A new rumor:

AMD updated HD7970 -- faster clocks, a turbo mode like GTX6xx, lower price. Said to beat GTX680 in many cases.

HD7970 Updated

Another "behind the scenes" set of rumors about HD7970 GHz.

Story conatins yet another rumor that GTX680 and GTX670 "press samples" (the one's Nvidia sends to sites for review) are "cherry picked cards". That is, the store bought cards do not always perform to the level of the press samples. Not surprising. Implication is that the HD7970 store bought model does perform like the press samples.

HD7970 GHz Model

Also, a different article sums up the HD7970GHz as being decidedly better than GTX680 at high resolutions. So, HD7970 best for triple monitor gaming.

HD7970 compute has already been shown to be FAR superior to GTX680 compute. In addition, HD7970 is double precision compute -- GTX680 is single precision compute.

All in all, something to make AMD fans happy that their favorite GPU is holding its own.

As it is, my older HD7970 version does run OC at 1050GHz like the HD7970 GHz version. I assume the newer card will OC a bit higher.

Competition is good

Tahiti XT2 uses less voltage and has a higher clock rates and increased efficiency/scaling when overclocked than Tahiti XT Chips.

its not just a new BIN as they keep saying, AMD worked with TSMC to increase yield by adjusting some things.

A new Bin wouldnt allow 125-150Mhz higher clocks on LESS voltage. AMD Adjusted the design working with TSMC, which was stated by AMD in an Article a few weeks ago.

AMDs Drivers had Turbo Mode Implemented in Cat 11.2, no manufacturers used it in their BIOS'

My 7950 runs 2 or 3 different clocks in desktop mode depending on Load and screens enabled/resolution.



Gotta love it when articles even in AMDs favor, dont get their information correct.

BTW, there is now a 12.7 Beta driver that is rumored to push the HD7970 up a few percent -- and add a feature or two (don't know what feature). I'm downloading now.

Catalyst 12.7 Beta Driver

Rumor that Beta drivers may release on a very frequent 1 or 2 week pace as improvements are made weekly (not officially though). I thought the Beta's would be less frequent -- more than a month between each. Maybe not.

there were THREE 12.6 betas drivers.

ill prolly update when i get my CH Gear Saturday, since I'll have to shut down everything to hook everything up.

Might be looking to upgrade to a 7970 from 7950, i can get away with running most games in Eyefinity, but BF3 and a few others could benefit greatly from the extra 256 shaders.

Dont wanna risk Overclocking right now, as summer months are hard on my gear, with it being upper 90s outside, high 80s/low 90s in my room.

GPU idles in 40s and hits 60s now, instead of being in the 20s-30s like it was in Feb. then again in Feb I was also only running 1 screen so the desktop clocks were lower.

CPU Idles in the Teens but gets as high as 25-30 now instead of staying in the Teens like it did in Feb.

I think the 7970 is an awesome card now that they dropped the price $70 to $479 street price to fight the $499-$519 680, but I think for the junior cards, the 670 at $399 being within 5% of the performance of a 680 beats out the $379 7950 for bang/buck currently, but that changes all the time as prices fluctuate. In reality I think any of the 4 cards can run anything in single monitor on max settings and in three monitor still do a good job on high settings, so it boils down to which brand you prefer or which games are your favorite.

Glad to see them bring on the next set of developments in the competition... as the fight continues and they keep bringing out better/faster/cheaper solutions, also good to bring the price down for those of us that want to pick up a second one for crossfire/SLI sometime next year or later.

my 7950 gets better scores than the 670s :P

Seems Im gonna be doing a lot of updating this weekend.

Shutdown to install CH Flight Control System (i have to shut down to move the system out of the way to do wire management.)

Update to Cat 12.7

Then Update my mainboard's BIOS from 1.5 to 1.7 (both came out in April, yet ASRock never emailed me.)


Like always no Changelist/Readme other than a short cryptic:

V1.7 - June 6th, 2012
1. Modify for Windows8 shut down behavior.

V1.6 - April 10th, 2012
1. Update CPU code.
2. Update USB module.
3. Add "Custom Fan Speed" setup item.
4. Add Turbo UCC function for AM3+ CPU.


Wonder what else it changes, maybe it fixes a few things I've noticed with the CPU.


Might give the system a cleaning while im in it, and see if I can add another fan to blow on the HDD and help the graphics card cool.

if I was to build a custom loop, i'd include my HDD too, lol.

Agree. On a single monitor, the new cards are overkill -- overkill is nice to have AMD and Nvidia both make good products and one can't go "wrong" with either. Agree. Comes down to preference and, maybe, a special application here and there.

Didn't know there were three 12.6 Betas. I'll have to pay more attention.

12.7 was microscopically faster than 12.6 in my informal test. But, I don't update to get more speed. I update for the heck of it and what benefits, if any, the new driver set brings (increased speed not normally being significant)

wow my bios update put me on par with the i7-960@3.2Ghz, on my 8120Running 3.1Ghz, whoo hoo, only 2 generations behind, lol...