HD7990 clockspeeds detailed

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It seems the card will have two full Tahiti XT chips slightly downclocked to 850MHZ:

http://www.techpowerup.com/162678/AM...n-Surface.html

[r3quiem]

I wonder though if we were liquid cooling these we should be able to push it at least up to 1100 mhz is not more give adequate cooling. I think its a better bargain to wait for one of these than to go with two 7970's consider the costs for getting two additional gpu blocks + accessories and the markup for getting two cards vs one.

[Bugbait]

I wonder though if we were liquid cooling these we should be able to push it at least up to 1100 mhz is not more give adequate cooling. I think its a better bargain to wait for one of these than to go with two 7970's consider the costs for getting two additional gpu blocks + accessories and the markup for getting two cards vs one.

Pretty much why I went for a 5970 back in the day. Sure, 2x5870's were a little cheaper and easier to source but it was clearly more expensive once I added the additional water block accessories. I've been running it at 950 (default is 725/750 odd) since day one without issues and the max temperatue under water is almost half temperature of the air cooled solution.

Been watching the 7 series alongside the new Nvidia offering (680). Itching for an upgrade but even with SWTOR at max on a 30" screen I'm not seeing any real hardware bottlenecks. Unfortunately I'm not an FPS player so hard to justify throwing more power at games.

Bargain? Unsubstantiated Net chatter puts the price of these around USD$850 odd but Nvidia's new line might put a dent in that (hopefully).

[Biscuit]

Given the efficiency of the Keplar chips, is it even worth considering AMD anymore now?
Surely its better to just wait until NVidia fleshes out their range

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

given the efficiency of the keplar chips, is it even worth considering amd anymore now?
Surely its better to just wait until nvidia fleshes out their range

wtf??

So let me get this right?? No should have bought a Fermi based graphics card in the last two years since Nvidia had worse performance/watt??

Its like someone looking at the GTX480 and saying that no Nvidia GTX400 series card is worth buying ever. Forget the card called the GTX460?? Of course everyone knows why the GTX480 and GTX580 have worse performance/watt than the rest of the Fermi range. Its blatantly obvious. Of course,lets forget about the HD6850 1GB too.


Did you even look at the rest of the AMD HD7000 range let alone all the HD6000 range which will be around for the next few months??

[kalniel]

Given the efficiency of the Keplar chips, is it even worth considering AMD anymore now?
Surely its better to just wait until NVidia fleshes out their range

I think you're putting rather more ability in the Kepler cards than they quite deserve

The 680 is an excellent card, but it's not like it's the most efficient (the 7870 is) or most powerful when used in extreme situations (7970 is arguably). It is however by some way the best blend of efficiency and power at 1080p.

The 7990 will not be targeting that market - it will be for the ultra high resolutions. A competing card made up of two 680s (as they are currently configured) will be at a disadvantage - they might still do fine, but there's a design limitation especially in terms of memory.

That could well be overcome, and I'd hope to at least see a 690 made up of two 4GB variants of the 680 - then we'll have a decent battle in the extreme market. But it's wrong to question if AMD are even worth considering.

[Terbinator]

I think he was misunderstood tbh, and at worst, meant the 7970 wasn't worth looking at atm.

[Biscuit]

yeah my comment was blown out of proportion slightly.

I was more suggesting that seeing as the current high end keplar card has trumps on the AMD equivalent in most modern scenarios, there seems to be little point in buying into something like a 7990 when the Nvidia equivalent looks set to be a much better product in performance per watt/doller scales. It could well be the case that the same is true of the lower end Nvidia cards when they are released, at the very worst i think its worth waiting for.
If the bus limitations cause a problem and infact the purpose of the card (ultra high res gaming) proves better on the AMD then ok, it was a question afterall, not a statement.

Perhaps AMD will once again compete on price, wouldn't surprise me.

I don't see how any retrospective comparisons are relevant

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

That could well be overcome, and I'd hope to at least see a 690 made up of two 4GB variants of the 680 - then we'll have a decent battle in the extreme market. But it's wrong to question if AMD are even worth considering.

The GTX680 4GB is incoming:

http://www.techpowerup.com/163044/Ga...ing-Shape.html

http://www.techpowerup.com/163043/Ga...-Pictured.html

8GB on one card would be as much as my system RAM!!

. It could well be the case that the same is true of the lower end Nvidia cards when they are released, at the very worst i think its worth waiting for.

I don't see how any retrospective comparisons are relevant

It is as your statement seemed a general one statement regarding the whole GTX600 and HD7000 series ranges,and looking at prior history it is very relevant to look at previous trends in all ranges. The GK104 is compute light though,so I suspect performance/watt of the GPU won't massively change for lower end gaming cards(might be slightly better due to lower clockspeeds). This is why lower end Fermi cards were a decent improvement. Compute ability was reduced and the internal arrangement was different so they were much more power efficient for gaming.

As Kalniel mentioned the HD7800 series has significantly better performance/watt than the HD7900 series. The same goes with the GTX480 vs the GTX460,the GTX580 vs the GTX560TI,and even in many ways the HD6970 vs the GTX580 too.

However,now that you clarified it,yes AMD is in a pickle,however price isn't so much the issue but the TDP. Even in the worst case scenario in reviews,the GTX680 still consumes less power and this means the GK104 dual card is probably going to have full speed cores. It is like the GTX590 against the HD6900 accept now the roles have reserved.

[Rob_B]

What would even need 8GB ?! Now if you could trun GPU RAM into RAM drives....then I'm interested!

[shaithis]

The GTX680 4GB is incoming:

I wonder how useful it will be though......at least once it's here we will see if it's bandwidth or size limited at higher resolutions.

My guess....bandwidth limited (large increase in core power but no increase in bandwidth...), in which case the 4GB version would be close to useless......much like a 2GB GTS440 !

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I wonder how useful it will be though......at least once it's here we will see if it's bandwidth or size limited at higher resolutions.

My guess....bandwidth limited (large increase in core power but no increase in bandwidth...), in which case the 4GB version would be close to useless......much like a 2GB GTS440 !

Good point. I wonder if the RAM would be higher rated though??

I might have missed it,but have any of the reviews covered VRAM overclocking performance improvements with the GTX680??

Another thing which might be worth considering is the core boost. Since the percentage boost is not artificially limited and is dependent on thermal considerations only AFAIK,I just wonder if the dual cards will boost as much as single cards??

[kalniel]

What would even need 8GB ?! Now if you could trun GPU RAM into RAM drives....then I'm interested!

I don't think anyone has suggested 8GB GPUs! 4GB is enough for now!

[Rob_B]

I don't think anyone has suggested 8GB GPUs! 4GB is enough for now!

8GB on one card would be as much as my system RAM!!

Was in repsonse to that

My dream of a GPU speed 8GB RAM disk still evades me

[kalniel]

Ah cool. Glossed over Cat's post for some reason

[DanceswithUnix]

Was in repsonse to that

My dream of a GPU speed 8GB RAM disk still evades me

Can be done under Linux, but speed is supposed to be quite poor

This discussion showed just 33MB/sec.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...s-swap-883900/