30 replies to this topic

[Remarius]

Going to eat a bit of humble pie here. Went back to read about 4 long reviews...

Base line is that the card is a nice improvement over the stock model.

However, the vast majority of the improvement isn't in the card at all its in the driver. The stock 7970 with the new driver can easily match the GHZ currently. The dirty thing is though - all the better bin parts will now no longer be used in the base product so the ability to overclock them so well will drop as the old stocks disappear.

Unlike some of their other products the GHZ also has very bad noise and heat parameters, plus once you hit average load the power draw jumps from very good to very bad.

Luckily the heat side is easily handled by stripping out the stock cooler and replacing it - no idea why they went with such a worthless cooler though in the base model.

Currently I can't see a reason why you'd use a GHZ over the 7970 itself with the new driver unless you want to buy a pre-overclocked product and are willing to pay a premium for that.

But very nice work AMD on that new driver.

[Vulpesveritas]

Natedog, on 22 June 2012 - 08:30 AM, said:

Well that changes everything.....

I will say this, I hope you are right and that this will overclock just as well as the regular one (I.E. instead of hitting 1.1Ghz regularly they hit 1.2 or higher on a regular basis). I am also interested in how this chip will perform in an overclock as well.

Well, given that all the reviews showed the GHZ edition on stock PCB and cooler overclocking to about the same point as the MSI Lightning hits on air, I would say that it's looking decently okay there. The quesiton is will it get any higher on non-stock PCBs.

[Dark Fact]

Gonna agree with Remarius here. The true improvement here is in the driver. (As noted in the Anandtech review, however, NVIDIA also released a performance driver at the same time. )

The 7970 GE is a disappointment. And this is coming from someone who switched from NVIDIA to AMD before. The hardware had no changes whatsoever. Even the chip revision is unchanged. All they are doing is taking the best binned chips from the old 7970 and charging more money for them, made changes to the BIOS to add the Turbo feature and pumped them with more power.

The result is that the 7970 caught up with the 680 in gaming performance overall. No, the 7970 didn't really outperform the 680, it merely closed at the gap between the two. Performance advantages vary with each game, there's no need to debate that. But that is fine considering the 7970GE now has the same MSRP as the 680.

Except you have to take a look at the sacrifices they made to get there: The 7970 GE's power draw sucks, literally.

The 7970GE draws 67W more than the 680, and 38W more than the old 7970.

Consequently, temperatures also went up pretty harshly:


And the temps went up despite the poor stock cooler working much harder than it does on the old 7970, generating way too much noise:

Congratulations, AMD, on beating the dual-GPU 590 in noise intensity, LOL.
63.2 dBA in OCCT, too, almost a whole 11 dBA worse than the 680...

Source: Anandtech


Most of us were expecting AMD to be launching the 7970GE with a lower voltage than they have. We were expecting power and noise to remain about the same, while improving performance. AMD failed on two key metrics here. Custom coolers will improve the picture a bit when it comes to temps and noise, but you have to remember to compare apples to apples. The GTX 680 used for comparison also used a stock cooler. Ultimately, with custom coolers, the NVIDIA card will still run much cooler and quieter.

Edited by Dark Fact, 22 June 2012 - 09:35 AM.

[Gettothechoppa]

I gave up on AMD a long time ago, the graphics cards are unreliable. Bad drivers etc. I'll wait another year and upgrade my card.

[Vulpesveritas]

Dark Fact, on 22 June 2012 - 09:24 AM, said:

Gonna agree with Remarius here. The true improvement here is in the driver.

The 7970 GE is a disappointment. And this is coming from someone who switched from NVIDIA to AMD before. The hardware had no changes whatsoever. Even the chip revision is unchanged. All they are doing is taking the best binned chips from the old 7970 and charging more money for them, made changes to the BIOS to add the Turbo feature and pumped them with more power.

The result is that the 7970 caught up with the 680 in gaming performance overall. No, the 7970 didn't really outperform the 680, it merely closed at the gap between the two. Performance advantages vary with each game, there's no need to debate that. But that is fine considering the 7970GE now has the same MSRP as the 680.

