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Comment Thread for AMD HD 7970 3GB Review

lKashl

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Apr 26, 2009
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191
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Australia
No, but really. They need to get their drivers in order, and they also need to stop trying to play 'catch up' to nVidia with things like 3D/Eyefinity and get back to basics.

Alot of people would disagree with you there, Eyefinity is actually some pretty promising tech and many consider it to have revolutionised using a PC/PC gaming. Also it gives people a way to actually do something with they're gfx cards instead of having all that horsepower wasted on console ports at low resolutions.
 

Soultribunal

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Alot of people would disagree with you there, Eyefinity is actually some pretty promising tech and many consider it to have revolutionised using a PC/PC gaming. Also it gives people a way to actually do something with they're gfx cards instead of having all that horsepower wasted on console ports at low resolutions.


Yes, it is good to have.
But nVidia Surround Gaming does it better (Driver/bugs) than AMD/ATI now , and it was ATI/AMD that brought the Technology forward.

-ST
 

Killswitch

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Sep 10, 2007
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830
Location
Sault Ste Marie, Ontario
Bahahahahahahah. :rofl::rofl::rofl:

No, but really. They need to get their drivers in order, and they also need to stop trying to play 'catch up' to nVidia with things like 3D/Eyefinity and get back to basics.

No!! The world can't live without eyefinity!! :haha:
The new features for "eyefinity 2.0" are simply awesome. 3D can go however.

As for the 7970. I'm getting one. Time to move to a single gpu solution that will hammer my 2 x 5850's! :punk:
 

draemn

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Dec 10, 2010
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Fort St. John, BC
There, now the haters can stop saying SKY always favours nvidia ;)

I was surprised as I kinda just stopped doing the whole rumours things and thought this card was being pushed back later into 2012, but so wrong was I. It will be interesting to see if this will stay a paper release or if AMD didn't jump the gun to make us drool... only January will tell us if they actually have enough production/stock to meet the demand. Personally, based on the optimistic claims that nvidia makes about Kepler performance, I expected a touch more from the next gen GPUs from AMD... not to say that 25% faster than the 580 isn't impressive, especially at higher efficiency.

I do have a bone to pick: why do you have graphs that have 1 set of GPUs for one setting and different set of GPUs for the next batch of settings?!?!?! Then I have to interpolate myself and put the others back in based on relative performance :/

Oh well, pretty fun read SKY!
 

clshades

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Big White Ski Resort
Excellent review Sky. I'm quite happy to see amd putting themselves back on top with some amazing headroom to play with. It's good to see after the failure with the cpus. Cheers dude and I hope you get to enjoy that thing over the holidays.
 

OblivionLord

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Joined
Jul 21, 2008
Messages
8
I really wish in the Overclocking section they oced the 580 3gb since the MSI Lightning XE reviewed on this site got 1009mhz from its stock 775mhz. That's 237mhz over stock on 40nm.

The 7970 was only able to achieve 1078mhz from stock 925mhz which is 153mhz.

http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image//skymtl/GPU/GTX-580-LIGHTNING-XE/GTX-580-LIGHTNING-XE-72.jpg

http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image//skymtl/GPU/HD7970/HD7970-72.jpg

The stock 580 and 590 on both charts show virtually the same performance even though 1 setting was off.. High vs Very High.

Notice how the 580 Lightning XE oced rivals the 7970 oced.

I'd rather have 1 chart with all the same settings, but this is as close as I can find.
 

Soultribunal

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WIth the amount of background work that goes into a review of this magnitude there is only so much we can do. And Then what you are asking is cherry picking specific items to compare which isn't really fair.

His card was an ES which is about as basic as it gets. THe GPU for the MSI Lightning much like the SOC from Gigabyte is hand picked with all its components. Its not an apples to apples comparison and would give the wrong impressions.

-ST



I really wish in the Overclocking section they oced the 580 3gb since the MSI Lightning XE reviewed on this site got 1009mhz from its stock 775mhz. That's 237mhz over stock on 40nm.

The 7970 was only able to achieve 1078mhz from stock 925mhz which is 153mhz.

http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image//skymtl/GPU/GTX-580-LIGHTNING-XE/GTX-580-LIGHTNING-XE-72.jpg

http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image//skymtl/GPU/HD7970/HD7970-72.jpg

The stock 580 and 590 on both charts show virtually the same performance even though 1 setting was off.. High vs Very High.

Notice how the 580 Lightning XE oced rivals the 7970 oced.

I'd rather have 1 chart with all the same settings, but this is as close as I can find.
 

OblivionLord

Member
Joined
Jul 21, 2008
Messages
8
WIth the amount of background work that goes into a review of this magnitude there is only so much we can do. And Then what you are asking is cherry picking specific items to compare which isn't really fair.

His card was an ES which is about as basic as it gets. THe GPU for the MSI Lightning much like the SOC from Gigabyte is hand picked with all its components. Its not an apples to apples comparison and would give the wrong impressions.

-ST

I really don't think the factor of fairness is deeply concerned in these benches or else the dual gpu videocards wouldn't have been included since it is after all 2 GPUs vs 1 and well out of the price range of the 7970. I think these benches are more focused on the point of showing off the performance of this new card vs what the public is able to buy which is why a whole assortment of different cards are used that are above and below the price range of the 7970.

Furthermore, if we are to again look at fairness, then using both the 1.5gb and 3gb 580s options simply goes against the very principle of 'fair comparison' since the 580 wasn't introduced with 3gb. It wasn't till a good 6 or so months after the 580's debut that it came in a 3gb model. You can even say that using the 3gb version is no different than using an Oc'ed 580 out of the box since it's simply not a Vanilla vs Vanilla comparison against the current 7970 considering the fact that the current 7970 available is just an engineering sample. The point could even go further by mentioning how the 580 has an entire year of optimized drivers and game patches vs the current state of the 7970 with its immature driver. In order to say that things are "fair" then you'd have to use an ES GTX580 with its year old driver at launch vs the current ES 7970. Of course noone is going to goto that extreme since it's not practical because the 580 owners aren't using an ES model nor is anyone crazy enough to use the first 580 driver released a year ago.

I'm not asking to bench every 580 out there since that would be quite redundant, but the fact is that the 7970 is AMD's new arch, new single GPU flagship and if you are going to include the aspect of showing the overclocking performance of the 7970, then at the very least include an oc'ed 580 since it's the only card that is really in the same class. Not just show 2 580s with the only differentiating factor of vmem size vs a stock and oced 7970 even though there are alot of people with regular 580s that can achieve 100-200mhz over stock.
 
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SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
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Feb 26, 2007
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Montreal
The reviews include comparable cards + cards in slightly higher and slightly lower price brackets. "Fairness" never factors into the equation.
 

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