AMD 9970/R970 Performance Poll

[SiliconWars]

You're right, they are disadvantaged - in time. That's why they had to go almost 2 years with Tahiti. That disadvantage is almost over.

Given that AMD would have known about GK104 in 2011 or early 2012 at the latest, and Titan's projected performance, they've had plenty of time to beat it if they chose to.

 

[RussianSensation]

Does this go for more than one SKU? I think cherrypicking is not helpful.

It's not cherry picking because there is no such thing as a reference 7970GE 1.256V card. Chuck that to AMD's terrible PR/marketing but when AMD never released reference 7970GE cards, why should anyone use power consumption, noise levels and temperatures from those reviews? They were a waste of everyone's time. The evidence was all over the net but people continue(d) to ignore it.

Sapphire 7970 Vapor-X uses 20W less power than "reference" 7970GE, while max overclocked, it used just 9W more than a stock 1.05Ghz "reference card":
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012...eon_hd_7970_ghz_edition_review/9#.UhtEsJL-HYE

If AMD was dead serious on squeezing maximum performance out of their R9970, they would redesign the PCB, VRMs/power circuitry and GPU cooler to match or beat that of after-market 7970GE cards. We don't know if AMD will release a card that uses 250W of power at load but there is a good 50-70W to work with if they really wanted to as after-market 7970GEs use 181-190W, not 240W.

AMD also can implement more aggressive power switching for DP transistors when not in use in games. Then there is a more mature 28nm node. One of my cards can hit 1.05Ghz at 1.089V. Instead AMD shoved 1.256V into all 7970GE chips. We can't just ignore that there will be some benefits of a more mature node 2 years after Tahiti launched.

 

[Black Octagon]

Sapphire 7970 Vapor-X uses 20W less power than "reference" 7970GE, while max overclocked, it used just 9W more than a stock 1.05Ghz "reference card":
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012...eon_hd_7970_ghz_edition_review/9#.UhtEsJL-HYE

To be fair, [H] didn't exactly get a stellar OC out of the sample they reviewed though!

 

[SiliconWars]

I bet they would have it if were a Galaxy though.

 

[tviceman]

HD5870 --> HD6970 is a move from 144W to 185W = 41W
http://tpucdn.com/reviews/HIS/Radeon_HD_6970/images/power_peak.gif

As has been repeated for 18+ months, using HD7970GE reference card as a gauge of power consumption is 100% misleading. After market 7970 cards with 1.05ghz come in at 181W.
http://tpucdn.com/reviews/VTX3D/Radeon_HD_7970_X-Edition/images/power_peak.gif

If AMD targets 250W of peak real world power consumption, they have 69W to work with, substantially more than the move from 5870 to 6970.

You are not accounting for improvements on 28nm. HIS Turbo X 7970 with 1180mhz clocks reached that at 1.256V. My 7970s hit 1150mhz on stock voltage and 1200mhz at 1.212V.

Hey Russian I can cherry pick too.
http://tpucdn.com/reviews/ASUS/HD_7970_Matrix/images/power_peak.gif
http://tpucdn.com/reviews/Gigabyte/HD_7970_SOC/images/power_peak.gif

They have 12-27 watts to work with according to my "data" and your standards of power consumption. The fact is AMD does not rely on consumer data or their AIB's to bin chips coming off TSMC's line, and I guarantee AMD's stress testing procedures is way more stringent than 3dmark and Crysis stress tests, so I'm going to go ahead and believe that while some people are hitting another 100mhz with stock voltage (just like GK104's do all the time), the few Tahitis that can be undervolted and overclocked probably would not pass AMD's binning procedures and/or are very few in number compared to the amount of Tahiti chips produced.

I fully stand by my original claim that they have less TDP to work with and a larger performance gap to bridge in catching gtx780, let alone Titan.

 

[Enigmoid]

AMD got 15%-20% more performance with 16% more die size and 23% more transistors, with a back-ported Cayman design vs Cypress. Nvidia can only dream of such engineering feats.

Nvidia got ~40% more performance with 91% more die size and double the transistors with Titan compared to GK104.

http://www.techspot.com/review/644-nvidia-geforce-titan/

Titan is only as fast as 7870 crossfire. All AMD has to do is double Pitcairn to beat it - that would only need a 424mm2 die (less if you consider the parts that wouldn't need doubling) and 5.6 billion transistors with no other arch improvements. That is all AMD has to do to beat Titan, double Pitcairn and nothing else.

If you aren't crapping yourself at the thought of AMD going with a Titan-sized die and transistor count, you should be.

Nvidia added a ton of DP though. And not all of that die is enabled.

Titan also runs at a lower frequency negating a lot of that die area and transistor count (run GK 104 and GK 110 at the same frequency to really compare).

And AMD could never cut out all that DP as they use that same die for their workstation cards.

 

[Mombasa69]

You're right, they are disadvantaged - in time. That's why they had to go almost 2 years with Tahiti. That disadvantage is almost over.

Given that AMD would have known about GK104 in 2011 or early 2012 at the latest, and Titan's projected performance, they've had plenty of time to beat it if they chose to.

Just wait ans see, these rumours and counter rumours are getting tiresome.

 

[boxleitnerb]

Hey Russian I can cherry pick too.
http://tpucdn.com/reviews/ASUS/HD_7970_Matrix/images/power_peak.gif
http://tpucdn.com/reviews/Gigabyte/HD_7970_SOC/images/power_peak.gif

They have 12-27 watts to work with according to my "data" and your standards of power consumption. The fact is AMD does not rely on consumer data or their AIB's to bin chips coming off TSMC's line, and I guarantee AMD's stress testing procedures is way more stringent than 3dmark and Crysis stress tests, so I'm going to go ahead and believe that while some people are hitting another 100mhz with stock voltage (just like GK104's do all the time), the few Tahitis that can be undervolted and overclocked probably would not pass AMD's binning procedures and/or are very few in number compared to the amount of Tahiti chips produced.

I fully stand by my original claim that they have less TDP to work with and a larger performance gap to bridge in catching gtx780, let alone Titan.

This. 100% agree. People get way to overexited. There are SKUs that look good and then there are those which rather don't.

 

[Smartazz]

What about slower than 780 or on par with 780?

 

[Fastx]

What about slower than 780 or on par with 780?

Guys if someone wants to start a new poll with more options no problem. Once its started I will put a link in my first post to your new poll and then pm a mod to either lock mine or delete if possible.

I vote for a new poll.