radeon Radeon HD 7970 raw specs leak out

[Snake89]

here's some more info on this graphics card:

AMD Radeon hd7970 tessellation performance 4x faster than hd6970:

http://www.geeks3d.com/20111216/amd-radeon-hd-7970-tessellation-performance-4x-faster-than-hd-6970/

[Roger H. Veteran]

Holy crap :omg: - it used to be 90w on idle???? Geeze, I got out of the PC gaming market a long time ago but I remember when GPUs used to use that much power while active! That's a lot of power!

[Astra.Xtreme]

Wow this card is going to be sick if the idle power spec is true. Will definitely give Nvidia a run for its money for once.

[(Spork)]

how big of a tower will you need for this lol

[giantpotato]

Let's just hope this doesn't turn out like Bulldozer. Looks awesome on paper, is a disappointment in reality.

I'm curious as to what the definition of idle is here. Idle as in: using the 2D desktop or idle as in: monitor is in sleep mode because I'm not using the computer.

[Motoko.]

Let's just hope this doesn't turn out like Bulldozer. Looks awesome on paper, is a disappointment in reality.

I'm curious as to what the definition of idle is here. Idle as in: using the 2D desktop or idle as in: monitor is in sleep mode because I'm not using the computer.

Fortunately, AMD's cpu team is completely seperate from ATI's engineers

I'd like to be optimistic and say 3W for 2D Desktop, it wouldn't really be worth a mention if it were for sleep mode, imo

[yxz]

"AMD Radeon? HD 7970 Graphics Benchmarking Guide"

AMDRadeonHD7970_ReviewGuide_Final.pdf

AMD ZeroCore Power

Enabling the World?s Most Power Efficient GPUs

When a discrete GPU is in a static screen state it works to minimize idle power by enabling a host of

active power saving functions including (but not limited to); clock gating, power gating, memory

compression, and a host of other features. However, GPUs with AMD?s exclusive ZeroCore Power

technology can take energy savings to entirely new heights by completely powering down the core

GPU while the rest of the system remains active.

Nearly all PCs can be configured to turn off their displays after a long period of inactivity. This is

known as the long idle state; where the screen is blanked but the rest of the system remains in an

active and working power state (ACPI G0/S0). As soon as the system goes into long idle state and

applications are not actively changing the screen contents, the GPU enters the ZeroCore power

state. In the ZeroCore power state, the GPU core (including the 3D engine / compute units,

multimedia and audio engines, displays, memory interfaces, etc.) is completely powered down.

However, one cannot simply remove the GPU and its associated device context completely;

particularly when it is the only GPU in the system as is the case in many enthusiast platforms. The

operating system and SBIOS must still be aware that a GPU is still present in the system. For this

reason, the ZeroCore Power state maintains a very small bus control block to ensure that GPU

context is still visible to the operating system and SBIOS. The ZeroCore power state also manages

the power sequencing of the GPU to ensure that the power up/down mechanism is self-contained

and independent of the rest of the system.

Improved Tessellation

The latest iteration of architecture in the AMD Radeon? HD 7970 GPU features a brand new

Generation of Tesselator (Gen 9) in its Geometry Engine. This features optimizations such as;

Increased vertex re-use, Off-chip buffering improvements and larger parameter caches. This helps

Improve performance at all tessellation factors at up to 4x the throughput of AMD Radeon?

HD 6900 series graphics (Gen 8).

[Tekkerson]

^*le drool*

Now how about load power consumption?

For that performance I'm not sure if it's about the same considering the die shrink or more because of how much more powerful it is

[ahhell]

I wonder how ****ty the drivers will be at launch.

2x performance in xfire? LOOOOOOOOOL

[ToneKnee]

Let's just hope this doesn't turn out like Bulldozer. Looks awesome on paper, is a disappointment in reality.

I'm curious as to what the definition of idle is here. Idle as in: using the 2D desktop or idle as in: monitor is in sleep mode because I'm not using the computer.

Maybe it's possible it has a separate GPU that exclusively runs on the GUI or something..?

[giantpotato]

This is looking good, but that second chart is deceptive. It's cropped so that the performance benefit of AMD is exaggerated. The performance is 1.6x better, but the AMD bar is 4x bigger than the nVIDIA bar :s

[Knife Party]

I wonder how ****ty the drivers will be at launch. 2x performance in xfire? LOOOOOOOOOL

hey in all fairness the Nvidia camp are in the sameboat.....

[Randolph]

i really need to build a new pc after seeing this. dimension 8300 lol :no: