Thursday 29 March 2012

More Proof 7970 is clock per clock KING



GTX 680 vs. MSI Lightning 7970 Clock per Clock




Comparing the GTX 680 to the 7970 both clocked at 1100/6000 Mhz. Enjoy.. 


Setup: Core i7-3930K @4.7 GH, Asus Rampage IV Extreme, 8 GB DDR3-2400 MHz Kingston, Antec HP-1200W. Drivers Catalyst 12.3 + GeForce 300.10.


RESULTS:






Even OBR a known pro Nvidia / Anti AMD troll shows here the 7970 beats the GTX 680 in a clock per clock battle!

EDIT:

HE ACTUALLY MADE A MISTAKE IT LOOKS LIKE THE 7970 IS ~8.0% BETTER ON AVERAGE CLOCK PER CLOCK, COMPARED TO THE GTX 680, NOT 1.8%. 

Wednesday 28 March 2012

PS4 called Orbis and uses AMD x64 CPU / AMD Southern Islands GPU









The British edition of the Official Playstation Magazine pointed out a finding by Kotaku USA that the new Playstaion 4 has the codename Orbis and is reported to sport an AMD x64 CPU as well as a 7900 Southern Islands derivative GPU. Sound Familiar? This sounds an awful like Trinity, but we will see how things unfold by E3 2013. This means Sony would be moving away from its original partner Nvidia, to develop the new Playstation. The console is also reported to support resolutions up to 4096x2160. Seem like AMD will be owning  the console market in 2013, supporting GPUs for both Sony and Microsoft (using a AMD 6670 derivative in the Xbox Loop), as well as Lenovo's iSec in China.

Look here for the full story.

Sunday 25 March 2012

AMD and Nvidia's REAL single GPU flagships



ITS ON!

Lets see what the future holds for single GPUs




TEAM AMD:


Sapphire will later announce their 1335 Mhz 7970 flagship with their Atomic Series, which will come in air as well as liquid cooled variants.




This card will be clocked +45% higher than a standard 7970 (925 Mhz), giving roughly 40-45% higher performance. It will be intresting to see how high these clocks can go with further over volting and cooling, though I dont expect it to easily clock higher than 1400 mhz.




TEAM NVIDIA: 


In August 2012, Nvidia will be unveiling their GK110 (GTX 685) single GPU flagship. According to the specs, it will cost $650 USD, and will sport roughly 50% more cores, and ~46% higher computing power, and ~50% more Gaming performance when compared to the GTX 680.




Both these cards will be beasts, however I still believe Nvidia's singlle card flagship will come out with a slight advantage. By August, AMD will already have released their 7990 dual card solution (watch in the next few weeks to come), which will still out perform both of these single cards by over 50%, despite its meager 850 Mhz clock. Nvidia's dual card solution will spot 2 x GK104 cards, so it will be neck and neck with the 7990 in performance. It is expected to be released in May of 2012. The auguest release date is not official, and this card could end up being the GTX 780 in late 2012. This would be the largest bump in performance Nvidia will experience between generations of their single card flagship.

Only time will tell how things unfold!

Thursday 22 March 2012

Nvidia GTX 680 OCd vs AMD 7970 OCd




No Clear Winner....

EDIT: The GTX 680 actually turbos to 1058-1110 Mhz, so this is the stock clock used when comparing to a 925 Mhz 7970. Clock per clock is a completely different ball game, and it is important to note because these cards are designed to overclock.

UPDATE: Check here  you can see that an overclocked 7970 gets very close and usually passes an overclocked gtx 680 in performance. VR Zone giving the GTX 680 a worse score (8.5, vs 9.0) than the AMD 7970, even given its lower price. Keep in mind the GTX 680 still has a 4.3% OC limit advantage in this specific benchmark. (GTX 680 @ 1335/1800 Mhz AMD 7970 @ 1280/1860 Mhz).

source: Xbit Labs

QUOTE:


And finally we can compare the performance boost each card gets from overclocking. It’s clear the AMD Radeon HD 7970 benefits more from overclocking in nearly every test both in 1920x1080 and in 2560x1600.


source


Also seen here, we can see overclocked performance is pretty much a tie! Note the GTX 680 is at 1300+ Mhz, while the 7970 is only at 1125 mhz




This is from techpowerUP


As seen here, we can see across all resolutions the 7970  @ 925 / 1375 Mhz  vs GTX 680 @ 1110 / 1502 Mhz  we only see a +6% difference. Note to get to the clocks of the 680, the 7970 will have to be overclocked +20.0%/+9.2% for clock/memory. 


