Personal computing discussed
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Game_boy wrote:The only official thing said by Nvidia is that the 28nm process is having yield issues. Not sure if AMD or TSMC have confirmed that.
Game_boy wrote:The only official thing said by Nvidia is that the 28nm process is having yield issues. Not sure if AMD or TSMC have confirmed that.
Aloeus wrote:Game_boy wrote:The only official thing said by Nvidia is that the 28nm process is having yield issues. Not sure if AMD or TSMC have confirmed that.
I believe AMD said its 28nm yields were fairly good
--k wrote:AMD needs to eat some humble pie with the inflated Radeon 7xxx prices. Don't fail me Nvidia
Jon wrote:This is all very interesting news and I'm keeping my left eyebrow tilted in an angular fashion as so ^ for the time being.
I.S.T. wrote:I don't see why the Radeon HD 7970 prices are super inflated per se compared to the 500 or so dollar GTX 580... Which is slower than the 7970.
Much, much higher than I'd like, yes, but they were going oit be high anyway. The wonders of a new arch and a new process.
oddjobman wrote:Why do you say that? If someone has the money to spend and they want the fastest single card available - not close to the fastest, but truly the fastest - then the 7970 is currently that card and there's nothing particularly "foolish" about it unless you're funding the purchase by underfunding other more important responsibilities in life - and that rule covers every purchase you can make.In real life only a fool would buy one 7970. There are many cards on the market which could come close to it
I think it's already special with a single serving. Two 7970s would require a remarkably expensive mulit-monitor configuration to even be useful. If you're gaming on a single monitor then a second 7970 is effing useless.what makes the 7970 special is when you start using them in crossfire.
Well, first off, the rumor is that the GTX 680 will use less power than the 7970 or be more "power efficient" which means that it may use a little more power but it will serve up more than an equal amount of performance for it. But that is, in all truthfulness, genuinely irrelevant. It takes years for the wattage difference between any two competing cards to "pay off" the difference in the price between the cards. So it's just a silly justification. Now in terms of that extra power consumption contributing to heating up the computer case and contributing to faster spinning and therefor noisier fans, well that's very valid, but that's not always a given. If the card efficiently vents out of the case then it will hardly make difference over the other card and may even prove better if the lower power consuming card is rather inefficient at venting heat.In real terms the 7970 will work out cheaper than buying the equivalent keplar because of the temperatures and power used.
Meh, that's mostly a non-issue. Again, GTX 680 is supposed to have pretty lower power consumption by the rumors. And also, anyone running such powerful multi-card setups is going to have a very high quality PSU and high wattage PSU that would be able to handle more than the difference between the cards. You're going to be talking about people moving FROM a GTX 580 SLI or HD 6970 XF, so these folks are going to have beefy and capable power supplies.you dont need as powerful a psu or as many coolers as with earlier series and yet keplar will still be watt guzzling monkeys. so once you take into account all of that you see they arent as expensive as you think because you save money in other areas just because you have them and not nvidia.
Two 7950's and "value". Alright, if you say so. Usually people sporting such configurations aren't value shoppers and I think most people would not consider your two 7950s a "value purchase".personally I have two 7950's because i believe they are the best value.
My old boss has a saying that's rather crude but true - think in one hand and crap in the other and tell me what you've got. I'm personally a big fan of riding the speculation train but there's a difference between speculating and believing. Rumors are that GTX 680 will outperform the HD 7970 by 15% on average, so the 7970 would need a 15% overclock just to pull even. If the GTX 680 has any overclocking headroom then it will start to get difficult to OC a HD 7970 enough to keep up.I also believe that once keplar comes out they will release an update which will blow away the competition. I think that is the reason they are quietly confident of being above the competition even with the arrival of keplar.
I reckon there's a lot of Radeon brand favoritism in your post.I also reckon they will release the 7990 and that will be a monster.
oddjobman wrote:Oh yay an internet argument! Anyway, I tend to buy Radeons, as my sig illustrates, but I also try my hardest to be completely unbiased and equally is critical of all products and companies.and i reckon you are a nvidia fanboy.
It's designed for playing video games. You only need one card to use it as it was designed.the reason i said only a fool would buy just one is because you arent really using it for what its designed for.
The 68xx cards usually provided nearly ideal crossfire scaling. It's great news that the 7xxx series improves this even more, but I haven't seen any review and until I saw TechReports microstuttering analysis of 7xxx XF configs I won't take anything for granted. But even so, it's a bit goofy to say it's foolish to just have a single GPU.even ocd there are games which will struggle at the highest res. in the past crossfire meant that your second catd would add a percentage to your speed fps etc, the 7970 in crossfire doubles it.
There are a whole lot of additional burdens that the 6990 brings with it: price, power, noise, card length, the occasional lack of a XF profile, and price, price, price. I can switch terms to avoid the technicality and say "people who want the fastest GPU". And some people really want just that and are not interested in XF/SLI and I think that's a very reasonable position. And I also think that most would go for two 6970s before going for one 6990; heck the 6990 is actually the card that makes the most sense to be paired up with another because as a single card it's bested by 6970 XF and because of it's size and cost; the only way you can scale past those limitations is, while counterintuitive, to get two of them.secondly on its own the 7970 is not the fastest card out there so again you would be foolish just to by one because its the fasyest. if you are only wanting one card and want the fastest then the 6990 is the one to go for.
