XFX’s Radeon HD 7970 Black Edition Double Dissipation: The First Semi-Custom 7970
by Ryan Smith on January 9, 2012 6:00 AM ESTFinal Words
Being the first mover in any market has its advantages, and this is especially true for XFX’s Radeon HD 7970 Black Edition Double Dissipation. While there’s nothing here we haven’t seen in the past on other video cards – a custom cooler and a moderate factory overclock – for the time being XFX is the only vendor offering either of those. Not surprisingly the Black Edition Double Dissipation appears to have sold out over at Newegg before our NDA even expired.
At this point in time XFX’s biggest advantage is that they’re the only vendor offering an open air cooler. There are obvious tradeoffs in these designs and it’s definitely not suited for everyone, but for cases that can handle the heat load of an open air cooler, XFX’s Double Dissipation cooler makes the resulting card significantly quieter than the reference design under load, offering the performance of a 7970 with less noise than any current high-end card. The only thorn in XFX’s side here is that their idle noise is a bit high, something I suspect they’ll fix on their first fully custom card when they can program in a more fitting fan profile.
Meanwhile XFX’s factory overclock gives the Black Edition Double Dissipation a distinct edge over the reference 7970 and any cards at similar clockspeeds, but I don’t believe this is as a significant advantage for the Black Edition Double Dissipation as its cooler. There’s plenty of evidence that most if not all 7970s can reach XFX’s factory overclock, so you’re effectively paying for the privilege of having those speeds pre-burnt into the BIOS. Not that there isn’t a place for a factory overclock, but unless you’re absolutely sheepish about doing it yourself, there’s probably nothing here you can’t do on your own. At best an argument can be made that by grabbing a pre-binned card you can expect a better aftermarket overclock – and you’ll absolutely want to do some overclocking of your own as we were able to get another 125MHz out of our sample.
Of course XFX isn’t giving this away for free – the Black Edition Double Dissipation comes at a $50 premium making it a $599 card, and the notable absence of the active miniDP to SL-DVI adaptor means you’d need to shell out another $25 to build a kit at parity to most other vendors' 7970 kits. Nevertheless XFX has generally earned their price premium. If you were satisfied with the reference 7970’s performance for its price, then the Black Edition Double Dissipation is not far off that curve, though at the end of the day it’s a factory overclocked card and you are definitely paying a premium for that.
With that said, if you’re looking to save a buck we’d suggest keeping your eyes open for the non-Black Edition version of the Double Dissipation card in the future. Without the factory overclock it should be a bit cheaper than the Black Edition, conferring the same advantages of the open air cooler without quite the price premium.
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chizow - Tuesday, January 10, 2012 - link
Also to this:"Gtx 460 and 560 ti were failure compared to AMD's offerings - in terms of performance."
Contradict yourself much? If this is true, then you're admitting every single GPU AMD has created since G80 is a failure compared to Nvidia's offerings and directly contradicting the points you're trying to make with regard to price and performance.
Sorry, you can't argue out of both sides of your mouth, the message just comes out a big jumbled mess.
wifiwolf - Tuesday, January 10, 2012 - link
I think with this post you're just saying he was right all along.And I agree. It's just business, you just choose where you you want to place your product: On profits or brand.
chizow - Tuesday, January 10, 2012 - link
No, I don't agree with any of that because its clearly off-base and out of place in a discussion about high-end performance parts.What drives pricing in this segment? This is a simple answer.
Performance. That's all that matters.
Performance/watt and performance/dollar are just tertiary considerations that take a back seat to secondary considerations like feature sets and application support. You win these "value" market segments not because you want to, but because you have to when you can't win without compromises.
wumpus - Tuesday, January 10, 2012 - link
DPFlops/Watt matters if Fermi and Kepler were designed for GPU computing. Nvidia makes a ton of money there, and doesn't have to compete with AMD nearly as much as in graphics.DPFlops/Card seem to matter more. I suspect that DPFlops/Card matters most (due to IO issues) than DPFlops/$ (once known as machoflops, mostly for govt/academic epeenwaving).
Now that both companies appear to be designing for GPU computing, it will be interesting to see how they compare (even if the 7970 seems to be missing half of its DPFlops. I wonder if they managed to de-power the transistors if they are there).
chizow - Tuesday, January 10, 2012 - link
DPFLops/Watt discussions have a place, but not for desktop GPU parts branded GeForce or Radeon. If this were a Tesla part it'd be more meaningful.Nvidia cripples DP performance pretty badly on their GeForce parts starting with Fermi and I imagine they will do the same for Kepler. It also sounds like AMD is doing the same for Tahiti, but it will be some time before we have any idea if GCN is even directly competitive in real world GPU compute applications.
Benchmarks and synthetic tests look great, but its going to take quite a bit of effort for AMD to get any penetration in a HPC market Nvidia has clearly dominated. Nvidia basically had to create their own API and GPU compute market from scratch, so AMD has their work cut out for them to catch up.
Jediron - Wednesday, January 11, 2012 - link
No, not the Champions of the poor. But yes, Champions of the single core Videocard!GTX580, you lose.
Sure the ball lies in Nvidia camp now, no suprise there! The ball was in AMD's camp, and they scored; that is obvious.
Long live the red camp :-)
mhampton - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
Page 2 of the article starts by listing the setup tested, and the CPU must be a misprint - as far as I know there is no "i7-3936". Presumably this should be 3960 or 3930 instead.know of fence - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
The same 3936 misprint can be found here:http://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/amd-radeon-hd-7...
Ryan Smith - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
Noted and fixed. Thank you.BenSides - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
I agree with a poster above, who is apparently content running a single 5850 paired with the latest game releases. I have 2 5870's in crossfireX, in conjuction with an old i7 950 cpu. My benchmark results (Crysis) blow this new thing (7870) to hell.While not a gamer, benchmarking is a hobby of mine. Looking at the results here at Anandtech, it is reassuring to know that with the elderly cards I have, it seems there is nothing, at the present time, or looming on the horizon, which would make my graphics cards obsolete.
In short, until AMD or NVIDIA introduce some revolutionary new technology, you're fine with your current card(s), if the presented benchmarks are any indication. Seems to me that at the present time, NVIDIA and AMD are producing new graphics solutions which are just overclocked versions of *old* graphics solutions.