New AMD GPU, 7970 unveiled today...

[ShyguyXPC]

... And more smoke blown up consumers arses...

764 Days as Graphics Performance Champion – and Counting | Game Blog

In November 2009, we unleashed the world’s fastest graphics card and then followed that up by launching the AMD Radeon™ HD 6990, taking the crown from…ourselves. Fast forward to today and we’ve outdone ourselves yet again. Refusing to settle on having the fastest graphics card, period, we also wanted to title of the fastest single GPU graphics card, bar none. After all, it is important to have goals. Today, we unveiled to the world a new player in the graphics card market – the AMD Radeon™ HD 7970, the fastest single- GPU graphics card on the planet.

Um... Yeah, you had the Radeon 5870, no competition from Nvidia at the time, not counting their GTX 295 Dual GPU card.

And then followed up with the 6990 (though I think it was supposed to say 6970), but in either case, its completely false... You were eclipsed by Nvidia with their GTX 400 series in almost every category above the $150 range.

Then the 6800/6900 series came through and took it from them for a short while, before the GTX 500 series was released, again they took it back. So how that adds up to 2 years worth of time for the crown is beyond me... maybe thats why the Bulldozers fail to impress, AMD's Marketing personnel failed elementary school math.

Does the Radeon 6970 beat the GTX 580? No. Does the 6990 beat the GTX 590? No.

So to claim the performance crown for nearly 2 years is complete rubbish.

With that BS claim, their lack of following through on their claims on Bulldozer, and then once released to public, they forgot to fill the tank of Bulldozer and give it a competent capable Operator to drive it...

I call BS on many of the claims for this new series until I can see some new Benchmarks and reviews.

And even then, it will be against current Gen cards, which the GTX 580, 590 and EVGA's Dual GPU GTX 560 Ti, are real bastards to compare against, gonna have to REALLY have something that can compete. as it is, the GTX 580 comes damn close to the Radeon HD 6990 in performance, and for a Single GPU card, that says something.

But the real news will be for the 7800/7700 Series and lower since thats where most of us will probably be playing, for the performance price ratio/improvements over current gen cards.

With AMD's claims on these 7900's, I expect the 7800 series to have GTX 560 Ti or Radeon 6950 performance at least, with Radeon 6700/6800 power and heat levels.

If it amounts to a meager 10-20% increase over all, honestly its not worth it. given the prices these things have been rumored to be released at.

anyways, only time will tell.

[ShyguyXPC]

Toms Hardware review on it: AMD Radeon HD 7970: Promising Performance, Paper-Launched : Radeon HD 7970: A Holiday Surprise That You Can't Buy

Although in many benches it is clearly the fastest single card in the pack, its really not THAT much faster than current Top end Single GPU's (with exception of some of the GPGPU benches)... 10-15 fps isn't really that much IMO... and with a $550 price tag?

It is making a stab at the GTX 580 (Price and performance), but then again, thats last gen, and will be interesting to see how the 600 series Keplers stack up this when those eventually are released.

I'd love to see how a few of the EVGA Dual GPU cards (GTX 460 2Win and GTX 560 Ti 2Win) as well as the Visiontek Dual 6870 cards, stack up against this card, which can be had for less in price, since they ran the "official" 6990 and GTX 590 Dual GPU cards.

Still, hoping the 7800 series and 7700 Series makes a similar if not better impact against the Nvidia competition once released.


One thing I see omitted from these 7900's is the vaunted XDR RAM that was rumored to be in them, their running GDDR5...

[SoloCamo]

Thanks for the update and links as I've been looking forward to the reviews on it

However..... I've gotta say, I'm quite disappointed in it's performance. Sure, it's faster, but we're talking less than 5-10fps overall a majority of the time (in the benchmarks per toms hardware).

That small of a difference does not justify the jump to the 7 series nor the cost of it when a slight overclock on any of the cards they were comparing would easily bring them to the same level.

[ShyguyXPC]

exactly what I was thinking.

Though as some comments have hinted at, the current pricing could be up on it for a while, since kepler is still probably months away, and to not compete with current 6900 series stock still out there, to get rid of as much of it as possible before bringing pricing down to more reasonable levels. That and last I read AMD was still having some yield troubles with these 28nm cores as well, so could be limited production until stock piles are sufficiently made of these, and/or the mainstream 7700/7800 series once those are released.

At least its yet another noticeable performance increase over the prior gen cards.

but if I remember right these cards were part 2 of a performance enhancement over the Radeon 5xxx series.

the first part was the 6xxx series being able to do as much or more with less cores than comparable prior gen cards, and then now these "Tahiti" cards with more cores finally over prior gen cards.

Though I am disappointed in not seeing any of the XDR equipped cards, unless they plan on releasing those once Nvidia's Kepler comes out, as a sort of ace up the sleeve trick? Which would be a smart move, as I doubt Nvidia's new 600 series will be leaps and bounds over the prior gen cards, although the GTX 580 was a pretty impressive card, matching the Dual GPU 6990 in some instances, or at least coming close.

[Aaron_8015]

Upon release I believe the 6990 trumped the GTX590... Not picking holes though...

[ShyguyXPC]

Well the 6990 only came out a few weeks/a month before the 590 did, so yeah.

But one review, GeForce GTX 590 review the score is looking like 6 & 3 (Benchmarks), GTX 590 taking the lead

another review, out of 13 benches, 9 & 4 in favor of Nvidia AnandTech - NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 590: Duking It Out For The Single Card King

Don't mean to go all "Gomer" on you (Fact checking), but

It really depends on the games and settings, but still, its just the way AMD has been making claims, adding the days they've been #1 in graphics cards... for over 2 years, No, I think not, you can only count the days where you ARE, once a better card comes along, you can keep counting those days... If thats the case, why aren't they being more retroactive and counting the days when the Radeon 9700 Pro was kicking ass up and down the street back then?