Now compare these TWO reviews from OCC. they are using identical hardware, and most tests are identical. Watch the 7970 @ 1235/1730 Mhz wipe the floor with the GTX 680 @ 1305/1563 Mhz in most tests.

source 1 - gtx 680 OC

source 2 - 7970 OC

So keep this in mind. 

We are actually seeing 1110 Mhz GTX 680s against 925 Mhz 7970s, yet these cards both overclock to about the same Ghz value. Nvidia has the stock crown, while AMD has the overclock crown because its overclocking performance and clock gap is highest.  There is no obvious winner in my opinion, yes the GTX 680 is newer, but is it enough? And is it too late?

Nvidia GTX 680 vs AMD 7970 More Proof..L2N results!

3DMark 11  - L2N Results, GTX 680 vs AMD 7970 - Performance Setting




First Corner: AMD


Intel i7 3960x @ 5.2 ghz
MSI 7970 @ 1800 Mhz
4Gb DDR3 @ 2314 Mhz



Score: P15035



---


Second Corner: Nvidia


Intel i7 3930k @ 5.5 ghz
EVGA GTX 680 @ 1842 Mhz 
4 Gb DDR3 @ 2400 Mhz



Score: P14912





--


WINNER : AMD


Not only is the Nvidia GPU clocked higher, so is the memory, and the CPU clock. Despite these advantages, the 7970 manages to squeeze out a higher score!

At stock settings, the turbod gtx 680 (1058 Mhz turbo) will beat a 7970 (925 Mhz), but with overclocking is a different ballpark. This will be seen in the reviews to come! Stay tuned ;) EDIT: Reviews are out

As I predicted, its barley a clear winner.



My Prediction March 18th on fudzilla:

"The GTX 680 will outperform the 7970 by only 5-15% in most benchmarks, with some showing up to 30 % increase increase (for typical nvidia favoured benchmarks)  is my estimate. And I have a feeling it wont win in every benchmark, but will still be renowned King. (Not like when 6990 and gtx 590 came out when there was no clear winner). This card will cost 549-599$ USD (Wrong here, its 499 USD, good work nvidia), with the 7970 at 549$ , which will probably price drop to 459$. The 7990 will come out within 2-3 weeks later, again dethroning Nvidia, so I doubt Nvidia will play the King Card for long. This card will perform roughly 50-60% better than the GTX 680, and will cost around 849$ USD. I dont want to begin to imagine what Nvidia's dual card Kepler GTX 690 will cost (Over 1000USD?)"

Clock per clock, the battle becomes more even. Look here

I still want to see a clock per clock comparison review between the 7970 and the gtx 680. It appears this way comparing between the 7970 and the gtx 680 as resolution increases.

If this is true, it could be enough to de-thrown the gtx 680. Look here showing an OCd 7970 vs the gtx 680 with multiple monitor gaming. 

As shown here, no clear winner.

Side Note: To this day the AMD 6990 is king of GPUs.



Tuesday 20 March 2012

More Bad News for Nvidia



Not only is this card now cheaper than the 7970 (which is a good judgement of performance) (499 vs 549 USD) 

Check this out...





Also, we can see some leaked benchmarks, (Tom's) here. This card is designed for 1080p resolutions, if you are going to be running anything higher AMD is the way to go. We still have yet to see formal overclocking performance figures, other than what I have posted earlier. It also seems Nvidia hurts more when AA or AF is being used.

