AMD Radeon 9970

Thanks for the information, very well summarised.

If it does have the specs rumored on hardwareluxx, it might perform as well as the GTX 780, but it will not be significantly faster.
It will most likely be a bit slower.

Also, since it's going to be released in september, it can't be based on the 20nm process.

Or, there's also the possibility that the cards are made at 20nm because, while TSMC has not yet started "volume production of chips using 20nm process technology", it may have produced chips for AMD in small quantities.

Thanks for the info

It would be interesting to see how the 9970 competes with a 780, hell it'd be interesting to see how it straight up competes with a Titan!

We all know that AMD cards are absolute powerhouses, and that stands true while the 7970 still trades blows with the 780, and if the 9970 gets the same driver treatment that the 7xxx series has gotten, phwoar! We're in for a treat!

Personally for some reason though, it's always been the x950 versions (naming revisions going back) that have gotten me excited, they always seem to be amazing on their own but an absolute beast when crossfired.

Would be interesting to see a) how powerful these cards actually are, not just specs but actual gaming, and b) what Nvidia's response would be. I've taken some time off from AMD to see how team green does things, and I'm very impressed, but AMD just always seem to blow the water away with performance, if not instantly, then a few months after release with driver updates.

7970 isn't near a 780 in performance, and the driver treatment is atrocious. What are you talking about?

But it DOES trade blows with a number of titles. That's not really opinion or a judgement that's just cold hard facts.

And the drivers for the 7xxx series of cards has been phenomenal, constant performance upgrades everywhere, some games have seen massive performance boosts thanks to the drivers.

If you think I'm just some fanboy, well, pity on you. I own Nvidia hardware. If you're too blind to see the wood for the trees then that's your own fault.

graphs please. Also, the cards should have had the performance to begin with, not have it administered gradually to them over a long period of time. ANd I have been running amd for years, so fanboyism is out of the question, as I despise nvidias pricing of their top-end models.

For someone who doesn't want to get called a fanboy, your post is quite strange...

#1) Who cares that in a couple obscure games the 7970 keeps up with the 780? The 780 is significantly faster - on the order of 35-40% faster for most 780s. Cherry picking is never relevant to GPU discussions.

#2) Yeah AMD's single card drivers have been great, just like Nvidia's - this is very good news! But the only reason this is news is because AMD's driver support in the past was crap.

As for the 9970 or whatever AMD ends up calling it, it's about damn time. All this overpriced crap from Nvidia is getting old. Can't believe they got away with the pricing they did on the Titan. Blech.

You mean theyre skipping the HD8000?

Yes, the HD 8000 series is an OEM rebrand of HD 7000 cards.

Surprised the release is quite close and there hasn't been more leaks about the card. Maxwell is coming soonish, maybe in March or April if i had a guess. But the weird thing about these cards is it's been quite quiet on the rumor mill. No mention on tap out's or revisions or anything. My guess is all the console distraction is taking up hardcore's time to dig for this info.

There's no way Maxwell is going to get here that soon... the 20nm process just isn't ready yet.

First and foremost, thank you for your objectivity Hydro-Carbon. It's nice to see that we don't have total fan boys in this thread making ignorant comments just because "Nvidia is the best zomg, go green!!!!" While true that Titan is indeed the "fastest" GPU currently, I am also anxious to see what AMD has up their sleeve with the HD 9970. I mean I'm not trying to praise one or the other. The two year old 7970 traded blows with the GTX 680. Certain titles, the 680 was faster. Others, the 7970. AMD has tweaked drivers over the last two years and I believe it is safe to say that an OC'ed 7970 whether you're running a GE card or standard reference board thats OC'ed, there is no doubt that the 7970 is indeed a bit stronger than Kepler, and does in fact trade blows with a 780 thanks to the graphs posted by Houldendub.

We all know a 770 is a re-branded 680 so no real surprise here that 7970 and 770 (slightly OC'ed 680 aka GK 104) are pretty much neck and neck and while as I said previously the Titan is currently the king, AMD and Nvidia will always go back and forth who has the "fastest" title. It's all relative I suppose. I think AMD has certainly gained quite a bit of momentum over the last couple of years with their Never Settle Bundles, and not to mention both next gen PS4 and Xbox One each have a custom AMD APU. Nvidia continues to market $1000 GPU's and they are the verge of releasing the Titan Ultra which essentially unlocks the remaining CUDA cores. I'm not saying Nvidia is a bad company. In fact I've owned several Nvidia products and they are quite good and well made. I just don't understand Nvidia's marketing strategies anymore. Team green is going to be in serious trouble if they don't jump on the "bandwagon" and soon. PhysX just became pointless with the recent release of Open GL 4.5 and not to mention Nvidia still does not support x86 architecture as far as I know.

Straying quite off topic, great discussion and truly looking forward to the HD 9970. I'm not sure about the 20nm transistors yet, but reading around TSMC's website, they could surprise us which is why we've been in the dark for quite some time about the 9970. Some of the other rumors are exactly just that. I don't believe its going to carry a 512 bit memory bus on GDDR5 alone myself, but that's just a prediction. I guess in the end we'll see.

