From Dave

He is buying it for us

The only problem now is that there are none in stock

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... 0hd%207970

McOwen, not Baumann?

Yes. ABT's Dave.

This is the second time he has done this. The first time he bought us a HD 5870 so that i could bench it against the GTX 480, two years ago. *Then* (when they figured out we had a GTX 480 under NDA) AMD sent us an overclocked PowerColor HD 5870 so that they could attempt to rain on Nvidia's parade the week of the GF100 launch.

Who knows what AMD will do now as i am going to bench a reference version of HD 7970; we am not paying extra for better cooling and overclocking. i notice the AMD shills at ATF VC&G are already warning that ABT is a shill site. Not strange that the viral marketers accuse others of what they themselves do.

they'll probably send you a tarted up 7850.

Very strange, since you have a demonstrated history of sending shills packing (Rollo, Evolucion8, Nvidiacookies). But AMD's supporters revel in this sort of thing. Makes me laugh, especially when I remember that Ruby/AMD vs the silicon overlords animated video they put out when they launched FAILdozer.

i am glad to bench anything that AMD sends. But they would be silly to do so now as i would just set it aside for a week or so while i bench HD 7970 for an upcoming evaluation.

Let me tell you what you can expect (at least to all the other tech sites):

AMD will send a SuperOverclocked HD 7970 to every tech site this week. And a new driver (finally). And that cherry-picked HD 7970 will undoubtedly be represented by a *single* out-of-stock SKU on Newegg so that they can say it is a regular card.

AMD's MO is getting boringly predictable. And of course their shills and employees are on Red Alert for Incoming; that is clear. And until this week they had absolutely no clue what is coming.

Silly is AMD's normal modus operandi as near as I can make out....

Who are they calling a shill? Me? That would be the ultimate laugh.

Yep. AMD's viral shills over at VC&G are calling ABT a shill site
- how stupidly ironic and the function of limited-AI PR. Fortunately not everyone is as stupid as they assume everyone else to be. They have a track record of deceit.


Let me predict a spectacular failure for it this time. You can't keep repeating the same crap over and over and not be noticed and then countered.

And *amazingly* they do what they accuse Nvidia of doing

You only have to look at 3DMurk and R300's "full precision FP24". The only reason they ever got away with that was because Microsoft was pissed with nvidia over XBOX parts pricing, and deliberately sided with ATi. Not that it matters. Nvidia's way prevailed in the end, as seen in r520 and r580.

What kind of launch is HD 7970? i don't give a crap about ancient history. We see a product rushed to market and priced sky-high. The drivers are immature and the first WHQLs were two months late. From what i hear, the reference card is noisy when overclocked as there isn't even a proper fan profile.

And most telling of a rushed and sloppy launch ...

There is no stock at $550.

AMD is opening themselves up for a massive counterstrike and they could well alienate the rest of their fans depending what they do. I would think they might want to make friends, not enemies in the position they may find themselves in.