AMD's HD7970 is ready for action! The most effiency and fastest card on earth.

[Qaridarium]

English news:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/22/radeon_hd_7970/

German news:
http://www.golem.de/1112/88610.html
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldu...e-1399905.html




Noise level:3,5 Sone(C't) - 4,2 Sone(Golem)
Idle measured by German C't=5 Watt (AMD claim 3 watt)
average consuming measured (C't)=198 Watt (official TDP 250 watt)
Up to 30% faster than the GTX580
Ram Bandwidth 264 GByte/s
support for ECC RAM
Compute speed: DP: 0,95 TFlops / SP:3,79 TFlops
(Open source-friendly)Video Codec Engine/VCE

The only downside: google translate: "Unfortunately, OpenGL comes in four-run driver again AMD's weakness to light, which breaks a strong performance"
"Leider kommt im OpenGL-4-Durchlauf wieder AMDs Treiberschwäche ans Licht, die Performance bricht stark ein"C't(heise)


OpenGL on HD7970 is shit but all other stuff is good.

[AlbertP]

It means that AMD is still much better at DirectX. On nVidia cards, OpenGL is generally a lot faster than on AMD cards, even on GPU's with equal DirectX performance on Windows.

But on Linux we don't use DirectX except for Wine and Gallium3D. We're stuck with OpenGL which is slower on AMD cards.

[Qaridarium]

It means that AMD is still much better at DirectX. On nVidia cards, OpenGL is generally a lot faster than on AMD cards, even on GPU's with equal DirectX performance on Windows.

But on Linux we don't use DirectX except for Wine and Gallium3D. We're stuck with OpenGL which is slower on AMD cards.

right now yes. i think the openGL speed up driver comes 3 month later.

sure OpenGL is not so important for amd.

i'm sure OpenCL is the future graphic engine with "ray-tracing"

[AlbertP]

For other AMD GPU's the OpenGL speed up also didn't come 3 months later. I don't expect them to fix this suddenly when 1 reviewer writes about it.

[Kjella]

But on Linux we don't use DirectX except for Wine and Gallium3D. We're stuck with OpenGL which is slower on AMD cards.

Wine does not use DirectX natively, it implements the same APIs using OpenGL so effectively they're the same. I heard there was a DirectX state tracker for Gallium3D but I've never heard of anyone using it, I don't think it's usable for anything yet (and IMO probably never will be).

[Qaridarium]

For other AMD GPU's the OpenGL speed up also didn't come 3 months later. I don't expect them to fix this suddenly when 1 reviewer writes about it.

the speed up come because of: idtech5/rage

[curaga]

It means that AMD is still much better at DirectX. On nVidia cards, OpenGL is generally a lot faster than on AMD cards, even on GPU's with equal DirectX performance on Windows.

Just curious, does this still stand with the artificial limiting of OpenGL Nvidia did on the 400 and 500 series? (google it if you haven't heard, I recall threads here on phoronix too).

[Qaridarium]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/gra...0-3gb-review/4

YES! the HD7970 beats the gtx580 and gtx590 in ARMA2-OA

min fps: 66fps HD7970 vs 50 fps GTX580

the HD7970 is 32% faster!

[Kano]

And you really think nvidia will launch a next gen product that is slower than something from amd? You need to wait most likely a bit longer, maybe 1-3 month for highend version.

[Ansla]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/gra...0-3gb-review/4

YES! the HD7970 beats the gtx580 and gtx590 in ARMA2-OA

min fps: 66fps HD7970 vs 50 fps GTX580

the HD7970 is 32% faster!

Raw performance is not really that impressive, the gtx590 beats it in most other tests, and AMD's own HD6990 is faster in almost every test, what is really impressive is the power usage, especially when idle.

Lets hope this low power usage will allow AMD to later release a HD7990 that will also impress with it's raw power alone.