go to 1150 without change anything... ( choose the 86+% Asic, and you are good ) ..

I can confirm you easely a 1175mv have higher temperature ( so higher average tdp ) of a 1112mv... but at the same time, this card will go through the 1300mhz without problem, when it is not so sure for the 1112mv ( with standard cooling, lower temps ( 40°C full load under water and ofc subzero the thing is going closer )
 
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I have got 3 different 7970 ( one who have died ), and it is a common thing the base voltage on the 7970 is different from a card to another ( 1112mv to 1175mv, Vrzone report a 1020mv, but i have never seen one ) .. the Asic quality is giving the base voltage ( higher is the Asic quality, lower is the voltage ) ... I can assume a chip who use less voltage with an higher Asic quality... give too less leakage and so the average tdp of the chip is not the same of the 1175mv ( in general under the 85% Asic quality )..

Basically... if you want make 7970 1ghz with same tdp, you have just to choose the core who have the higher Asic quality and give them 1112mv ... they will go to 1150 without change anything... ( choose the 86+% Asic, and you are good ) ..

I can confirm you easely a 1175mv have higher temperature ( so higher average tdp ) of a 1112mv... but at the same time, this card will go through the 1300mhz without problem, when it is not so sure for the 1112mv ( with standard cooling, lower temps ( 40°C full load under water and ofc subzero the thing is going closer )

I see now, thanks. I can only wonder if a revised 7970 can do 1GHz at 1112mv or lower.
 
7900 series vs 600 series OC results
It would be nice to see more reviews like this instead of seeing the 7900 series at stock clocks. Anyone got similar reviews?
 
need to look, but surely Lab501 have done some..... Anyway it have been nice to have the model and brand used on this test.. as ofc depending the cooler, or the luck the cards will not oc the same.

too bad they have not think to made an apples to apples clock to clock comparaison.. ( let say 1150-1200mhz on all cards ).. due to the coolers difference ( sound wise ), not all with stock cooler want to oc at maximum level 24/24 .
 
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need to look, but surely Lab501 have done some..... Anyway it have been nice to have the model and brand used on this test.. as ofc depending the cooler, or the luck the cards will not oc the same.

too bad they have not think to made an apples to apples clock to clock comparaison.. ( let say 1150mhz on all cards ).. due to the coolers difference ( sound wise ), not all with stock cooler want to oc at maximum level 24/24 .

Now, i remember an article on Xtremesystem forum ( review thread ), where one have compare the 680 -7970 and 580 OC ...

Using the same mild OC would be better overall. But I've not seen any review doing this yet.
 
This one, i think this a compilation of the reviewer of overclocker.net pushed in Anandtech forum .. ( and then on xtremesystem )
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums...970-OC-VS-Single-680-OC-VS-6950-CF-VS-580-SLI


I see now, thanks. I can only wonder if a revised 7970 can do 1GHz at 1112mv or lower.


No problem at 1112mv, there's a lot of cards who are 1112mv. The max CCC is 1125mhz ... i have never seen a 7970 oc with the CCC who dont go to 1050 without voltage change.

I dont know how a revised or ameliorate TSMC will bring as voltage. The result will maybe mostly be on the TDP.
 
So if all you do is run a 7900 series at stock it's no surprise if it doesn't beat a 600 series.
But when you OC them the results are drastically different. No surprise there.


You just have to read the MSI Lightning reviews or other review with overclocked retail 7970 (Gigabyte etc ).. impossible to say who win. ( outside maybe TDP ).

( Ofc there's allways some game who will favor more a card vs an other )
 
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Or maybe it's that specific sample, or Lightning uses higher volts, who knows?
I mean, without comparison point at reference stock clocks it's impossible to draw any judgements from that
 
From this chart, there's not so much difference. Lets not forget the card is all but reference: different pcb, Phases... memory clock ... a 8watts difference is not really big
( anyway official MSI pages http://event.msi.com/vga/lightning/r7970.html )



Note, what i like on techPowerup, is outside maximum ( Furmark ), the reference 7970 have a so close Power consumption of the 680 in all case.. Anyway will try find more review of the MSI, will maybe be possible to find why so much difference.
 
