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Leaked specifications provide a look at the make-up of AMD's next 7000-series cards.
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Leaked specifications provide a look at the make-up of AMD's next 7000-series cards.
What I find amazing is that at release the consumer will be faced with an option around £240 for the 7870 (a price point they could've already had a GTX570 at for the best part of a year). I expect performance to be around 5-10% better than the GTX570, with slightly lower power consumption at the same price point.
That's not a technical analysis of the hardware, just a practical assessment of what they'll be aiming for to make it marketable (in their opinion).
I say marketable, but I honestly don't see this as a victory. Releasing something that can only best a product on the market by 5% in a whole 8/9 months extra development time for a similar price means your behind the curve.
While I like the 7950, the market position they've placed it by charging £350 has really been an insult to their customers.
Right now I could pick up a pair of 6870's from Scan and Crossfire them, for less than £240. You only need to look at the GTX 570 Super Overclock review to see this nets you typically 50% more performance than a GTX570, and so very likely approximately the same improvement over this new 7870.
I'll reserve final judgement till the numbers are in, but it's clearly not going to best a pair of 6870 in CF at the moment.
yeah mate you are right except for one thing these are new so people will want them. There is a guy in the fs section selling his gtx 580 same model i have for £275 because he bought a 7950 so even if he got the cheapest one he paid £75 more than he will get for his 580 to have exactly the same performance.Quote:
Originally Posted by cptwhite_uk
for people that already have anything more powerful than a gtx560 these are a waste and overpriced too.
Think you're missing a fair bit from your analysis, simply put:
1. Crossfire/sli cant compare, personally way to much microstutter with sli and likely Crossfire, feels like the same even if double fps, so really is multicard worth it? It always will if you dont notice this and have games with terrible performance in multicard, is it more power effcient? I will cover another point shortly.
2. Cost, the old generation have had their time to recoup research and development costs, these cards havent even come out yet which is why they WILL be more expensive simply put all other cards have had massive drops, ive seen gtx560ti 448 selling for £180 on offers a fair few times, wait a few months and it will be even more competitive, the 7970/50 are already competitive (within reason, still need to be better IMO) as they beat the 570/580 but cost about £10 less and can overclock like a tank and use 1/3 of the power.
3. Other technologies, you are forgetting that an amd card has eyefinity support as standard where as Nvidia still require multiple cards UNLESS you buy the galaxy gtx580 which costs more than the 7970... yes you pay more to get nvidia with the same features. CUDA is great but AMD are pushing open tech more and more and thus its becoming hard to differentiate.
But more importantly, if you are buying a high end card (gtx580 or anything like that) you are pretty stupid in my mind to be selling it already, it doesnt take a genius to look at results and say, oh well at the minute its only X% better but if i sell my card i will lose 30% because its used, lets keep it for another few years as my games are still running fine. If you live on bleeding edge you WILL get screwed for price vs performance, exactly the same as pc games really! you can buy a single player game for £25 on release or wait a month or two and buy it for <£15 yet its the same game but with most likely more performance due to patches etc.
And drivers, AMD are in the infancy period of their drivers, this GCN can gain massive performance but drivers and optimisation is holding it back. In a few months i can see another 10 - 25% improvement across the board. May i also point out in performance, when you actually run these cards in a high end setup say 2 or 3 1080p+monitors then you actually get a differences with the 7970 beating the 580 alot more. Its because some reason people like to spend £300 - £400+ on a graphics card but just want it for a simply single 1080p monitor, baffles me!
When i finally upgrade from my gtx460(did have sli, sold the second a month after buying this year!) i will either be grabiing the 7950 or a gtx670/80 depending on performance however if it really doesnt bring much to the table in regards to competitive pricing (id like the 7950 to be £250.. LOL) then ill simply run my games at a lower quality till the 8000/700 series because i know the 8000 will be an even greater improvement just for the fact its their second attempt/optimisation of GCN and we all know it takes multiple times to get the best out of something!.
TLDR: AMD chips are competitive with Nvidia chips in price, regardless of how old one another is as Nvidia IS behind the curve (i.e not released 600 series), AMD just offers that slightly better offering with less power and more overclocking. Price vs performance will improve after a few months of R&D recouping and Nvidia release some competition. People who live on the bleeding edge and then sell for no real difference are plonkers.
