Price Cuts on AMD Radeon 7900 Series GPUs Coming Soon

Subject: Graphics Cards | April 13, 2012 - 09:31 PM | Tim Verry
Tagged: price cut, nvidia gtx 680, gpu, amd, 7970

We reviewed the AMD Radeon 7970 3GB GPU back in december (you can read that here), and then the NVIDIA GTX 680 was released and became king of the single GPU hill. And while I was hoping for price cuts in the 7900 series as a result, there were none to report.

According to LegitReviews, who questioned sources within AMD, consumers may be seeing cheaper 7900 series cards next week. Starting Monday, April 16th 2012, AMD will be cutting prices for the suggested retail prices (MSRP) of the cards. Specifically, the 7970 will be getting a price cut of $50 USD and the 7950 will get a $40 lower MSRP.

Although AMD has a slower single card on their hands, the scarcity of NVIDIA GTX 680 GPUs and decent performance of the 7970 means that price cuts aren't going to be a much as I was personally hoping for. Even more, retailers may further murk up the situation by not reducing prices as much as the full MSRP reduction due to GTX 680s being sold out. Also, there is no word on whether the 7800 series will also be getting price cuts. In the end though, at least you won't have to spend as much of your tax refund on a new GPU if you've been eyeing the 7900 series (heh) even if it's not as much as you were hoping for.

Just Delivered: MAINGEAR SHIFT with 3x Radeon HD 7970 Cards!

Subject: Graphics Cards, Systems | April 7, 2012 - 06:16 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: shift, maingear, just delivered, HD 7970, 7970

Just Delivered is a section of PC Perspective where we share some of the goodies that pass through our labs that may or may not see a review, but are pretty cool none the less.

While we get sent complete system builds from time to time, it's pretty rare when they actually impress me.  Because we review and work with the best harware in the business on a daily basis, something unique really has to be there for us to really be wowed.  Today we were playing with a custom built MAINGEAR SHIFT machine that did just that.

The SHIFT is the company's flagship product line that starts out with an $1800+ price tag, so you know you are getting top of the line components.  Our test system includes a Core i7-3960X Sandy Bridge-E processor as well as a trio of Radeon HD 7970 cards from AMD.  That's right, three.

The internals are lit by a white LED and the black/red color pattern of the graphics cards is continued with the inclusion of matching Corsair DDR3 memory to the tune of 16GB and the MAINGEAR EPIC 180 self-containted water cooler.

Corsair's AX1200 watt power supply is included in the build and it is necessary!  During our testing so far we found the PC could draw as much as 1050 watts from the wall while running 3DMark11.

Another exclusive feature for the MAINGEAR systems is the EPIC Audio system that adds studio quality audio headphone output and microphone input.  The licensed Aphex technology is touted by the company as being really impressive and I am looking forward to giving it a try this week.

With our time with the SHIFT so far, the build quality has been impressive, the lack of crapware on the system is a welcome change and the performance is simply astounding as we expected with a SNB-E CPU and triple HD 7970s in CrossFireX.  

Expect more very soon!

Podcast #195 - GTX 680 Review, the MSI HD 7970 Lightning, and a 4GB GTX 680!

Subject: General Tech | March 29, 2012 - 03:29 PM | Ken Addison
Tagged: ssd, podcast, nvidia, Intel, gtx680, amd, 7970, 680

PC Perspective Podcast #195 - 03/29/2012

Join us this week as we talk about our GTX 680 Review, the MSI HD 7970 Lightning, and a 4GB GTX 680!

You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still access it directly through the RSS page HERE.

The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!

• iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store
• RSS - Subscribe through your regular RSS reader
• MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file

Hosts: Ryan Shrout, Jeremy Hellstrom, Josh Walrath, and Allyn Malvantano

This Podcast is brought to you by MSI Computer, and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!

Program length: 1:00:26

Program Schedule: 

1. Introduction
2. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
3. http://pcper.com/podcast
4. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
5. Gigabyte GA-X79-UD5 LGA 2011 EATX Motherboard Review
6. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2GB Graphics Card Review - Kepler in Motion
7. Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 Review: Kepler's First Laptop
   1. PC Perspective Live Review Recap: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680
8. MSI R7970 Lightning Review: AMD's HD 7970 Gets the Treatment
9. This Podcast is brought to you by MSI Computer, and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!
   