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Tahiti's power consumption appears to jump up considerably at a bit above 1 GHz. It even surpasses Thermi at the maximum.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/HD_7970_Lightning/26.html

GK104 at 1.1 GHz looks to demand a lot less max power.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Zotac/GeForce_GTX_680_Amp_Edition/26.html


It's an interesting role reversal. NVIDIA had such huge dies before and now AMD has the big dies and higher power consumption.
Did you look at the PCBs used for this card? This isn't a traditional reference card.
Link
 
Did you look at the PCBs used for this card? This isn't a traditional reference card.
Link

PCB, powers (14+2+1 phase vs 5+1+1 on reference ), features, core and memory speed... this card is made for overclocking, and aimed at LN2 users.


Anyway, outside marketing, is really AMD have an interest to do it ?

This will not cost them a lot outside, some specific selection out of the production line. But is AMD have not a better choice? ask their partner to release some faster card, and count on the review for it..

It is really funny to see there's nearly no review yet for AMD gpu's and the 670-680 690 review, rarely include 7970 Overclocked..

I was read some guru3d reviews... when he have test many 7970-7950 OC cards, even sometimes 1 week before the 680 have been released, he have never include in his article the oc version.
Even for CFX vs SLI .. you find some strange things.. ( no 7970cfx result, sometimes only 7950. sometimes with 7970cfx )
( So imagine standard hardware site ( i think to some who treat of mobile phone, pc, more global technology instead of hardware based etc )... )

I say that, at same time, if AMD release a Ghz edition, many new partner cards will follow, and the overclocked one will surely get an update too..
 
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PCB, powers (14+2+1 phase vs 5+1+1 on reference ), features, core and memory speed... this card is made for overclocking, and aimed at LN2 users.


Anyway, outside marketing, is really AMD have an interest to do it ?

This will not cost them a lot outside, some specific selection out of the production line. But is AMD have not a better choice? ask their partner to release some faster card, and count on the review for it..

It is really funny to see there's nearly no review yet for AMD gpu's and the 670-680 690 review, rarely include 7970 Overclocked..

I was read some guru3d reviews... when he have test many 7970-7950 OC cards, even sometimes 1 week before the 680 have been released, he have never include in his article the oc version.
Even for CFX vs SLI .. you find some strange things.. ( no 7970cfx result, sometimes only 7950. sometimes with 7970cfx )
( So imagine standard hardware site ( i think to some who treat of mobile phone, pc, more global technology instead of hardware based etc )... )

I say that, at same time, if AMD release a Ghz edition, many new partner cards will follow, and the overclocked one will surely get an update too..

But is the new 1GHz revision really true though? That's the real question. It is strange we haven't seen many CF/SLI reviews but I think we will see more of them as time goes on.

Edit:
I found this article about the 7970 1GHz cards indicating better silicon, improved yields, lower voltage requirement for 925MHz then the earlier ES revision and, people should be able to hit 1.25GHz (not sure if that's at stock voltage or not but I get the impression some may).

So is this true or not? I've not read any more about it since then.
 
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I found another review that tried to compare 7970 to the 680 using gpu clock rate of 1058MHz for the 7970. However, the review doesn't show the exact speed of the 680 in each game tested. They did note in the test method that 1058MHz is an average for the 680.
Review test method

If only they provided the actual clock rate of the 680 for each game tested. Then we would know the difference between performance/clock rate ratio. At 1600 resolution it's a tie as far as actual game play goes. Which makes me wonder if the the boosting at 1600 resolution is lower (or closer to 1058MHz) then at 1080 resolution.
 
:oops:

With all the 2048 shaders enabled the comparison is not fair.
If they want an apples-to-apples comparison they should test the same amount of everything, eg number of shaders, frequency, memory bandwidth, etc...
 
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