"According to our sources, the Radeon HD 7970 is about 30 percent faster in 3DMark when compared to the Radeon HD 6970. These are early performance benchmarks made with the first "usable" driver.

According to the whispers that we are hearing right now, Radeon HD 7970 should end up about 30 percent faster than the HD 6970. These are 3DMark early performance numbers probably done with the 12.1 RC driver that was, at least according to our info, released two days ago. This should put the HD 7970 somewhere around Radeon HD 6990.

We are also hearing that the HD 7970 does even better in game benchmarks and we hope that we'll have more details regarding those pretty soon, as after all, game benchmarks are the ones that really matters when it comes to performance of graphics cards. We still don't know if there will be another driver before first reviews hit the net, but AMD usually holds the final driver as long as it can to control the performance leaks.

Some slides have leaked over at Donanimhaber showing that Tahiti might do a lot better when it comes to tesselation, but once again we are talking about AMD slides so we tend to tread lightly there.

In any case, we'll know for sure on 22nd of December."

"...When compared to the HD 6970, the HD 7970 is around 50 percent faster in 3DMark 11 Extreme test. It scores around 2800 points while the HD 6970 can get up to around 1800 points. The HD 6990 scores around 3400 points in the same test, but according to our sources, HD 7970 is more than happy with a good OC that draws the card an inch away from the HD 6990. The previously reported 30ish percent was probably taken from 3DMark 11 Entry setting test where all the cards are closer in performance.

We were also told about the 3DMark 11 Performance setting performance that ends up on par with the HD 6990 but we aren't sure if these are with or without OC.

These numbers also mean that [the HD 7970] ends up faster than the Nvidia GTX 590 in some cases. Of course, as always, take these numbers with a grain of salt..."

Of course, I do NOT expect to "see" the difference ("measure" yes, "see" no) in any of my games (vs 2x HD5870) -- just an AMD/ATI fan being a fan.