• Hardware

  • AMD’s Radeon 7970 Is Here: Your New Drool-Worthy Super GPU

The Radeon 7970 is packing some serious firsts: a brand new core design, and the world's first GPU using cool, efficient 28 nm transistors. But it's also designed, of course, to be fast as hell. Gamers, you're gonna want one.

The 7970's numbers are heavy as hell on paper: 3 GB of RAM, up to 32 internal computing units, the first use of PCI-E Gen 3, Direct X 11.1 support, and a fat, CPU-style L2 cache. That adds up to a potential six monitors gaming at once. And that's just with one—you can sling together up to four of these things at once. AMD is promising enormous gains over Nvidia's top cards—billing it as the world's fastest—but we'll hold off on judgment until we have something firmer than internal, synthetic benchmarks. Still, there's no reason to think this thing will be anything less than incredibly powerful, with both games (of course) and the bevy of desktop software it's capable of accelerating.

But it's not all about power! The 7970 is power with responsibility, or something. It's capable of ramping up its power consumption when needed—and scaling it down to practically zero when your desktop has been idling for a while. And it'll be quiet, unlike many GPU powerhouses—no leaf blower, if AMD is to be believed. They claim a new fan design and smarter ventilation angles will mean softer cooling. With all that horsepower, we hope so!
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What ever AMD does, NVidia will come and beat these specs.

Nvidia GTX 600 ?
Joe3dr wroteWhat ever AMD does, NVidia will come and beat these specs.

Nvidia GTX 600 ?
Not that I care which is better, but I just found this funny. Granted, when Nvidia releases GTX 600, someone could very well have said:

What ever Nvidia does, AMD will come and beat these specs.

AMD Radeon 8960?
nvidia > ati :/
how ?
features:
_______
Stable drivers (nvidia)
Cuda (nvidia)
physx (nvidia)
ESA (nvidia)
_________
Power! (ati)
awful drivers (ati)
heat problems (ati)
Nvidia is going to skip the 6xx series and go directly to 7xx series.
But, but, but i thought amd are fail!!! J/K

Yes nvidia will probably beat those specs but till they release that card AMD reigns supreme.

FYI: till GK100, gtx 780 (600 series are rebranded mobile oem), will be released in end of 2012. By that time amd will be refreshing these cards. So saying X will beat Y, while X doesnt have a card yet is pointless.
ibxoful wrotenvidia > ati :/
how ?
features:
_______
Stable drivers (nvidia)
Cuda (nvidia)
physx (nvidia)
ESA (nvidia)
_________
Power! (ati)
awful drivers (ati)
heat problems (ati)
Really? The way I actually see it is this:

Nvidia / AMD
-Slower driver releases, people waiting for the next driver (which comes in monthly intervals) / ALMOST EVERY DAY I see a new application profile supporting a game properly and major driver released are not to be taken lightly.
- CUDA? LOL / Supports OpenCL, a standard far more likely to survive than the proprietary CUDA which is basically used because people have no other alternative to turn to for faster GPU computation. Had AMD had the CUDA technology, I would go AMD for sure, only in GPUs though, but as OpenCL gains support, so does AMD, and so does my tendencies towards this brand.

-PhysX? LOL! / Same as OpenCL, basically the best way to move forward is to take things the Open way, as in, I would also prefer that DirectX die and OpenGL take over, had OpenGL received the developer support DirectX receives nowadays (hello again, no other solution, Linux / Mac users are usually left in the dark. Wanna play the latest game? Heck no problem, just install Vista. Remember that fiasco?? ONLY 33 games supported DirectX 10 when DirectX 11 came out! It's only in countries like this one that we have no such problem, our Windows INSTALLATION DISCS come bundled with a crack!)

-Power? Consumes it like there's no tomorrow! Just compare the Radeon 6970 and the GTX 580, which had been continuously trading blows at the high-end with each new driver release, and likewise compare the HD5870 and the GTX480, THIS one is not even a fair comparison!

- Heat problems? AMD?? hahahaha, refer to the power consumption comparison, and keep in mind that after all, heat is a function of power consumption, and it's not a well-known fact that Nvidia's stock coolers are any better than AMD's. They are both the purest forms of shit.
yasamoka wrote
ibxoful wrotenvidia > ati :/
how ?
features:
_______
Stable drivers (nvidia)
Cuda (nvidia)
physx (nvidia)
ESA (nvidia)
_________
Power! (ati)
awful drivers (ati)
heat problems (ati)
Really? The way I actually see it is this:

Nvidia / AMD
-Slower driver releases, people waiting for the next driver (which comes in monthly intervals) / ALMOST EVERY DAY I see a new application profile supporting a game properly and major driver released are not to be taken lightly.
- CUDA? LOL / Supports OpenCL, a standard far more likely to survive than the proprietary CUDA which is basically used because people have no other alternative to turn to for faster GPU computation. Had AMD had the CUDA technology, I would go AMD for sure, only in GPUs though, but as OpenCL gains support, so does AMD, and so does my tendencies towards this brand.

-PhysX? LOL! / Same as OpenCL, basically the best way to move forward is to take things the Open way, as in, I would also prefer that DirectX die and OpenGL take over, had OpenGL received the developer support DirectX receives nowadays (hello again, no other solution, Linux / Mac users are usually left in the dark. Wanna play the latest game? Heck no problem, just install Vista. Remember that fiasco?? ONLY 33 games supported DirectX 10 when DirectX 11 came out! It's only in countries like this one that we have no such problem, our Windows INSTALLATION DISCS come bundled with a crack!)

-Power? Consumes it like there's no tomorrow! Just compare the Radeon 6970 and the GTX 580, which had been continuously trading blows at the high-end with each new driver release, and likewise compare the HD5870 and the GTX480, THIS one is not even a fair comparison!

- Heat problems? AMD?? hahahaha, refer to the power consumption comparison, and keep in mind that after all, heat is a function of power consumption, and it's not a well-known fact that Nvidia's stock coolers are any better than AMD's. They are both the purest forms of shit.
when i meant power i mean its power in clock speed (textures/render/etc.. which is a good thing) :l
also directx has more features then opengl and u would know that most cards are direct x optimized and when u play a game in opengl u'll get a huge fps increase
ibxoful wrotewhen i meant power i mean its power in clock speed (textures/render/etc.. which is a good thing) :l
also directx has more features then opengl and u would know that most cards are direct x optimized and when u play a game in opengl u'll get a huge fps increase
Yup, unfortunately that's right. Though I do hope the idea of "coding to the metal" comes to life. Not having graphics APIs limiting us every 3 years is a good thing.
I never understood the need for such high-end hardware for us casual people.
One can easily play, say battlefield 3, on ultra settings with a sandy bridge i5 and a gtx460, on 60fps. Why would someone need a $800 GPU?
I'm sure sounding silly to some, but I'd like an answer...
peekaie wroteI never understood the need for such high-end hardware for us casual people.
One can easily play, say battlefield 3, on ultra settings with a sandy bridge i5 and a gtx460, on 60fps. Why would someone need a $800 GPU?
I'm sure sounding silly to some, but I'd like an answer...
Battlefield 3, as of today, runs 53FPS minimum on an AMD Radeon 7970 @ 1920x1080, Ultra, 4xAA, so yes, we always need faster hardware.

EDIT: Also, don't forget the new advents of GPU rendering. Some software require stacking as many current-gen high-end GPUs to make rendering jobs finish faster.
I had my first encounter with ATI in 1995-1996, ever since, the ATI drivers have always been a disappointment.
As was mentioned, NVIDIA has slow releases but to my experience, the drivers are stable.