Also it should be obvious that most of the games tested in the leak have a Nvidia Bias, except I am impressed with DIRT 3 results. The percent drop in performance with AA is generally higher than that of a 7970, and at 1080p you most probably will use max AA/AF/MSAA if you are dishing out this much money for a GPU. I dont understand why ultra or max graphics weren't used for Metro 2033.

The jump from a 6970 to a 7970 (price difference ~249 USD)  is much larger than that of a gtx 580 to a 680 (price difference ~99 USD)

It doesn't look like there is a clear and obvious winner.



Link

Sunday 18 March 2012

3DMark11 Extreme : Nvidia GTX 680 SLI vs. AMD 7970 Crossfire Overclocked!



3DMark 11 Extreme Scores @ Same GPU Clock







First Corner: Nvidia



Intel i7 3960x @ 5.0 Ghz
2132 Quad Channel Memory  Cl9
Nvidia GTX 680 x 2 in SLI @ 1150/1803 Mhz


SCORE: X6243





--------





Second Corner: AMD



Intel i7 3960x @ 4.5 Ghz
2132 Quad Channel Memory  Cl8
AMD 7970 x 2 in Crossfire @ 1150/1750 Mhz


SCORE: X7896


Link

--


Intel i7 3960x @ 5.0 Ghz
1600 Quad Channel Memory  Cl8
AMD 7970 x 2 in Crossfire @ 11001750 Mhz



SCORE X7593




----


WINNER:  AMD


Monday 5 March 2012

Interesting.. 7870 in Crossfire + Intel 3960x @ 4.7 Ghz in 3DMark



3DMark 11 Extreme







First Corner: Intel

Intel i7 3960x @ 4.7 Ghz
2 x AMD Radeon 7870's in Crossfire @ 1000/1200
Corsair Vengence 16 Gb 1866 Quad Channel

Score : 4069




--------------------



Second Corner: AMD

AMD FX 8150 @ 4.8 Ghz
XFX 6990 @ 990/1500 Mhz
4 Gb 2183 Mhz Cl10

Score : 4065 



Its a Tie!

Sunday 4 March 2012

New Kid on the Block! Team Xtreem! Undefeated overclockability at an undefeated price!



Enter Team Group Inc:










Team Xtreem LV PC3 19200 - 2400 Mhz (2 x 4Gb) 
(9-11-11-28-1T)




The lack of reviews and any benchmarking for this DDR3 set makes me want to try it out and review it myself! Not only is this PC3-19200 (2400 Mhz) but its cas latency is only 9. Ontop of that its Command Rate is 1T, which is better than 2N or 2T (what all other 2400 mhz rams out there have)

Almost too good to be true! (Edit: These actually have lifetime warranty)And for the exact same price as the Geil and Corsair set. (~$160 CAD)

Here is the only benchmarks I have seen so far, This puppy will OC to 2628Mhz CL10, while most other PC3-19200 kits fail to push 2450 Mhz CL10. The only downside being that Trp 10 is usually unachievable at 2400 Mhz.


These are part of the same set series as the 2600 Mhz CL10 / 2800 Mhz CL12 that Team Group offers, which are untouched as of now in the memory market. 

Update:  So apparently this is the same Samsung Memory that Gskill uses with their Ripjaws Z 2400 Cl9 as well. 

Ill include this in the Poll!!

Friday 2 March 2012

ASUS Crosshair V - DEAD! Enter Gigabyte




Bad news everyone, my ASUS Crosshair V is officially DEAD. I will be purchasing :



GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD7 AM3+






WITH:


Geil Evo Two DDR3 - 2400 Mhz (2x4Gb)
(10-11-11-30)

source: extremeoverclocking


OR


Corsair Dominator GT DDR3 - 2133 Mhz (2x4Gb)
(9-11-10-27)



source: lelong.com


By I am leaning more towards the Geil (I have had really bad history with Corsair except for their PSU's, that is three individual cases of faulty ssd / ddr3 ram) 

Help me choose which ram I should get! I would love to get your guys' opinion on this! ^^

Also, I will be redoing my benchmarks with Windows 8 Consumer Preview! 


Stay tuned for this Upgrade. and Results! Thanks for all the support and everybody's patience! ^^