Reviews - AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition

[Terbinator]

That is a known issue with the Asus cards i think.

[Hicks12]

not bad really, quick to turn around that software powerboost so good stuff there. Can i ask what the stock voltage was for your card? I might have missed it but i didnt see it and it was said that these would be coming in at 1ghz with a much lower voltage (i.e strong high end chips, better yields!). I can easily see 1.2ghz models from partners and thats a good thing, i think you're a bit harsh on the comment on TDP, assuming it was a gpu only test (again missed description but it seems very low now ) as its very small and it clearly is due to overclocking from 1ghz to 1,050! And may i point out that it is only 3.6% over the stated 250W TDP, think you should be looking at that gtx680 and slamming Nvidia as their rated TDP is 195W, yet you see a 221W draw!? thats 13% higher than stated, quite a bit higher if you ask me.

AMD havent had time to refine their powerboost so only being a few % over the TDP is nothing serious and im worried that Nvidia has had awhile to ensure powerboost(or is it tune) works without outing the TDP?.

Other than that, good review and i believe the AMD side is a better buy purely on it being an all rounder in performance including GPGPU, im waiting till the 8000 series though haha.

[Terbinator]

The graph has Ultra settings depicted, the commentary talks further about Extreme, which is very similar in terms of IQ, and that's what the seven per cent comes from.

It would be nice if we got a proper rundown of settings used though, even if its just 'Highest in-game w/ 4xMSAA'.

Edit: I get that the above isn't too different form what you do now, but some games have a named 'High' setting so it would be nice to know which exactly you used.

[Nabobalis]

Most reviews show how much better the ATI cards are with regards to computing performance. How important is the compute performance when it comes to games? I thought that if you have no intention of running CUDA/OpenCL simulations, it should matter.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Interesting tidbit from a chap who works for AMD:

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.p...postcount=3701

The GHz edition ASIC is explicitly designed to fit within the same thermal / electrical / physical footprint as the standard 7970 and as such, given that every one of the partners have transistioned to their own designs they will be using their own fansink designs. The "reference" design is not much more than our qualification mule now and is sampled for the purposes of performance testing.

[kalniel]

Most reviews show how much better the ATI cards are with regards to computing performance. How important is the compute performance when it comes to games? I thought that if you have no intention of running CUDA/OpenCL simulations, it should matter.

You're kind of answering your own question - compute isn't that relevant to games (except where they simulate physics etc.). But it's relevant to people who want to use their GPUs to accelerate graphical work (photoshop for eg.) or transcoding (handbrake) or compression (winzip) etc.

[Nabobalis]

You're kind of answering your own question - compute isn't that relevant to games (except where they simulate physics etc.). But it's relevant to people who want to use their GPUs to accelerate graphical work (photoshop for eg.) or transcoding (handbrake) or compression (winzip) etc.

I thought so, but I've seen people in other forums say that the poor compute performance is impacting a few games like Civ 5.

[kalniel]

I thought so, but I've seen people in other forums say that the poor compute performance is impacting a few games like Civ 5.

AFAIK in civ 5 compute is only used to decompress textures for the leader scenes, so lack of compute would just result in minutely longer loading times when these scenes occur. It's not what I'd call a performance impactor.

[Terbinator]

I thought so, but I've seen people in other forums say that the poor compute performance is impacting a few games like Civ 5.

By "impacting" do they mean the 6FPS difference between the cards at 1080p (87 vs 81) or the dead-heat at 1600p? n both cases, performance is north of 60FPS for both cards.

Welcome to the internet, some posts may contain hyperbole.

[DETHNDESTRUCTN]

ATI doesnt exist anymore and hasnt done for 4 years - its AMD now ^^

btw you might want to check the writing vs chart for teh crysis 2 page , article says aAMD is 7% faster whereas the chart says the GTX is fastest

I thought the percentage was incorrect at first too, but if you look at the rest of the paragraph it says they tried turning the settings down to extreme (from ultra) which gave the 7970 the 7% lead at the higher res

[Mosfetv]

That's a great card.Althou a little overpriced.