So which would you go for and how much extra do you think the 7970 is worth?
I've obviously looked at benchmarks but you never know if they are on new or old drivers.
Oh and what make would you choose as well?
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So which would you go for and how much extra do you think the 7970 is worth?
I've obviously looked at benchmarks but you never know if they are on new or old drivers.
Oh and what make would you choose as well?
The 7970 is a tough recommendation so close to the 9970's launch. It is a fair way ahead in performance though - you're right that a lot of benchmarks are on very old drivers at pre-GHz clocks.
You're looking at a good 30% or so increase on a stock 7950 Boost to a stock 7970 at 1GHz.
A recent deal had a 7970 at £279, which is pretty good when the 7950s cost £240-£250.
Yeah I know what you mean, but I believe they are just releasing the 9970? Which going be estimates will be around the £450-500 mark, Im not sure when the 9950 is out?
I thought about waiting so you get the bargain 7000 series cards, but going by nvidia they take a few months to come through, so I'm guess I will end up constantly waiting?
The 9970 is expected to be due October, the 9950 shouldn't be too far behind. I'd expect it at similar prices to the 7970 at launch, around £400-500.
The 7950s and 7970s probably won't get massive discounts until they're made EOL (just like the GTX 670 is now). I'd expect some 7950 deals at around £200 very soon though.
It wasnt that long ago 7950s kept coming up at £200 then they went shooting up, but they are coming down again :) Ive seen them at about £215 so just waiting to see if the 7970s drop
The 7970s have come down a bit with deals. It was a Gigabyte Windforce at £279, which is pretty good for a custom cooled one.
I'm not sure we'll see the 7970s any lower than that for a while as it's AMD's best single-GPU card and all.
You can pick up a Asus HD 7950 DirectCU TOP @ Amazon for £199 Delivered
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008NF3R1I
Here are some recent comparisons with current cards and drivers:
Hardware.fr
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/900-...formances.html
(Using Catalyst 13.6 Beta2)
They got around 20% overall.
HT4U.NET
http://ht4u.net/reviews/2013/55_dire...st/index29.php
(Using Catalyst 13.5 Beta2)
They have the 7970GHz at 122% of the 7950 Boost.
Computerbase.de
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/g...760-im-test/4/
(Using Catalyst 13.2 Beta4 for most tests - except 7990 and 7790).
They have the 7970GHz at 123% of the 7950 Boost.
I'd link TPU but W1zzard doesn't have a 7950 Boost in there AFAIR.
The 7970 does use a fair bit more power though; the PCB's are generally well made and can handle it but on a poor case I guess the extra heat could make things noisy.
Is 20% extra performance worth 30% more cost? I'd say yes, as that's actually a good performance return on money spent considering you're at the high end and usually at the high end you spend much much more to get much less performance increase.
But then I am biased as run 7970s not 7950s :)
Butuz
Quote:
Our look at the reference Radeon HD 7950 and HD 7970 cards shows there to be a 15 per cent gap in performance in favour of the range-topping GPU. But raise the HD 7950's clocks to the higher speeds of the 7970 and the gap melts away to around five percent, often a little less, depending upon gaming title.
For me; the 7950 as long as it has a decent cooler. This was done in FEB 2012 prior to drivers maturing. In terms of sheer grunt it should still be similar.
You can get an MSI Twin Frozr 7950 inc games at ocuk for £190, offer just went live.
That's an amazing price! Pity it's a hit and miss when it comes to the weird 100% Fan issuesQuote:
Originally Posted by teppic
The fan issue is fixed, it's a revised model.
The 6 free games deal is only on the first 250 orders, so they may have run out by now.
I have pre ordered the msi 7970 as I am more comfortable with it and I don't think it suffers from the fan issue. I'm not convinced it is worth 70 more than the 7950 but hey at least I will know I have a decent card :)
The 7950 can be coaxed past stock 7970 speeds with relative ease, and most models can match or slightly exceed the GHz edition too.
Of course, the 7970 is a great clocker too so this gap can be increased again, but the bottom line is that both are great cards. With the new Never Settle Bundle on 79XX cards you can expect to offset the price by dozens of pounds too (if you don't want/need the games of course).
Yeah it is a msi twin frozr with the ghz core speed and 1050 boost and I believe they should overclock quite well as you can adjust the voltage :)