AMD's counter to the GTX 680 (HD 7970 GHz Ed.)

apoppin · Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 8:30 am

Nope, a new skew
:grin:

Or an old respin

grstanford · **Joined:** Sat Apr 24, 2010 11:19 am **Posts:** 5174

He probably means it both ways -- a "new" SKU with a new skew on the old FanATIc fantasies to go along with it.

apoppin · Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 8:44 am

AMD might consider shipping watercoolers with the 1.2 GHz Overclocked editions - just like with the FX-8150

grstanford · **Joined:** Sat Apr 24, 2010 11:19 am **Posts:** 5174

That or omit their fan altogether and rename the vapor chamber the magma chamber! :lol:

All the modders that stick lamps and glowing fans and christmas lights in their cases would go ape-shit over it.

apoppin · Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 10:52 am

you're close .. think "vapor chamber"

BoFox · Posted: Wed May 09, 2012 4:00 pm

Ocre wrote:

BoFox wrote:

I don't think there will be another price drop - just that the 925 MHz editions of HD 7970 could be quietly discontinued, to be replaced by the GHz edition, at the same $450 price point. 1000MHz is an 8% increase over 925MHz, so it's gonna be neck-to-neck with a stock GTX 680 (of course the bandwidth should also be increased by at least 5%).

What this means is that GTX 680 would have to drop to $450, in order to compete.

Discontinuing the original 925MHz edition would be a good move by AMD, IMHO.. All HD 7970's can be overclocked to at least 1100MHz, so selling them at only 925MHz is hurting them financially!

it never was really the ability to clock higher. It was the power consumption. The 7970 sucks power the more you jack up the clocks. Chips are designed and created. They aim specifically for certain clocks that have a point where the power used per calculation is optimal. When you hit the goal you have the best case where power consumed per calculation is lowest and the clocks are good. If they miss it then you have to use more watts per calculation than anticipated. There is almost always adjustments.

The 7970 was clocked low because its power envelope. push the clocks up and the power consumption goes high with it. These cards are designed to sell in a small bracket. A very tight space. It will be interesting to see if these ghz editions use more power or the same as the 925mhz versions. If they use the same then we know they had finally reached a better level of silicon.

The 7970 wasnt that terrible in power consumption from the start. without any silicon level improvements we still could see 1ghz models. They could release them at a slightly higher power bracket. I am real interested in seeing their power consumption. whether they really improved their silicon or not.

All of this matters little cause the gk104 is extremely power efficient. And overclocking it to the current max does not shoot up the consumption badly. its clocks are not close to tapped. Nvidia could easily bring out 210watt 1300mhz gtx680TI or what ever. Nvidia has a lot more room to raise the clocks without even maturing its silicon. imagine it only gets better so i cant see AMD taking any crown. Nvidia wont let it happen

Yeah, I know it was the power consumption, but now there are factory-overclocked AIB versions at 1GHz or higher, barely consuming 20-30W more. AMD needs to do this now - discontinue the "MHz edition" of 7970 and replace it with the GHz edition, for the same price point, in order to equally compete with the GTX 680. NV will certainly be forced to lower the price on their 2GB GTX 680 to $450 or lower. Remember the X1900XTX? With that card, power consumption was not an issue - it ate power like no tomorrow! I didn't care - I was just happy to have the fastest GPU, and not even 7900GTX could really beat it 3 months later (but with 3 of my PSU's dying due to the insane overvolts/overclocks of both the Opteron 175 and X1900XTX, it was some trouble..). Funny Nvidia could've done that with the 7900GTX but I guess they didn't want to take too much thunder away from the 7950GX2 which had the ceiling set.

AMD was probably hoping to do it the same way with HD 7990, while not clocking the 7970 too high, in order to make the 7990 very attractive at ridiculous prices (like with what NV is doing now with their GTX 690).

I bet that AMD was planning on doing 875 MHz stock for HD 7990 (rated at 350-375W), while offering an "overclocked AUSUM" BIOS option for 925 MHz (probably consuming over 400W). But with GTX 690 giving them no hope in competing at all major counts (Voodoopower, power consumption, noise, temperature, overclockability, etc..) - AMD is probably ditching it..

Apoppin, did you actually say that AMD has now ditched Southern Islands altogether, moving onto the next generation?? :-O

Ocre · **Joined:** Mon Nov 22, 2010 5:22 am **Posts:** 2235

BoFox wrote:

Ocre wrote:

BoFox wrote:

I don't think there will be another price drop - just that the 925 MHz editions of HD 7970 could be quietly discontinued, to be replaced by the GHz edition, at the same $450 price point. 1000MHz is an 8% increase over 925MHz, so it's gonna be neck-to-neck with a stock GTX 680 (of course the bandwidth should also be increased by at least 5%).

What this means is that GTX 680 would have to drop to $450, in order to compete.

Discontinuing the original 925MHz edition would be a good move by AMD, IMHO.. All HD 7970's can be overclocked to at least 1100MHz, so selling them at only 925MHz is hurting them financially!

it never was really the ability to clock higher. It was the power consumption. The 7970 sucks power the more you jack up the clocks. Chips are designed and created. They aim specifically for certain clocks that have a point where the power used per calculation is optimal. When you hit the goal you have the best case where power consumed per calculation is lowest and the clocks are good. If they miss it then you have to use more watts per calculation than anticipated. There is almost always adjustments.

The 7970 was clocked low because its power envelope. push the clocks up and the power consumption goes high with it. These cards are designed to sell in a small bracket. A very tight space. It will be interesting to see if these ghz editions use more power or the same as the 925mhz versions. If they use the same then we know they had finally reached a better level of silicon.

