Radeon HD 7970 News: now available for purchase

[SSPrncVegeta]

Purchase:
Newegg

Reviews:
Hardware.info
VR-Zone
HardOCP
Guru3D
HEXUS
TechPowerUp
Overclockers
HardwareSecrets
Anandtech
HardwareHeaven
HardwareHeaven (Crossfire)
HotHardware
PCPerspective
KitGuru
HardwareCanucks
PCGamesHardware
TomsHardware
ExpertReviews
LegitReviews
NeoSeeker

Info:

MSRP: $550 USD (Source)
Release date: January 9, 2012 (Source)
Other cards (Source):

• Tahiti (high-end) - Radeon HD 7970, 7950, 7930
• Pitcairn (mid-level) - Radeon HD 7870, 7850
• Cape Verde (entry-level) - Radeon HD 7770, 7750

Conclusions:

So at the end of the day AMD has once again retaken the performance crown for single-GPU cards, bringing them back to a position they last held nearly 2 years ago with the 5870. To that AMD deserves kudos, and if you’re in the market for a $500+ video card the 7970 is clearly the card to get – it’s a bit more expensive than the GTX 580, but it’s reasonably faster and cooler al at once. However if you’ve been waiting for 28nm GPUs to bring about another rapid decrease in video card prices as we saw with the 5870, you’re going to be waiting a bit longer.

Source: Anandtech

Priced at an elitist US$549, the AMD Radeon HD 7970 is positioned to compete against Nvidia's 1 year old GTX580 3GB, which it bests considerably in most tests. We also saw the remarkable overclock frequency headroom and compute power that the 28nm 'Graphics Core Next' architecture delivered in our review, which is a promising baseline for AMD to build on for the next few product refreshes. Monthly driver updates over the next few months should also help increase the performance delta, especially in newly released titles like Batman: Arkham City/Skyrim and Crossfire scenarios.

What we really need now is some healthy competition from NVIDIA to bring prices down - their mysterious high end GK104/GK100 Kepler part isn't scheduled to come out anytime soon...

Source: VR-Zone

With the 7970 AMD offer us improvements over the 6900 series in performance and features which make it the best performing single GPU product available. It will however take time for all of the features to be fully utilised by software and hardware.

Source: HardwareHeaven


News:

Dec 19, 2011: AMD Radeon HD 7970 Design Details Leak Out

The Radeon HD 7000 utilizes a dual BIOS toggle switch, as seen with Radeon HD 6900 series. The first BIOS is "unprotected", which allows users to flash their "tweaked" BIOS to push the card even further. The second BIOS is "protected", which is a backup to the default settings just in case things don't go quite right with your "tweaked" BIOS. Cooling requirements haven't seen any major changes with only minor improvements to the design.

Source: TomsHardware

Dec 18, 2011: HD 7770 photos leaked

First pictures of AMD's mainstream card, HD 7770, have now been leaked online. This card is the first major upgrade to the HD 5770 in two years, since the HD 6770 was just a rebrand. It features the Cape Verde GPU, which replaces the Juniper GPU used in the HD 5770/HD 6770. The card looks somewhat different, with a large fan sitting on top of the GPU, blowing directly onto it and the card's length is the same as the HD 5770, at around 8.25 inches.

SPECIFICATIONS

• Three display outputs, DVI, HDMI and miniDisplayPort
• Single Crossfire connector for 2 cards max
• The reference PCB has four GDDR5 memory chips, implying a 128-bit memory interface
• Single 6-pin PCI-E power connector
• Around 100 Watts power consumption

Source: TechPowerUp

Dec 17, 2011: Radeon HD 7970 is around 30 percent faster

According to our sources, the Radeon HD 7970 is about 30 percent faster in 3DMark when compared to the Radeon HD 6970. These are early performance benchmarks made with the first "usable" driver.

According to the whispers that we are hearing right now, Radeon HD 7970 should end up about 30 percent faster than the HD 6970. These are 3DMark early performance numbers probably done with the 12.1 RC driver that was, at least according to our info, released two days ago. This should put the HD 7970 somewhere around Radeon HD 6990.

We are also hearing that the HD 7970 does even better in game benchmarks and we hope that we'll have more details regarding those pretty soon, as after all, game benchmarks are the ones that really matters when it comes to performance of graphics cards. We still don't know if there will be another driver before first reviews hit the net, but AMD usually holds the final driver as long as it can to control the performance leaks.

Some slides have leaked over at Donanimhaber showing that Tahiti might do a lot better when it comes to tesselation, but once again we are talking about AMD slides so we tend to tread lightly there.

In any case, we'll know for sure on 22nd of December.

Source: Fudzilla

Dec 15, 2011: AMD Radeon HD 7970 Specifications Leaked, 2048 Cores and 3GB VRAM

According to these specs, AMD’s upcoming GPU will be made up of 32 Compute Units for a total of 2048 streaming cores that operate at a 925MHz clock.

The number of texture units seems to be set at 128 just as expected, but contrary to what we had expected, the HD 7970 will pack just 32 ROP units just as it’s the case with the current Cayman cores.

This seems rather strange considering that the memory bus will be 384-bit wide, so I’ll guess that will have to wait for the official announcement to see if this is indeed right.

As far as the speed of the GDDR5 memory is concerned, this will be set at 1.37GHz (5.5GHz effective) in order to provide a whopping 264GB/s of memory bandwidth.

Power is delivered through a 6-pin and an 8-pin connector and the load TDP of the Radeon HD 7970 is rated at 300W while the idle board power is rated at an incredibly low 3W.

Finally, the embargo date mentioned in the slide is January 9, which corresponds with what was revealed by a previous report.