10. Galaxy Readying 4GB and Hall Of Fame Edition GTX 680 GPUs
11. About that pricing AMD; you sure you want to stick with it?
12. Super Talent Releases New RAIDDrive upStream PCI-E SSD
13. Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
    1. Ryan: is lame and didnt have one
    2. Jeremy: I got a better deal but this is close
    3. Josh: Two SSDs for the price of one 
    4. Allyn: Khan Academy
14. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
15. http://pcper.com/podcast   
16. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
17. Closing

Sapphire Unveils New AMD Radeon HD 7970 OC Edition GPU

Subject: General Tech | March 15, 2012 - 10:36 PM | Tim Verry
Tagged: sapphire, radeon, HD 7970, gpu, amd, 7970

Sapphire Technologies recently launched a new factory overclocked version of the AMD Radeon HD 7970 graphics card. The new Radeon HD 7970 OC Edition promises to combine the performance of AMD's 7970 GPU (you can find our review of the 7970 here) with Sapphire's own Dual X two fan heatpipe cooler.

The Sapphire HD 7970 GPU is powered by one 8 pin and one 6 pin PCI-E power connection, and supports the PCI-E 3.0 standard and Microsoft's DirectX 11.1 technology. Other specifications include 3 GB of GDDR5 memory, a 28nm Graphics Core Next (GCN) GPU core, a 384-bit memory interface, and a dual BIOS switch depending on whether you want to run at stock clock speeds or use the factory overclocked profile.

Specifically, the Sapphire HD 7970 GPU features a dual bios switch that allows customers to switch between default clock speeds of 950 MHz core and 1425 MHz memory and the factory overclocked speeds of 1 GHz (1,000 MHz) core and 1450 MHz memory. When using the overclocked BIOS, the graphics card will employ more a more aggressive fan profile and also allows raises the maximum limits for overclocking the core, memory, and voltage values.

Further, the Sapphire GPU uses their own Dual X cooler that features a dual slot aluminum heatsink connected to the GPU core by five copper heatpipes. This heatsink is then cooled by two large fans, that Sapphire claims will enable quiet operation even while under load.

Accessories wise, Sapphire provides one DVI, one HDMI, and two mini Display Port video outputs. In the retail packaging, Sapphire provides an Active mini Display Port to single-link DVI adapter, HDMI to DVI adapter, DVI to VGA adapter, two PCI-E to molex power adapters (one molex to PCI-E 8 pin and one molex to PCI-E 6 pin), a mini Display Port to Display Port adapter, a 1.8 meter HDMI 1.4a cable, and a CrossFire bridge.

The new Sapphire HD 7970 OC Edition is available now from authorized retailers, and is retailing for between $580 and $630 at several retailers at the time of writing.

HD7970 from ASUS and XFX, who offers the most impressive card?

Subject: Graphics Cards | January 26, 2012 - 05:12 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: xfx, GCN, asus, southern islands, radeon, pcie 3.0, dx 11.1, amd, 7970, 28nm

[H]ard|OCP recently came out with two HD7970 reviews, one made by ASUS and one by XFX.  The ASUS Radeon HD 7970 is currently one of the least expensive choices at $559 and runs at the default speeds of 925MHz and 1375MHz.  It does ship with ASUS' GPU Tweak utility to allow for easy overclocking if you wish to push the card like [H] did, in their case to 1125MHz on the GPU core, and 1695MHz GDDR5.

The other choice is the XFX R7970 Black Edition which is a custom card, overclocked to 1GHz on the core and 1425MHz GDDR5 but costs $50 more than the offering from ASUS.  At the out of the box speeds, XFX's card both draws less energy and runs much cooler and was silent compared to the ASUS offering.  Even after [H] overclocked the card to 1125MHz core and 1575MHz GDDR5, which was the maximum possible using AMD's Overdrive, it was almost silent when running full out. 

The decision seems to be how much it is worth to you to have a quiet card and if you are willing to find a way to overclock beyond what the Catalyst Control Center can manage.

"We have the new XFX R7970 Black Edition video card to evaluate, which is XFX's current flagship Radeon HD 7970 based video card. With a custom PCB, custom hardware components and custom cooling fan, will it take us to new heights in overclocking, or leave us wishing we had just purchased a "reference" card?"

Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:

Graphics Cards

• Sapphire AMD Radeon HD 6670 @ TechwareLab
• Sapphire HD 7970 3GB Video Cards in CrossFire Overclocked @ Tweaktown
• Asus HD7970 Tri Crossfire @ Kitguru
• ASUS Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II Top Video Card @ Legit Reviews
• HIS Radeon HD 6570 IceQ @ Funky Kit
• Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 3GB Video Cards in 3-Way CrossFireX @ Tweaktown
• HIS 6670 1GB Fan @ XSReviews
• ASUS Radeon HD 7970 3GB CrossFire Review @ Legit Reviews
• An Open-Source, Reverse-Engineered Mali GPU Driver @ Phoronix
• Arctic Accelero XTREME Plus II VGA cooler Review @ XtremeComputing
• Graphics Card Overclocking: Is it really worth it? @ TechSpot
• KFA2 MDT X4 – GTX580 @ Kitguru
• Galaxy GeForce GT 440 2GB Review @ Neoseeker
• Galaxy GT 520 MDT Review @ OCC
• Nouveau For A $10 NVIDIA Graphics Card @ Phoronix

AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB Cards In Stock - For Now

Subject: Graphics Cards | January 25, 2012 - 07:42 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: amd, radeon, HD 7970, 7970, southern islands, tahiti

If you have been looking for a Radeon HD 7970 graphics card since its official release on January 9th and our review on December 22nd, then you better hurry up, as Newegg is showing the cards as in stock as of today.

There are three listed, all at stock clock speeds:

• MSI - $579
• Sapphire - $559
• PowerColor - $549

Also, Amazon.com lists a few but only one as currently in stock (with 8 remaining!!).  In reality, there aren't that many people interested in buying $550+ graphics cards but those of you that want the absolute fastest single GPU card on the planet, this is it.

You can check out review of the HD 7970 reference card right here!!

500 people attend AMD [H]ardOCP FX GamExperience 2012

Subject: Graphics Cards, Processors, Shows and Expos | January 22, 2012 - 01:09 AM | Steve Grever
Tagged: overclocking, hardocp, ati, amd, 7970

More than 500 people made the trip to Eddie Deen’s Ranch in Dallas, Texas to attend AMD and HardOCP’s FX Game Experience event today. Many of the tech industry’s heavy hitters were on hand with interactive booths to showcase their latest PC hardware and provide people with around $50,000 in giveaways and prizes. 

Check out our video coverage of the AMD [H]ardOCP FX GamExperience 2012 event!

ASUS, MSI, and Sapphire each brought their latest respective AMD-based motherboards and performance graphics cards to showcase at the event, including their HD Radeon 7950 and 7970 offerings. ASUS also gave the audience a closer look at some of their other PC gaming peripherals, wireless routers, and Blu ray burners.

HardOCP founder Kyle Bennett put on a show for the crowd with numerous raffle drawings and crazy contests for people to win new AMD processors and other hardware from MSI, Gigabyte, ASUS, Corsair, Ergotech, Antec, Maingear, Optoma, Patriot Memory, Astro, Sapphire, Western Digital, ArcSoft, ASRock, vReveal, Diamond Multimedia, and Zotac. 

Check out all of our coverage of the AMD [H]ardOCP FX GamExperience 2012!!

Stock Check: Radeon HD 7970 Day 1

Subject: Graphics Cards | January 9, 2012 - 12:00 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: amd, radeon, 7970, HD 7970

Well, today is the day!  You should be on the lookout for the brand new AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB graphics cards that we first were able to show you on December 22nd!  And today we posted our review of the retail-ready XFX Black Edition Double Dissipation card with overclocked speeds - be sure to give it a read as well. 

Scheduled to be on sale today, I decided to take a quick look around the Internet...

Newegg is on auto-notify for ALL Radeon HD 7970s...

Amazon shows a single card as in stock, from Sapphire, selling for a staggering $683.  But it has Prime shipping!

Our search at TigerDirect came up empty.

Someplace called ExcaliburPC shows one for sale at $637, but is backordered.

Finally, Provantage shows a whole lot of nothing...

I am hoping that stock will improve as the day goes on and some of these vendors start to show availability in their systems.  Otherwise, AMD is going to have a lot of explaining to do.

Feel free to post below if you find them for sale or not!