I haven't been keeping close tabs on this thing, as I do not buy cards when they are first released and I don't need to upgrade for a good while, but I have to say that I didn't expect it to be quite this beastly. It's very strong as a single card, but just as in the 6900 series, it becomes a fire breathing monster in Crossfire. It seems to stand up quite well to the $700 dual-GPU supercards and obliterates the GTX 580 SLI figures. I'll be curious to see how close the 7950 comes to the 7970 down the road. I've read AMD may lower the price of the 7970 to $475, but I'm sure it will still be priced gouged right back up to an insanely high price for awhile.
Pretty sure I'll be buying one if the price is reasonable enough for me. Same situation as when I got my 5870, no real idea of what nvidia are bringing out and more importantly when and I don't feel like I can wait that much longer. EDIT: The $475 price is the price for OEM partners like XFX, ASUS, HIS, MSI etc. Retail is still $550 apparently. The 5870 was gouged quite a bit due to competition being late, so the same will probably happen again. I expect prices up to $600USD unfortunately.
My card combo (CF 2x 6950) is doing quite well in that top graph, ranking just a few frames behind the mighty 6990. I wouldn't look at any 7900-series cards until something like an IceQ version of the 7950 became available, which I do not think will be for many moons from now. I'm not sure if I'll skip the 7900 generation or not. I guess it depends on how demanding games are a year or so from now. I can run any reasonably well optimized game currently at max or near max. It's usually only driver weirdness with AA or DX11 or simply being a Rockstar game that hangs me up with tech problems currently. I must say that I am a bit surprised at how potent the 7970 is.
so my 300 dollar purchase didn't go through. stupid me I was paying interest and late fees on interest for half a year on my newegg preferred card! Fuck me!! anyway I might just drop some coin on a pair of gtx 560s (NON Ti) when I get back, I have a triple sli motherboard, might as well use it right? With my 260 handling physx duties, that gets me greater than 7970 power at ~350 bucks. quite a dream right?? ~~ I may have to upgrade my psu as well though... got a 650 watt Tuniq (VERY efficient I'd bet my computers life on it!! ... I AM betting my computer's life on it...). Plus my Phenom II x3 will have to go... I DID want to wait for the new procs before I did though... :/ (just in case they DO decide to ressurect AM2+ with the new line of Phenom 2's) so maybe I'll just OC it... but that strains the PSU!! I should just get the Zosma (same power draw, more processing)... but that's only 400mhz and 1 more core and my mobo can't unlock (stupid Nvidea chipset :/) whatever.
What resolution are you trying to push, and what games are you trying to play? My monitor is pretty low resolution by today's standards (1680x1050), so I've been able to max pretty much every game with a 1GB/256-bit GTX 460, and have no intention of upgrading any time soon. Even Battlefield 3 ran great when I tried it. The GTX 460 and Radeon 5770/6770 are good, cheap options if you're gaming at lower resolutions.
Well, I guess Metro or Crysis (Assassin's Creed?) would be the most intensive, 1080p 'FullHD'. Not the most demanding, but still very satisfying for less than 400 dollars.
Crysis is a mystery to me. It doesn't use anywhere close to 100% of either card and certainly cannot max out my 2600K, yet it never runs that smoothly. I also have 8 GB of speedy RAM. Crossfire stutter? I give up. Bottom line: I wouldn't use Crysis as a benchmark for anything, as I'm not sure a setup exists that can run it at a locked 60 fps. Metro and Crysis both leave much to be desired with the optimization. They can challenge your system, but sometimes it's not clear why. I used the Battlefield games as benchmarks for cards in this thread because I think they are balanced enough in the optimization to both allow low end PCs to run it at playable frame rates at the bottom end and allow people with the high end rigs to push the envelope with demanding effects like HBAO. The last couple of games from the franchise have also had very respectable scaling in Crossfire and SLI.
Crysis is one of those games like GTA4 that's just poorly optimized. I don't think it runs perfectly on anything.
The 7970 is going for ~$550 on newegg, although most of them are sold out. I'm curious to see how Nvidia's next line of cards compares to the 7900 series.
To be honest, I'm not impressed at all. The card itself costs $550+, and is only a bit faster than a GTX 580. I paid $600 several months ago for two GTX 570's during a sale, and I couldn't be happier with it.
I was about to get two 560's for about 350 bucks (300 after rebate), it woulda given me about 7970 performance... it woulda been two cards though and two 7970 would still smoke it. But for the money it's still VERY good. Something's wrong with my NE Prefferred account so it didn't go through but... Be cheaper to just get two 6950's that perform better but... AKS already beat me to that one and I can't bring myself to 'copy' him lol.
It's a bit faster single card vs. single card. In Crossfire, the 7970 smokes the GTX 580 by a substantial margin.
I think 2x 6950s in CF is the best performance-to-price bargain in that range. It's almost as powerful as the 6990, at least in the resolution I use. The main thing I'd recommend with this card is to go with a manufacturer that does not use stock cooling. The typical fan makes an unpleasant sound. HIS IceQ is the way to go: I was stunned at the difference between the cooling system of the HIS (nearly silent fan, around 15 degrees C cooler on average despite having XFX's hot air blown directly onto it, huge heat sink) and XFX (off the shelf crap, loud and hot, screams "budget" parts) cards I bought for a similar price.
AMD makes a comeback with the 7970 GHz edition. http://www.pcworld.com/article/258168/amd_radeon_hd_7970_ghz_edition_review.html http://www.anandtech.com/show/6025/radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition-review-catching-up-to-gtx-680/19
I'm really not surprised. I think they could gain even more ground if they got their drivers in order and released in a timely manner. As of today, the last significant driver update (as in 12.4; not a CAP) was nearly 2 months ago now. On the other hand, Nvidia has also recently screwed the pooch with their own driver mishaps.
It's been weeks, but is the GTX680 even still available?? According to a quick look at newegg it seems their still a little scarce The 670s come out in decent numbers but seems most of the 680s are sold out. the first page is full of 7970 and 78xx cards but no 680s just a few 670s.
I've occasionally seen a GTX 680 available on newegg. I also saw that they had the signature edition of the GTX 690 for $1050. AMD has a fair point that the "launch" of the GTX 680 has in many ways been more on paper than in reality, as it's very difficult to find one.
I just ordered the value version.. the radeon 7770. the xfx double d cup version. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150599 I could've paid a little more for the radeon 6870 which is a lot better... but the 7770 is not loud.. at all. it is as loud as my current radeon 4870 idling when it's under load.
tell us if you think it's built well enough for you. I've had bad XFX cards and AKS there is always complaining about his. But I know with Powercolor it's like 1 in every 3 or 4 is a good one. Just curious how you fare.
It just arrived today and is fine. Hard to compare since my radeon 4870 1GB was considered fairly high end back in the day so the HIS model I got was big and heavy.. and extremely loud. This XFX radeon 7700 is marketed as more of a value performance model and light weight and low noise so it fits that perfectly. You can barely hear the fan up the rpm when it's under load. I'm basically testing it on Ghost Recon Future Soldier since that game is horribly optimized and ran terrible on my 4870. I had to turn off ambient occlusion and bump details to low. I maxed them all on this card and it runs perfectly. It only has one pci-e power connection and is one inch shorter than my radeon 4870 1GB. http://i.imgur.com/7AVmX.jpg http://i.imgur.com/3a0hl.jpg