Except you have to take a look at the sacrifices they made to get there: The 7970 GE's power draw sucks, literally.

The 7970GE draws 67W more than the 680, and 38W more than the old 7970.

Consequently, temperatures also went up pretty harshly:


And the temps went up despite the poor stock cooler working much harder than it does on the old 7970, generating way too much noise:

Congratulations, AMD, on beating the dual-GPU 590 in noise intensity, LOL.
63.2 dBA in OCCT, too, almost a whole 11 dBA worse than the 680...

Source: Anandtech


Most of us were expecting AMD to be launching the 7970GE with a lower voltage than they have. We were expecting power and noise to remain about the same, while improving performance. AMD failed on two key metrics here. Custom coolers will improve the picture a bit when it comes to temps and noise, but you have to remember to compare apples to apples. The GTX 680 used for comparison also used a stock cooler. Ultimately, with custom coolers, the NVIDIA card will still run much cooler and quieter.

Yeah... Anandtech seems somewhat different than every other review I saw, at least on the using more power than a 580 bit there. Still quite true.
I did have higher hopes for this card. Though it would be interesting to see if one of the partner fabs get something interesting.
But yes, it is mostly in the driver. Good job on that AMD, now find a new marketing department.

Gettothechoppa, on 22 June 2012 - 09:34 AM, said:

I gave up on AMD a long time ago, the graphics cards are unreliable. Bad drivers etc. I'll wait another year and upgrade my card.

Umm... what? The graphics cards are just as reliable as Nvidia ones, unless you've just had poor luck. While some would argue bad drivers.. umm.. no not really. unless you don't actually update your drivers ever... in which case you'll have the same issue with Nvidia much of the time. Harware wise, they're just as reliable as Nvidia cards.

Edited by Vulpesveritas, 22 June 2012 - 09:37 AM.

[cipher]

I hope you guys know that a binned chip is not "made" to operate any faster than a regular chip. Binning just means that they stress tested the chip and it performs above spec for the chip (ie: overclocks higher/more stable), so they move it to a bin to save for factory-overclocked chips. Sometimes these chips can also be set for a higher clock speed and sold as completely different models.

But it's still not a chip "made" to be any faster than spec, as its test results just flagged it as being more stable at higher speeds. IOW, it's possible to get a GPU/CPU that would have been binned for a different model on a reference model, especially early in the production cycle.

Edited by cipher, 22 June 2012 - 09:50 AM.

[Dark Fact]

Yep, I'm pretty sure that most of us understand how binning works.

With regards to that, though.. I feel bad for AMD's manufacturing partners right now. Before this move, the partners could bin the chips themselves and pocket the difference by selling factory overclocked models with them. Now it seems that AMD will be keeping some of that difference for themselves.

Oh, and for those wondering about the driver improvement stuff, here's a good summary:

Source: Anandtech

Just keep in mind that this is the old 7970 vs the 680, and not the GE version.

Edited by Dark Fact, 22 June 2012 - 10:01 AM.

[Chiyeko Kuramochi]

For those interested here is a competition to win one of these new cards of Saphire (so with OC etc)

http://hexus.net/tec...t2-ghz-edition/

Enter and who knows I know I did

[Vulpesveritas]

In any case, the ROG Matrix just hit my list of "Cards I wish I could have but probably won't ever be able to afford so long as I have college looming upon me."

[Damocles]

Vulpesveritas, on 22 June 2012 - 08:03 PM, said:

In any case, the ROG Matrix just hit my list of "Cards I wish I could have but probably won't ever be able to afford so long as I have college looming upon me."

Drop out and learn a trade: problem solved

[Vulpesveritas]

Damocles, on 22 June 2012 - 08:36 PM, said:

Drop out and learn a trade: problem solved

I happen to know a trade quite well thank you very much.

Unfortunately most people want you to have a college degree for it. Not to mention my long term goals.


All aside, cooler things will come in the future.