So what'd nv PR say about 7970? Just curious

The have a newsletter that gives a general "what's happening" and recently they gathered a summary of the reviewers negative points of the HD 7970 (of which the forums covered pretty thoroughly already from the articles)

(and yes, AMD also emails tech sites also about the issues or failings of Nvidia GPUs and they show the strong points of their VCs - i kinda like it - you get to see each company's PoV)

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/rad ... 04-18.html
“Unfortunately, we aren’t able to speak to the value of several others, or even confirm that they work. AMD rushed this launch to an extent that I don’t think we’ve ever seen before.”

in this review which compares the HD 7970 with the EVGA GTX 560 Ti 2Win
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1810/15/
“While there were some hiccups along the way we really like the EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win. It fills the performance gap between the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 and GeForce GTX 580 and does it for a lower price depending on what version of the cards you are looking at. This card also performed better than the AMD Radeon HD 7970, which has a suggested retail price of $550.

Noise:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/rad ... ,3104.html
“Aside from pricing, we also have to complain about the loud noise created by the reference cooler.”

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/ha ... ew-25.html
“AMD claims to have reworked many of their heatsink’s design elements but we’d still classify the HD 7970 as an overly loud card.”

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1 ... usion.html
“Essentially AMD needs to completely redesign their cooling.”

Drivers
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardw ... 70/17.html
“Our largest complaint with the HD 7970 is that the drivers don't yet appear ready for prime time. In the course of a week AMD has sent us three drivers that each fixed various issues, or improved performance in a game. Since the card doesn't have consistent performance across the board, we have to conclude that the drivers are just not yet optimized.”

value
http://www.techradar.com/news/computing ... ed-1049762
“The AMD Radeon HD 7970 is also rather expensive. We don't have final UK prices yet but our best guess is around £450, with future overclocked versions coming in considerably more. That's good news for NVIDIA as it makes the impressive GTX 580 a far more reasonable proposition at just £365.”


http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1 ... rk-11.html
“In the comparison with NVIDIAs fastest single GPU card we have quite a close set of results, especially surprising given the large gap in price between the two cards.”

i had great meetings with Thermaltake, Kingston, Genius, ECS, Diamond and AMD
(yes AMD!). I went to Intel's Press event but i missed ABT's contact there (decent breakfast for the press, however).

i reconnected with Diamond and will probably get a HD 7950 from them. i also reconnected with AMD and made a phone appointment next week to address ABT's issues.

All and all, a very productive day - from 7AM to 7PM
--tomorrow is only 8-6 ... then i drive home and you can expect a more detailed report tomorrow and especially over the next couple of days (i'll do a CES wrap up before the weekend).

I'm interested in seeing how the 7950 compares with gtx 580 in performance and price.

Also, what do you see going forward from AMD re theoretical driver improvements for 7970 since it's a new arch? Will they show more improvement than on more mature architectures like vliw5 or fermi?

i am also very interested in the HD 7950. Traditionally they have been a good value of the high-end cards.
- consider the HD 6950 - which unlocked into a HD 6970 for $150 less. HD 5850 was a great card for value compared to HD 5870. You can go back to 2900Pro which was good value compared to the XT.

In the past, AMD's drivers always have improved significantly over time over the launch drivers. You can expect performance increases in many of the newer games (first) as the driver team learns how to optimize for new architecture.

AMD seems to also be becoming a SW company; they have to write drivers for the APU, CPU, GPU, GPU compute, hybrid and regular CrossFire and it finally looks like they are making their OWN investments without waiting for their partners.

Well, i'm about to check out of my room and head for CES. No one realizes that there is free parking on the street with not much more of a walk than from their parking lots.


Anyway, i'll check back in tonight when/if i get home

Expect 'something' on CES published tomorrow. My pictures generally turned out pretty good

That would be good news!

Can't wait to hear the update apoppin! I hope you got some news from EVGA!

They allow you to read between the lines about Kepler. And i would i would say is what they hope for and what they get might not be totally aligned. (<<how's that for PR-speak?)

In other words, if everything goes well, it will be fairly soon. If not, then H1


Oh yeah. i got to talk about Tegra 3 at great length. They didn't mind pointing out that they had hoped it would be out earlier but had to coordinate more than they expected with their partners. I am totally interested in mobile computing as it finally looks like it will work well fully integrated with a Windows PC (and your TV and everything else).

i got to also meet with the ViaSat people. Their satellite service finally responds like good fiber optic for the first time ever. So i am going to evaluate it for ABT compared to my current WildBlue (which i used to hate but now just dislike) sometime early March when it is available in my area. It's about the same price with more options, and about 5x faster. VOIP is finally workable for home satellite Internet.

Also, i met with EVGA - had to wait 45 minutes but it was a good short meeting. Their own EVGA commercial displays an ABT award for the GTX 560 Ti 448 FTW. They have a new completely new power supply line that i will be able to review and of course the new cards as they come out.

AMD - it was good to see them again and actually get to talk with them face-to-face; last time was the Press event in LA that covered the 6000 series launch. This time i got a look at their upcoming Trinity mobile processor that has the same performance with half the power usage. And i made sure that we would follow up next week to talk about what is happening in the tech forums. It is hard to concentrate on anything besides the product in the short time available for the briefing. And it is important to meet face to face as it is the most real form of communication that we have. After that, it can continue by phone and email/

Cooler Master is having their 20th anniversary and they gave the press some nice gifts. Thye offered me a limo ride back to CES which i gladly accepted. i doubt in 2-1/ days that i spent a total of 4 hours on the floors of CES looking at the exhibits. i didn't even see AMD's booth. All i did was run from appointment to appointment from dawn to dusk - and i skipped the parties.

It was great talking with Thermaltake and Kingston. i never got to really connect with the Intel rep but did get a nice breakfast sandwich at 7AM for attending their press conference . . . and much more will be in the article. Genius has some interesting products as they also try to break into gaming. i am going to check out ViewSonic displays and emphasize 120Hz and 3D including HD3D.

Maybe i can publish the CES article tomorrow.

Cool, thanks for the update apoppin.

Good luck getting the articles out and posted. That sounds exhausting.