I'm sorry, I'm not an Nvidia fanboy, I own both Nvidia and AMD cards, but in what universe does a 7970 trade blows with a 780? A 7970 GHz edition is only marginally faster than a 680 and trades blows with it in most games. A GTX 780 is 30% more powerful than a GTX 680, and blows a 7970 out of the water, even a GHz edition. The only games where the 7970 beats down a 780 is in games specifically optimized for an AMD card, of which there are very few good ones. Metro 2033 is one, the Dirt series are another. In games like Battlefield, the 780 crushes a 7970, as it should, it costs a lot more and it's significantly newer. That's why Nvidia is rumoured to be stepping up the release of the 800 series to Q1 2014, to best the new AMD releases again.

As for the driver releases..... personally I've found AMD's drivers horrible of late. My main gaming rig uses Nvidia cards simply because SLI is leaps and bounds ahead of Crossfire in terms of stability, lack of micro-stutter issues, and driver profiles. I do like AMD cards, and they usually have a better cost/performance ratio than my Nvidia cards, but Nvidia are the best hands down when it comes to ultra high-end, dual GPU gaming rigs.

there's like 2 games where the 780 and 7970 are similar, which fanboys will cherry pick from


But everyone not picking cherries knows that the 780 is in a different league than the 7970, to the tune of 30-40% faster on average, depending on which two exact models get compared


Anyways, I'm curious to see how much of an improvement AMD will make on their new series. I personally expext 780 +/- 5% performance for at least $100 less

Have to agree with this. Drivers for the 7970 have been nothing short of terrible, Only in the last 3-4 months have they been any good. At the end of a product lifecycle decent drivers at last.
After having 2x 7970 in my PC (and removing one after 3 months due to micro stuttering) and a 7970M in my laptop (god, don't get me started on driver support for that. the mobile 7970 was treated like a leper by AMD. Their support for it on Klevo platforms was nothing short of a disgrace) I'm not touching AMD again until they get their driver act together.

I'd rather pay 20% more and have a system that works. The case on my PC and has worn away at the hinges, the driver sweeper utility has been hammered to death... all by 7970.

Love AMD value, but with the high end 7000 series, really not liking their driver support, and the hassle just isn't worth the small cost saving. Hour after hour of "not playing" and "not working" if I put minimum wage on those wasted hours and days I could maybe have bought 2x Titan in SLI

This is what I've found reading this thread:

"AMD is talking it up!"
AMD has said nothing. They haven't said a word about the 9970, it sounds more like to me like a bunch of nervous Nvidia owners.

"The GTX 780 might even out perform the 9970"
Yeah because that totally happened with the 7970 vs the 680. Understand something. The GTX 780 is running on Kepler architecture, just as the 600 series was. AMD isn't running Pirate Islands again, it's running Volcanic Islands. To say the 780 will out perform the 9970 is nothing short of wishful thinking.

"But my GTX Titan will still be better!! It has to be, it cost $1000!!"
You have been played, and played well. The GTX Titan was the biggest design flop I have ever seen for a $1000 card. They are complete junk in SLI, too. Anybody who spent the $2000 will know that 2 SLI'd titans was nowhere near worth $2000.

Nvidia owners and green team fanboys, heed this warning well: Nvidia is losing. They are playing the same tricks Apple played for years. They re-release the same cards and call them "new". EVGA, their side kick, is an even worse offender of this. If EVGA didn't exist, Nvidia wouldn't have the popularity they have today. Because with Nvidia/EVGA, Image = everything.

My HD7970 Ghz Edition (Overclocked to 1175 Mhz/1600 Mhz mem) runs the same, better in games with using over 2gb of RAM, as the GTX 770. That's pretty sad for Nvidia.

"They re-release the same cards and call them "new"."

Tick and Tock. I notice that you have an Intel processor. Intel do the same thing. Slight change one year, big change the next. Rinse and repeat.

The 4xx and 5xx series mainly used Fermi, the 6xx and 7xx series have mainly used Kepler, I'm sure the 8xx and 9xx will use the same generation of chips too. Seeing how close the Kepler cards are anyway, does it really matter? Still get a faster card than the previous gen's comparable model name.

Conversely, AMD have done the same thing, albeit not in exactly the same manner, but their hands aren't entirely clean. Juniper PRO and XT used in the 5750 and 5770 were used in the 6750 and 6770. Turks and Caicos are used in both the 6xxx and 7xxx series, while the Cedar chip has been used in the 5xxx, 6xxx and 7xxx series.

Judging by your card b737lvr, I think people can tell which company you prefer. Personally, I believe that AMD fanboys are desperately attempting to prove something to the world, claiming that the 9970 is going to be the end-all graphics card. It might be, it might not be. But at least wait until it has been released to argue its case. Right now the 780 is fantastic. This is not likely to change, and with AMD's budget cuts and firing employees, I find it unlikely that they will release a master card.

Every new release will get talked up and blown out of all proportion by the party faithful, it's what's they do, it's all they've got.

Precisely my thoughts!

I sad my post got deleted ;( But yeah I cant wait for 9970!