Nope - by definition they are ahead of the curve, because they've got the best product out for the price. It doesn't matter that it's only % percent better, or that a similar product has been out in the past - we're no longer in the past. You can only judge a product on it's real performance today. On that measure the 7950 is the better card than the 580. AMD are only interested in people buying cards today and onwards, and presumably not existing 580 owners.Quote:
Originally Posted by cptwhite_uk
surely by definition they have just caught up with the curve, if they are now beating nvidias last gen with kepler still to come out all amd have done is caught up with the curve. most of the selling points for these cards seem to eb on power usage and yeah that is good but the cards are priced £50 over what they should be so the 17 watts of power you save over a 580 will take a very long time to make back by then you would have sold the card.Quote:
Originally Posted by kalniel
People were going mad when the last gen of cards came out with the 6970 near £350 initially and the 580 at near £400 suddenly Amd bring out a card at £450-500 and another at £350-400 and everyone is saying how brilliant it is. they are overpriced for what they are, And there are many two card options that will work better. and yes you can get micro stutter with sli crossfire in certain games but there are ways to fix that.
Dan i agree it should be cheaper but really everything ever sold should be cheaper :P, it competes and thats all AMD want to do, you cant blame them for trying to recoup their costs as soon as possible so that they will be able to drop them to lower price points when nvidia catch up. A quick look at scan and a 7950 is £5 cheaper than the cheapest gtx580, so yes they do compete very well as price is equal why buy the 580 when you can buy a newer card with a potential driver improvement and lower power requirements already? If it was £400 then yes whole heartedly id say amd had gone mad.
They are ahead of the curve as their chips perform better and have a better power effciency, thats what beating is... Nvidia is now behind until the 600 series is out and if it wins ofc! The 6000 series was a solid card and out before Nvidia so again nvidia caught up, the 5000 was also an amazing series for amd and the 400 a massive massive flop originally (only the 460 and the massive 480 price cuts made it ok!).
I must say im confused why people are still comparing it to previous gen cards in terms of launch pricing, the 6000 series (and 500 series) were on the same process and merely tweaks of the previous design due to TSMC scrapping the 32NM process so they had to find the performance from the same tech/design. That is cheaper than moving to a brand new process and developing a whole new architecture. People are somewhat forgetting this! Its so expensive in comparison that these chips can actually drop like a bomb after 6 months of dev as presumably AMD has set out a reasonable timeline as to how long and at what price it needs to recoup all these costs, as will Nvidia. However as Nvidia arent present in this generation yet it would be utterly stupid in a business sense for AMD to sell their chips at a lower cost than Nvidias old cheaper generation even when performance is same if not better by miles and uses less power, it wins on most front... new buyers arent losing unless it goes above the 580 which it HASN'T.
And Crossfire/sli, you cant fix microstutter, you can minimise it but its always there and always will be. The crossfire and sli argument has always been there for about 4 generations, its 99% of the time cheaper so why compare it now? Two gtx460s can best a gtx480 yet cost 2/3rds yet that wasnt really said much, same as now it can get to 570 territory even better when they only cost £110 today!. If i wasnt one to notice microstutter i would have been a super happy bunny! Unfortunately i found out i am one to notice, alot... forced me to sell it as there was no point having an extra 160w power usage to look worse :(.
i just don't understand why people would buy these parts just because they're new. They don't support anything that current gen cards are without, and they're not more powerful.
All I can say is that I'm looking forward to seeing these two cards out (7850/70). I hope to buy one near the time that they launch depending on price obviously :P.
I don't understand why people are saying that AMD are behind at all with the 7970 and 7950, especially considering that the 7950 is cheaper, more efficient, easier to overclock and better performance wise than nVidia's best atm. It would make no sense for them to sell it any cheaper than what they are now.
I will be buying a 7850, not because it's new but because (wishful thinking) it will be better, cheaper, and more efficient than nVidia's CURRENT equivalent, or even AMD's last gen equivalent.
I don't think people would buy a new card just for the sake of it being new. If AMD suddenly brought out a card using 40nm, that was less efficient and less powerful than current cards but still cost a similar price I doubt people would buy it. The point being, people won't buy because it's new but because it's better.
EDIT:
However, I do think that AMD slipped up slightly with the release of the 7770 and the 7750, as the performance was lower than expected for the price range, and is not competing too well with similar range nVidia cards.
They wouldn't.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tunnah
They're a lot more powerful for the same electric/heat, and support new features.Quote:
They don't support anything that current gen cards are without, and they're not more powerful.
So surely all nvidia will do with kepler is catch up with the curve compared to AMD's last gen?Quote:
Originally Posted by danroyle
To write it off as its weaker than something not yet with us (potentially), yet as soon as we see kepler it will be weaker than something by AMD which is not yet with us.
Anyway back to it. I am certainly keeping an eye on the 7870 and the pricing of the 6950 aswell as how they compare. Will finally get an upgrade! :)
These kind of specs at these prices do not tempt me at all. Still on a 5850 myself, and if I were to spend over £200 on a new card, it'd have to be alot faster than 7870 will likely manage.