Source: Softpedia

Dec 8, 2011: AMD Southern Islands photos and speculation

A mysterious picture has been posted by a member of Beyond3D forums, capturing two next-gen AMD graphics cards in Crossfire. These new graphics cards are certainly enthusiast (and power hungry) products of the upcoming Southern Islands family, most likely to be Tahiti XT - expected to be branded Radeon HD 7970.

The first visual observation is that these cards are hefty and approximately 10 inches long - or around the same length as HD 6970. They contain 12 memory chips (as demarkated on the picture - the 12th being at the edge of the PCI-e connector), which suggests a memory interface of 384-bit - a novelty for AMD/ATI GPUs. There seems to be a provision for 2x8-pin PCI-e power connectors on the PCB - or upto 375W power. However, both cards are powered by the SIG approved 6-pin + 8-pin configuration, powering upto 300W. The two cards are powered by a 850W power supply. This is no doubt a power hungry card, and all this power seems to be fed through a mammoth 20 phase VRM.

The first Southern Islands / AMD Radeon HD 7000 series 28nm GPUs are set to release in January 2012, most likely around CES 2012 time. Whether it will be the above pictured enthusiast Tahiti / HD 7900 or the performance Pitcairn / HD 7800, as previously rumoured, remains to be seen.

Source: VR-Zone

[SlaveOnDope]

Love their power consumption analyze.

[The Dude]

I smell upgrade...

[Perkomate]

time to get a job and start saving. I wanna 7950!

[chadbobb]

Originally Posted by SlaveOnDope

Love their power consumption analyze.

I don't see an analysis

[BlakeFlies]

Give me another dually! That's what I'm waiting for. 7990 8Gb would be nice.

[Slizzo]

Originally Posted by BlakeFlies

Give me another dually! That's what I'm waiting for. 7990 8Gb would be nice.

8GB won't happen with a 384bit memory bus... 6GB would however... Probably would be 3GB in reality I would say though.

[Perkomate]

Originally Posted by Slizzo

8GB won't happen with a 384bit memory bus... 6GB would however... Probably would be 3GB in reality I would say though.

6gb is more than the amount of RAM I have total. Perhaps a little unnessecary.

[krone6]

Why are these pictures always blurry? Can they not just take 1-2 more seconds out of their lives?

[Czarspuppet]

I only really want to see how the new architecture core stacks up clock for clock against VLIW.

Additional Comment:

Oh, and the new cooling tech vs old air

[Odanez]

Originally Posted by krone6

Why are these pictures always blurry? Can they not just take 1-2 more seconds out of their lives?

it's because everyone has a smartphone, and not many actually have a proper digital camera.

[krone6]

Originally Posted by Odanez

it's because everyone has a smartphone, and not many actually have a proper digital camera.

There are pictures taken on 2mp cell phones from 2004 that look better than "high end" cameras. It's the skill of the camera user more than the camera itself. You'd be surprised how good those 2mp pictures can be. I think someone on here proved it to us.

[Odanez]

It depends more on the available light. A smartphone can make good pictures in adequate light. Dim it a bit and they suck ***. Anyway, not trying to derail the thread

[krone6]

Originally Posted by Odanez

It depends more on the available light. A smartphone can make good pictures in adequate light. Dim it a bit and they suck ***. Anyway, not trying to derail the thread

Uh oh, i hope i didn't either. Then i guess even with light some people just suck at picture taking. There's been some pictures on train with TONS of light (in the right direction) and they still came out blurry.

[The Dude]

Originally Posted by Czarspuppet

Additional Comment:

Oh, and the new cooling tech vs old air

What's this all about?

[BlakeFlies]

Originally Posted by Slizzo

8GB won't happen with a 384bit memory bus... 6GB would however... Probably would be 3GB in reality I would say though.

I'm a nut when it comes to ram. I can never have too much even if I never use it all. Especially if it ends up being the XDR2 ram chips. 3Gb per core would be nice but 2Gb is more likely realistic.

Source: www.nordichardware.com

[Czarspuppet]

Originally Posted by The Dude

What's this all about?

I dunno..
http://lenzfire.com/2011/10/amd-rade...cooling-27909/

I'm more curious how they're going to make that happen, as most ATI cards don't actually have ATI heatsinks...

Also a bit frustrated that the new architecture is only being released for the extreme performance cards.. 7800 will be bittersweet.

[SlaveOnDope]

quoted from LordEC911

Crossfire config is two 7970 ES.
Retail card should be ~210w TDP, 6+1 phase and 8+6pin.

VR-Zone's is a MSI 7950.
384bit and will come in both 1.5gb and 3gb flavors.
TDP is supposedly around 170-180w, 5+1phase and two 6pins.

VR-Zone attached

[Perkomate]

Originally Posted by Czarspuppet

I dunno..
http://lenzfire.com/2011/10/amd-rade...cooling-27909/

I'm more curious how they're going to make that happen, as most ATI cards don't actually have ATI heatsinks...

Also a bit frustrated that the new architecture is only being released for the extreme performance cards.. 7800 will be bittersweet.

so the only solution is to get a 7900? ****...

[N64link]

Originally Posted by krone6

Why are these pictures always blurry? Can they not just take 1-2 more seconds out of their lives?

A lot of people don't have a clue about macro mode, main problem. And they also can't frame a shot of hold still. (My hands shake too much most of the time)

Originally Posted by krone6

There are pictures taken on 2mp cell phones from 2004 that look better than "high end" cameras. It's the skill of the camera user more than the camera itself. You'd be surprised how good those 2mp pictures can be. I think someone on here proved it to us.

I hate when somebody ask me to take a picture of them, with their new 10-14 Mega Pixel camera and they have it set to 1MP mode. "Why don't you have it set to the higher resolution?" "But then it doesn't hold a lot of pictures."

Somewhat Back OT: If I wait a few more years my 9800 will be a good GPU again!