Official Radeon 7970 Review and discussion thread

[Roadhog]

Originally Posted by shadow001

Finally got the displays and hooked everything up, calibrated them identically in brightness and colors and contrast with a friend who's a photographer and wow, these are some gorgeous displays with a huge amount of flexibility and increadible image quality, however there is an issue that i never though would be a problem....


Seems that i need to relocate the PC under the desk rather than beside the desk, as the video cable for the third monitor( the one that's further from the tower), will only display it's native resolution of 2560*1440 when said cable is a maximum of 6 ft long, regardless if it's Dual link DVI or Display port....At longer cable lenghts(tried with a 10 ft long one) it's limited to 1920*1080 wich looks like crap btw.


Just a quick heads up before i move the tower under the desk and closer to that third monitor.....

Get a pic in a dark room with them displaying a black image, long shutter speed too.

Also, my 10ft dual link dvi works fine for 2560x1400.

[shadow001]

Originally Posted by Roadhog

Get a pic in a dark room with them displaying a black image, long shutter speed too.

Also, my 10ft dual link dvi works fine for 2560x1400.

No backlight bleed at all with the brightness set to 20%, and maybe the samsungs are fussier, but i now placed the tower under the desk and in such a way that 6 Ft dual link DVI cables are long enough for all 3 monitors and now everything is perfect across all 3 displays...


Edit:The time has come for benchmarks and seeing what the GTX580's are really made of....

[shadow001]

Originally Posted by slaWter

Just get a longer quality cable. I have an old 5m Dual Link DVI cable from the Dell 3007 days and it still works fine.

I guess i got to find at least 1 that's at least 8 feet long, while the rest stay the same so i can put the tower back in it's original location.....Anyhow, i'll only post this one result that says everything and simply can't be run with AA enabled at all, but puts a hell of a show on 3 screens...






Says everything right there....3 GTX580's with no AA enabled so it isn't running out of memory on the video cards are getting their asses kicked pretty hard...

[Roadhog]

Originally Posted by shadow001

I guess i got to find at least 1 that's at least 8 feet long, while the rest stay the same so i can put the tower back in it's original location.....Anyhow, i'll only post this one result that says everything and simply can't be run with AA enabled at all, but puts a hell of a show on 3 screens...






Says everything right there....3 GTX580's with no AA enabled so it isn't running out of memory on the video cards are getting their asses kicked pretty hard...

lmfao, make a new thread for this, please.

[Muppet]

Well, it looks like this card will be just as expensive at launch as the 6990. Ouch.


http://www.computerlounge.co.nz/comp...p?partid=16184

[MUYA]

Expect some price gouging until supplies stabilize

[Muppet]

Originally Posted by MUYA

Expect some price gouging until supplies stabilize

Jeez, you're not kidding. I thought it would launch somewhere in between the 6970 and 6990, which is a faster card except where crossfire doesn't scale. $1100 down here is highway robbery. I can get 2 6970's for that price.

[Viral]

Originally Posted by slaWter

Isn't it similar for Australia? I thought you guys also have to pay much more for everything compared to US customers.

Our dollar is a lot stronger now than it was a few years back, so sometimes we only pay as little as 10% more (tax), othertimes it's still 40% or more for no apparent reason, depending on what the item is. Monitors are sometimes cheaper for some reason.. the Samsung S27A850D that shadow just bought three of can be had for just over $700 here. The Dell U2711 is also $50 cheaper on the AU site than the US site... However other monitors like HP's ZR30w and just about every 30" monitor are around $400 more, just a supply and demand thing really.

Video cards are around 10-15% more than US on average right now, which is better than they've ever been. I used to pay 600-700 for one step down from high end (9800pro 128MB and 6800GT OC) back in 03-04, then in 08 I could buy ultra high end for the same price because of the dollar (4870x2).

Anyhow if they cost $550 in the US the most they should charge here is $650, but with price gouging I'm expecting that to be the cheapest we will see them

I will hopefully be able to pick up a 7970 for a reasonable price, I really can't follow what Nvidia are doing and once again don't feel like I can wait for them. To me, GK104 although not their high end Kepler should be faster than 7970, but I believe the limit will be memory bandwidth. AMD suddely have the best memory controller out, until the fully fledged Kepler later in the year with a 512-bit bus NV have to at least match AMD in memory clock speed for the first time since DX9 times. I have a feeling that is what we will see - GK104 being up to 50% faster than 580, but often on par with 7970 simply because the memory bandwidth is likely to be exactly the same. Pair that with the fact that I really can't hold any water as to what exactly it will be and when exactly it will be released and I just can't justify waiting.

[shadow001]

Originally Posted by Viral

I will hopefully be able to pick up a 7970 for a reasonable price, I really can't follow what Nvidia are doing and once again don't feel like I can wait for them. To me, GK104 although not their high end Kepler should be faster than 7970, but I believe the limit will be memory bandwidth. AMD suddely have the best memory controller out, until the fully fledged Kepler later in the year with a 512-bit bus NV have to at least match AMD in memory clock speed for the first time since DX9 times. I have a feeling that is what we will see - GK104 being up to 50% faster than 580, but often on par with 7970 simply because the memory bandwidth is likely to be exactly the same. Pair that with the fact that I really can't hold any water as to what exactly it will be and when exactly it will be released and I just can't justify waiting.

Well if we go by the naming designations of fermi based products, the original Fermi was the GF100, while the one in the GTX580 is the GF110, while the GF104 is the code name for the GTX 460/560/560 TI cards, and they're intended to compete with the HD6800 series, never mind the 6900 cards.


So if the GK104(k stands for kepler), is the followup to the GF104(F for fermi), it'll obviously be faster but like the info floating about claims, they're not aimed for the HD7970 at all to begin with, but more towards the HD7800 series....


The one to look for to beat the HD7970 will probably carry the GK100 designation, and that's the one that nothing is known about except a potential release sometime in Q2 or even Q3 2012.

[Roadhog]

http://kingpincooling.com/forum/show...9054#post19054

[Muppet]

Originally Posted by Roadhog

http://kingpincooling.com/forum/show...9054#post19054

I have a feeling the Sandy Bridge-E was severely holding those cards back

[K007]

Originally Posted by Muppet

Well, it looks like this card will be just as expensive at launch as the 6990. Ouch.


http://www.computerlounge.co.nz/comp...p?partid=16184

lmao!! that is just daylight robbery...

Originally Posted by Roadhog

http://kingpincooling.com/forum/show...9054#post19054

hmm thats just a bit insane lol