Just heard that AMD hopes to launch their new cards at CES in 2012. So that means middle of January. These cards were supposed to launch already this year but production problems at TSMC prevented that from hapenning with both AMD and Nvidia cards for this next generation. finalized/near finalized specs: Radeon HD7970XT: 2048 processing cores (shader units) @ 1ghz 128 Texture Mapping Units 3GB GDDR5 (384bit) @ 5.5ghz MSRP $450 Radeon HD7970PRO: 1920 processing cores @ ??? 120 Texture Mapping Units 1.5GB GDDR5 (384/256bit) @ 5ghz MSRP $350 Still waiting to hear what final specs are on Nvidia's Kepler, but with the rumor going around now we might be a ways away from final specs and a launch date.
So I completely forgot these cards "Launched" today. Anyway, some reviews: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/ and about OCing them: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1805/14/ Crazy high overclocks Looks like the price estimate was off that I heard about last month. Costs an extra $100 over what was said. Actual specs: Radeon HD7970: 2048 processing cores @ 925MHz 128 Texture Mapping Units 32 Raster Operation Pipelines 3GB GDDR5 (384bit) @ 5.5ghz MSRP $550 The speed was dropped a bit compared to what AMD wanted due to manufacturing problems with the not yet perfected 28nm processing node at TSMC.
Decent performance. I'm hedging my bets on a more polished product from team green that will improve on this and offer a significant upgrade over a GTX580 that will fast track them access to my VISA I don't see how spending 5 large on a 7970 makes a lot of sense with Nvidia lurking with a new card and a history of coming out on top.
Shit gets serious with xfire: http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...rossfire-performance-review-introduction.html
Thats what Im thinking as well. Hopefully we will also see AMD launch a higher clocked version once the process node matures more as well. But thats pretty insane looking on that link you posted. Really the only number you should really care about in minimum FPS, as you can have a great average and if the fps plummets when the shooting starts the your numbers are worthless. And on that link you gave it shows the 7970 right almost at 580 in SLI level. Single card to single card when measuring average FPS it doesnt look super impressive, but looking at that minimum fps it looks very nice. However this seems quite odd to me, as that same websites review of the single card's shows the minimum FPS of a single 7970 being pretty much even with a single 580. So how does the score then get much worse with 580 in SLI and the single card seems to somehow be doing better? I hope Kepler comes out soon with some amazing performance though Ive been with AMD for 3 generations now and want to try switching back to Nvidia but have been waiting for a card from them that is clearly better and a decent price.