The reviews are out! And it's a killer card!

But with a MSRP of US$549 I can't motivate a purchase
Hopefully the 7950 will have a more palatable price (though not likely) when it shows up in a couple of weeks.
Too bad Nvidia is still some months out with their new cards, we need some competition to bring down these prices.


HardOCP.
VR-Zone

Thanks another good review:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review

While it looks like it beats the 580 GTX at modern games at about the same price, it doesn't seem like ass kicking evolution I had been hoping for just a bit better than the 580 but not a generation above.

Still it looks good for the solid Eyefinity and 3GB support and great idle power consumption (580 can't handle 3 monitors unless SLI'ed), maybe the beta drivers are lacking and it will hopefully improve over the 580 GTX more as the drivers mature.

For the price, I think for now I will be sticking with my crossfired 5870s for another year as the performance has held up well (similar to crossfired 6950s) and keep the fingers crossed for driver improvements and prices to drop on the 7970 and 580 GTX eventually (5870s were $399 new and those are still $150 higher)

I'll wait for more reviews and when it actually comes out, but for now it looks as if AMD has done a good job. Unlike 6xxx with series... Too bad the fan designs is still rubbish, as in too loud (the same from last 3-4 gen. cards??). This thing coupled with some after market coolers (e.g. TwinFrozr III or those on Gigabyte SOC cards) will make this an awesome GPU.

We have yet to see what is cooking in the Nvidia's camp.

It looks like they managed to screw up the thermal paste on some of the review cards (good job...).
It made a pretty big difference when they replaced it (the table at the bottom of the page should be readable).
CLICK

---Edit---
Basically what this post says (from HardOCP forum):
CLICK

Looks like a good competitor for the GTX580 for a Christmas raincheck. Lower power requirement is a real plus. Now the wait's on to see what Nvdia counters with. Liked it better when they refreshed at the same time. Spending 5-600 bucks on a card when you know something better's coming in 3-6 months is a bit disheartning. Maybe Nvidia can become the bargain bin leader for a while and drop the price of a 580 to sub $400 levels untill the 680 hits the street.

For me personally buying a 7970 now is like buying a 580 two weeks ago. Is it a smart buy with 680 in the pipeline? It's only evolutionary better. Almost a GPU generation late. I'm going to wait for Keppler. Keeping my fingers crossed the 680 has three DVI out.

Eyefinity 2.0 will allow P-L-P setups

If one wades through the details in some of the longer articles, its apparent that the HD7970 really is a jump from the prior art -- in every respect (e.g. FPS, 3DStereo, Video encode/decode, Compute, DX11.1, Windows 8, etc). There is more to it than mere FPS -- its a total package.

Given the limitations of games (Skyrim, for example), it really can't show off its best stuff at normal resolutions (like 1920x1200) or lower. At normal and low resolutions, the CPU tends to limit things these days (but FPS is still plenty high with a mid-cost quad-core CPU). For normal resolution, single-monitor gaming, the HD7950 will be the card for most folks to get (about $400 they say).

As resolutions rise (in the test reports), the HD7970 advantage grows.

So, for folks at the bleeding edge (Eyfinity, 3DStereo, etc), HD7970 s the card.

I assume the Nvidia GTX680 will be faster than HD7970 in FPS because Nvidia won't release it until it is -- given rumored issues, that may be months away. After that, the HD8970 will be just around the corner -- so on to the end of time (or at least a few years)

Competition is good

Yeah it will be interesting to see if NV embraces the tripple monitor on a single card feature like AMD has, for now AMD has that market easily.

It's the reason I went with a $320 gtx570 to tie me over. I use an old 8800gts-640mb for my left and right monitor, the 570 for the middle. I really want to go surround video but the 580 did not have a 3 monitor one card solution at the time. Nvidia has to step it up with the 3 dvi out on the 680 or It's 7970/7950 for me next fall. On the other hand I could sell my 570, get a 7970 and have eyefiniti right now. Lets see how the 7970 does with Il2 CloD.

Here are some more reviews, as posted in the "7000 rumor" thread. I've removed the already mentioned HardOCP and Guru3D links: