AMD's Radeon HD 7970 is built to be a computing powerhouse. It offers a ton of new features, expands upon the Eyefinity ecosystem and aims to walk away with the single GPU performance crown. Find out how it stacks up to NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580 and AMD's own Radeon HD 6970 as the battle for the high-end graphics card throne heats up for the holidays.

AMD Radeon HD 7970 Launch Review

^ Agreed.

ATI is trying to take advantage of its new GPU as the "fastest single-core chip" before Kepler is out. The price will be lowered afterwards plus some performance improvements through new drivers.

It is overpriced, plain and simple. It should be $400. The GTX 580 is far overpriced for its performance - this is the reason I never got one (or two). For next-gen, this should not be anywhere near $500, let alone $550.

The 6970 was only around $300 at launch, so I honestly expected this one to be around $400. AMD is not going to sell many cards with this price point, because to be honest, it's NOT worth it. A 15% increase over a 580 in most cases is awful, not only because it's 28nm, but because it's a whole new Architecture.

Overpriced, underperforming, not worth it. I'll wait for Kepler.

Did it really? I thought it was around $300 at launch - I got the 6950 for like $250 at launch? Maybe I got it for $300, can't remember to be honest.

Anyway, this should be at $400, if it were $400, it would be reasonable for sure. $350 would be the sweet spot that would really just destroy Nvidia. The thing I love about AMD/ATI's cards were the fact that they offered the best price/performance. $550 is absolutely overpriced, you can't even argue it. The GTX 580 is also overpriced, and while this does beat out the 580 for a similar price ($50 more than the 3GB 580), this is a standard reference next-gen card. It should be around the same price as their standard current gen cards, or around $50 more. It's nothing amazing in the performance department, either. If it had a solid 40%-45% increase over the GTX 580, I could see $550.

great read. went over it a second time in case i missed anything. im quite impressed with the temperatures, especially after overclocking. it looks like you guys could have pushed it much further. are we able to see some extensive overclocking results? there has to be a way to get it past the limits of the overclocing sofware used, no? forget voltage increases...most people dont risk it with their cards, but just to see what happens on stock voltages would be excellent.

the price is high, but what do you expect? its new tech. they are always overpriced initally. sure, the initial price is high, even by those standards, but im sure if you wait a month or two, it will drop considerably. in any case, i believe that the extra price is partly justified with all the features offered, ecpecially considering that it has some better power management technology added in, as well as the improvements to eyefinity with the audio and the 3d features. i myself wouldnt use such a feature (the 3d), but hey, its there for others if they want it. ive never really understood the hype behind 3d anyway.

i say let people wait until its cheaper, and then im sure it would be a great value card.

leochan - "Batman: Arkham City is the squeal to the smash hit...."

^Fanboy squeal amirite?

Anyway, although the performance is great on this card, I'm particularly interested in the cooling. I hope NvIDIA takes a leaf out of AMD's book and improves the cooling solutions on their future cards, as I'm not terribly interested in going back to AMD in the future (NVIDIA is just a more logical choice, considering its feature set and software support).

I look forward to a review of a 670 or 680 card (or equivalent, though I don't see them changing it).

My jaw drops at the thought of a 690 GPU though, I can only imagine how epic that card will be (performance and price wise XD).

Two things stop me from getting a GTX 5xx and that is the size of the card and the price. One thing the HD 69xx cards have over nVidia is price/performance (well maybe not the 6990 because that's just damn expensive). The new dual-fan Sapphire 6970 is £50 cheaper than the cheapest 580 I've seen, and I've not really seen any 580s that would be able to fit into my case, since the harddrive bays get in the way... hell a 25cm card is pushing it.

Normally I would've gone for an Intel+nVidia build but to build it to the spec I would've wanted it would've cost me around £1000 atleast and I don't have that kinda money. AMD seems to have move to competing on price, hence why I've gone for an AMD build at a little over £500. However I've noticed alot of games are displaying nVidia logos on.

Granted I might not have explored every type of card on there but I'm going by what I've seen so far.