The 7970 wasnt that terrible in power consumption from the start. without any silicon level improvements we still could see 1ghz models. They could release them at a slightly higher power bracket. I am real interested in seeing their power consumption. whether they really improved their silicon or not.

All of this matters little cause the gk104 is extremely power efficient. And overclocking it to the current max does not shoot up the consumption badly. its clocks are not close to tapped. Nvidia could easily bring out 210watt 1300mhz gtx680TI or what ever. Nvidia has a lot more room to raise the clocks without even maturing its silicon. imagine it only gets better so i cant see AMD taking any crown. Nvidia wont let it happen

Yeah, I know it was the power consumption, but now there are factory-overclocked AIB versions at 1GHz or higher, barely consuming 20-30W more. AMD needs to do this now - discontinue the "MHz edition" of 7970 and replace it with the GHz edition, for the same price point, in order to equally compete with the GTX 680. NV will certainly be forced to lower the price on their 2GB GTX 680 to $450 or lower. Remember the X1900XTX? With that card, power consumption was not an issue - it ate power like no tomorrow! I didn't care - I was just happy to have the fastest GPU, and not even 7900GTX could really beat it 3 months later (but with 3 of my PSU's dying due to the insane overvolts/overclocks of both the Opteron 175 and X1900XTX, it was some trouble..). Funny Nvidia could've done that with the 7900GTX but I guess they didn't want to take too much thunder away from the 7950GX2 which had the ceiling set.

AMD was probably hoping to do it the same way with HD 7990, while not clocking the 7970 too high, in order to make the 7990 very attractive at ridiculous prices (like with what NV is doing now with their GTX 690).

I bet that AMD was planning on doing 875 MHz stock for HD 7990 (rated at 350-375W), while offering an "overclocked AUSUM" BIOS option for 925 MHz (probably consuming over 400W). But with GTX 690 giving them no hope in competing at all major counts (Voodoopower, power consumption, noise, temperature, overclockability, etc..) - AMD is probably ditching it..

Apoppin, did you actually say that AMD has now ditched Southern Islands altogether, moving onto the next generation?? :-O

30w more puts it into another completely different class. thats quickly approaching GF110 levels. AMD spent tons of cash promoting lower power and to release a card with such higher power consumption would be a contradiction entirely. Ppl like you or me may not mind so much, but they built their reputation on such things. The reason the 7970 was clocked where it was is because of the power envelope goals. The goal post was set and they had to keep it between the lines. The first batches of silicon had to be clocked where it was to meet the goal on the majority of chips needed to be a 7970. thats it, simple, nothing more to it.

I am sure that they could get away with 1ghz 7970 with reasonable power consumption. The process matures and gets perfected over time. By now i am sure they can easily have 1ghz 7970 without much more power consumption. i bet 20watts or less. But then you have a card in the 220w range. The overclocked 680s would easily keep pace using less. If nvidia dropped a 220w gtx680 it would be completely untouchable by Tahiti. Its a no win situation for them ultimately but its good for the consumers. Nvidia will not set back and let AMD take the crown. Also nvidia can raise their TDP without doing much of anything. Their dynamic clock system can turn their regular production 680s into a 680+ with a simple bios update or possibly with the driver. The gk104 was built with this in mind from the start. Final clocks were based only on the TDP limit they wanted to meet. Just as easy they could turn the gk104 into 210w cards. I expect nvidia to respond when amd trys to take the crown back. I expect them to respond like the speed of lightning.....yea that fast

apoppin · Posted: Wed May 09, 2012 5:13 pm

Quote:

Apoppin, did you actually say that AMD has now ditched Southern Islands altogether, moving onto the next generation??

i actually said it .. just to see if anyone would notice.
:blush:

Thanks for noticing, but ... Probably not. i actually heard that; but it is likely to be completely unfounded.

grstanford · **Joined:** Sat Apr 24, 2010 11:19 am **Posts:** 5174

apoppin wrote:

Quote:

Apoppin, did you actually say that AMD has now ditched Southern Islands altogether, moving onto the next generation??

i actually said it .. just to see if anyone would notice.
:blush:

Thanks for noticing, but ... Probably not. i actually heard that; but it is likely to be completely unfounded.

It wouldn't surprise me all that much, as long as you read "generation" as "iteration". Think r520 & R580. R600 & rv670/rv770.

They never attempt a small fix of whatever the problem is like nvidia does, but just bring the next iteration out instead. Of course with Eric Demers gone now they mightn't have too many iterations left up their sleeve, let alone generations.

Ocre · **Joined:** Mon Nov 22, 2010 5:22 am **Posts:** 2235

grstanford wrote:

apoppin wrote:

Quote:

Apoppin, did you actually say that AMD has now ditched Southern Islands altogether, moving onto the next generation??

i actually said it .. just to see if anyone would notice.
:blush:

Thanks for noticing, but ... Probably not. i actually heard that; but it is likely to be completely unfounded.

It wouldn't surprise me all that much, as long as you read "generation" as "iteration". Think r520 & R580. R600 & rv670/rv770.

They never attempt a small fix of whatever the problem is like nvidia does, but just bring the next iteration out instead. Of course with Eric Demers gone now they mightn't have too many iterations left up their sleeve, let alone generations.

really Tahiti is pretty darn good. with a little tweaking of efficiency you have a very capable chip. Nvidia may have beat them but its not a huge amount. It wouldnt take much for amd to get there. Had AMD been tweaking the design on a transistor level from the start, they would could knock it out of the park with a quick refresh. Instead we will get mild overclocked cards. just enough to match the 680 in performance. I am not sure we will see any real design upgrades for the rest of the yr. Only bumps in clock speed from AMD.

it could have played out really exciting for amd, but i think this yr will be mostly dominated by nvidia.

AMD's counter to the GTX 680 (HD 7970 GHz Ed.)

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