That's a parsec or two from the "whole point"; I've not seen anyone further from stating the "whole point". There's much more to GCN than overclocking and XF that you can read up on in TechReport's review; and you can probably bet your entire self worth that the vast, vast majority of systems will not end up with two graphics cards in them.the whole point of the 7000 series is how great they are with overclocking and how effective they are in crossfire. to no make use of that is idiotic. its a bit like buying a gas converted car but choosing to solely run it on petrol.
Say what you like but two 7950s is absolutely high end, not the highest, but certainly high; it's like saying the Empire State Building isn't a skyscraper because it isn't the tallest. I sure hope you've got a beefy enough build to back those cards up and you're not running them beside 4 GB of RAM and an i3 2100 (or worse yet a Bulldozer).the 7950s are a good deal and are relatively inexpensive. i wouldnt say i am a high end builder in fact i know i am not. i buy parts which will do the job i need them for and that is all.
oddjobman wrote:oh nearly forgot, i apologise for calling you a nvidia fanboy, its nice to see someone playing devils advocate.
also i apologise for the grammer and layout but im currently answering this via android and its a pain to say the least.
i still believe that someone who just buys one of the 7970s or 7950s is an idiot though because they are basically wasting their money imo. what would be even worse would be someone who o.ly buys one and doesnt even oc it that would be a prize idiot.
it is the overclocking capabilities and crossfire increases in performance which set thiese cards apart from everything else.
dont believe this rubbish that the human eye cant tell the difference at anything over 30fps it can and does. crossfire will almost double it and that cant be bad unless they just play wow ha ha
going back to the realms of speculation i believe that the 7000 series is ideal to bring bulldozer into its own and let it do what it was supposed to all along. give it six months and it will ne a pairing made in heaven.
i firmly believe this and so have put my money where my mouth is so to speak.
the reason i went with the fx4100 and not its big brothers was solely down to better updates and imo superior overclocking capabilities when relatively scaled to the others.
once the other ones scale as well i will go for the best performer relatively.
oddjobman wrote:and i reckon you are a nvidia fanboy. having crossfire is not just about having eyefinity though granted it is a bonud.
crossfire enables you to play all games at maxed out settings and still keep the high fps and tesselation. it also enables you to game on large 1080p tvs and still get the quality res.
the reason i said only a fool would buy just one is because you arent really using it for what its designed for. even ocd there are games which will struggle at the highest res. in the past crossfire meant that your second catd would add a percentage to your speed fps etc, the 7970 in crossfire doubles it.
secondly on its own the 7970 is not the fastest card out there so again you would be foolish just to by one because its the fasyest. if you are only wanting one card and want the fastest then the 6990 is the one to go for.
the whole point of the 7000 series is how great they are with overclocking and how effective they are in crossfire. to no make use of that is idiotic. its a bit like buying a gas converted car but choosing to solely run it on petrol.
the 7950s are a good deal and are relatively inexpensive. i wouldnt say i am a high end builder in fact i know i am not. i buy parts which will do the job i need them for and that is all.
flip-mode wrote:Say what you like but two 7950s is absolutely high end, not the highest, but certainly high; it's like saying the Empire State Building isn't a skyscraper because it isn't the tallest.
StuG wrote:oddjobman wrote:and i reckon you are a nvidia fanboy. having crossfire is not just about having eyefinity though granted it is a bonud.
crossfire enables you to play all games at maxed out settings and still keep the high fps and tesselation. it also enables you to game on large 1080p tvs and still get the quality res.
the reason i said only a fool would buy just one is because you arent really using it for what its designed for. even ocd there are games which will struggle at the highest res. in the past crossfire meant that your second catd would add a percentage to your speed fps etc, the 7970 in crossfire doubles it.
secondly on its own the 7970 is not the fastest card out there so again you would be foolish just to by one because its the fasyest. if you are only wanting one card and want the fastest then the 6990 is the one to go for.
the whole point of the 7000 series is how great they are with overclocking and how effective they are in crossfire. to no make use of that is idiotic. its a bit like buying a gas converted car but choosing to solely run it on petrol.
the 7950s are a good deal and are relatively inexpensive. i wouldnt say i am a high end builder in fact i know i am not. i buy parts which will do the job i need them for and that is all.
One last thing I would like to add. Your 7950's have to be bottlenecked (the 940 @ 3.8Ghz was bottlenecking my 2 x 5870's). As well, I use to use Crossfire for a good part of my life, and ended up ditching it because it never felt as fluent or smooth. This has been proven over the last year or so extensively about micro-studdering and latency. If you are playing on 1080p and purposefully playing with crossfire you are actually hurting yourself more than you are helping (as your 7950 should max out anything at 1080).