Pre-ordering the AMD Radeon 7970

[baN893]

Hi Guys,

It's almost 2012, and I am starting to wonder where, how, and when we are going to be able to pre-order AMD's newest creation. Does any one of you know?

All the best and a happy new year,

baN

 

[raybay]

I wouldn't want to order it until it has been released, and the word circulates on how it is performaing... It seems to us, that the early models of anything are too often a disappointment.

 

[baN893]

So what is the word on the street?

 

[dividebyzero]

Word on the street ? It's a graphics card, not an episode of "The Wire"

You might take note of the stock levels for OC.UK as a guideline. The usually have access to a lions share of a new card. Note the relative stock level pics posted in the first reply (HD 6970 vs 7970 ) :
This does not auger well for the availability, nor keeping the model at manufacturer recommended pricing.

Of the 20+ reviews on the web, most compare their testing against the previous single-card performance leader- the GTX 580. A card not noted for it's performance-per-$. Of those reviews the average performance gain is 13.4% ( 1920x1080/1200, 2560x1600 only, maximum image quality only) for a 16.8% increase in price...assuming that the GTX 580's price isn't lowered, and that the 7970 sells as MSRP.

 

[red1776]

It might be interesting to see if there are performance differences in the Jan 9th launch. i have heard from a normally reliable source that the first round of review cards may have been throttling back a bit prematurely. it will be interesting to see if this is true, or if they clock them up another 100Mhz or so.

 

[baN893]

Word on the street ? It's a graphics card, not an episode of "The Wire"

xD ROFL

If those pictures are indeed an accurate representation of the availability of the 7970 to the 6970 (my guess is they are since issues with the 28nm process have been noted prior to the announcement on December 22nd), there's only going to be somewhere between 10%-25% of 7970s compared to 6970s available at the release... :/

I hope Santa keeps his promise and lets me get one of them bad boys...

 

[Buckshot420]

Word on the street ? It's a graphics card, not an episode of "The Wire"

I laughed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SO40ansNU8
"We used to build **** in this country. Make ****. Now we just stick our hand in the next guy's pocket."

-Frank Sobotka

 

[dividebyzero]

It might be interesting to see if there are performance differences in the Jan 9th launch. i have heard from a normally reliable source that the first round of review cards may have been throttling back a bit prematurely. it will be interesting to see if this is true, or if they clock them up another 100Mhz or so.

Who's the source? John Fruehe ?
Sounds closer to a wish list than reality from reviews out there. While I've no doubt that there's OC headroom in the tank, the binning of these cards is all over the place. You've got a good percentage of sites maxing Overdrive at 1125MHz (and Legit Reviews hitting 1165) which leaves 100+ in the tank for AIB's to exploit with vendor OC cards- all good there...
Now, the other half or more of sites range from 1015/1025 MHz (Kitguru- 90 over stock, PC Per 100 over) through ~1045-1078 (Hardwareluxx, Techspot, Hexus, TPU, Hadware Canucks, HT4U etc.), which leaves precious little OC headroom -if any- with the new default clock at 1025...unless of course AMD are going to hike vCore past the already sizeable 1.17v...which of course would also call more a more aggressive fan profile even with a more rigorous load throttling BIOS.

I'm making the assumption that the review samples are either cherry picked or worst-case scenario, production line examples...so I'd think that AMD would either be screwing AIB's over on OC headroom, or force them to pump up voltage/run third party coolers and bin a good percentage as HD 7950's (at a more relaxed 900 core).

You see any other way around bumping core speed for those GPU's unable to clock past ~1075 (allowing for a 50MHz OC headroom/ safety margin) ?

 

[red1776]

The bumping of the vcore for the jan 9 release was merely a musing on my part as they seem to have some pretty good OC room left in them. the bigger point was that what I heard (as i said) from a usually reliable source, was that the throttling may have been a bit off and premature on the initial round of samples. if true, this would hurt performance to some degree. I think it will be interesting to see if the performance is bumped up a bit when they reappear on jan 9th. I hold out this possibility as the review samples were handed out with an eyedropper....I don't think they were done binning these things yet:haha: At any rate I will be watching for slightly different results from the jan 9th round of benches to see if this theory was correct. As far as the vcore needed/used, with the paper (get them on the books by end of year) launch. who knows what might come out of a completed binning process

 

[dividebyzero]

The bumping of the vcore for the jan 9 release was merely a musing on my part as they seem to have some pretty good OC room left in them.

True enough if AMD bin the 1100+M GPU's for 7970, and everything less as 7950. Which kind of begs the question; How much variability is there in TSMC's 28nm process, and what kind of yield are AMD getting for the top bin ? Remember that AMD are yet to set aside binned low-vo CPU's for the 7990.

the bigger point was that what I heard (as i said) from a usually reliable source, was that the throttling may have been a bit off and premature on the initial round of samples.

Should be easy enough to ascertain even removing the vagaries of non-standard game settings, simply by noting power consumption at full load. The card is presently pulling 264-270w under max load. It would be helpful if the sites that have already reviewed will do so again...on the plus side, there's probably not a lot of graphics hardware coming out so sites may jump at the chance for review page views, on the minus side- some sites wouldn't do much more than an update (two full reviews on the exact same product smacks of company PR) unless it's bundled with a 7950 / CFX review.

if true, this would hurt performance to some degree. I think it will be interesting to see if the performance is bumped up a bit when they reappear on jan 9th. I hold out this possibility as the review samples were handed out with an eyedropper....I don't think they were done binning these things yet:haha:

Possible. New process is bound to give better results as it matures, but generally, vendors don't give out gimped samples for review, and I would have thought that PC Partner would have done some preliminary binning of the cards on hand. Three weeks between paper launch and actual launch suggests that all the launch and review cards are of the same tranche of wafers and the delay is more a product of getting the cut dies into a GPU package and on the boards.

At any rate I will be watching for slightly different results from the jan 9th round of benches to see if this theory was correct.

As will I.

As far as the vcore needed/used, with the paper (get them on the books by end of year) launch. who knows what might come out of a completed binning process

I'm not expecting this series to differ much from the previous (HD6/5/4xxx) series tbh.
Average bins for reference based cards made by PC Partner with AIB's stickers plastered to them.
Low bins for AIB budget money-makers (fewer PCB layer count, budget power componentry)
High bins reserved for vendor OC special editions, with a trickle of low voltage optimized GPU's for the duallie 7990.

For me, a good indicator of how good the arch/process is, is how many salvage parts materialize:
40nm early: HD 5850 at launch, HD 5830 originally unannounced-arrives midway through the product cycle
40nm late : HD 6950 at launch, HD 6930 originally unannounced-arrives very late in the product cycle
28nm early: HD 7950 at launch, HD 7890 all but announced for one quarter after launch.