[OcUK]7950 Crossfire vs 680 SLI at 5760*1080 (Eyefinity/Surround) - Page 7

Tahiti cards[7950 and 7970], on average, overclock similarly

@ 7950s being binned up to 1GHz

Get to know what binning is and how it's done before you continue your laughing, why don't you?

I can give you a starting point: chips are binned to run at their stock clocks, nothing more. Stock clocks here mean the clocks that the cards are sold to customers with. For 7950s, that would be 800-1000MHz AFAIK. For 7970s, the range is 925-1200MHz AFAIK. Now: if one batch of basically the same chip is binned for, let's say 1000MHz, there should be zero chips in that batch not capable of running at 1000MHz. Another batch is binned for 800MHz: that means that the good chips in that batch will most likely run at similar max clocks than those of the first batch, but it also means there could be chips that won't make it to 1000MHz. Base your statistical analysis on those two batches and you get similar max clocks but lower average clocks for the second batch. See my point? Here's something for further reading.

I would say the most of those threads are from 7950 owners who go and buy a 7950 because everyone is saying to them: "get a 7950 and clock it to 1150MHz, they can all do it, go for it". They go and buy one and behold: they don't all make it to 1150MHz regardless of voltage. The most pissed of 7950 owners are the ones who end up with a 7950 with locked voltage. I guess you laugh at them, too?

I've read my fair share about these cards and my estimates would put the average 24/7 usable 7950 at around 1125MHz and the average 24/7 usable 7970 at around 1175MHz. Hwbot's benchmarking averages on air are 1155MHz for 7950 and 1214MHz for 7970.

I'm in this thread because I wanted to bring forth the fact that frame rates are not all there is to comparing SLI and CF (which is very much on topic). I then revived this thread because of Tom's review showing the great results of using RadeonPro with a Tahiti CF. And finally, I keep coming back here because there seems to be some sort of a feeding frenzy for certain people who can't be happy with Tahiti being stronger based on facts, but need to go further twisting the truth to only include pro-Tahiti points of view and exclude all others.
Edited by specopsFI - 11/12/12 at 8:43am

AMD stopped manufacturing HD 7950s at 800 Mhz from when they launched HD 7950 Boost at 850 Mhz core clocks and 925 Mhz boost clocks in August mid. A mid Aug launch means chips off the fab after late June were binned for the higher clock speed and came with higher voltage. the boost clocks are only limited by TDP. If you max power control to +20% every HD 7950 boost chip runs at 925 Mhz guaranteed. These chips are easily hitting 1100 Mhz on stock voltage and reach upto 1200 Mhz with extra voltage.

Might be. Still not sure how that is in conflict with what I wrote. Also, there are a lot of 800MHz 7950s still being sold even with the Never Settle bundle. And you're still overly confident on the 7950 overclocking capabilities, there's again a new thread on the AMD side of a 7950 user struggling to get past 1000MHz even with voltage control.

I am happy to admit that 2 * 7950 at 5760*1080 beats my LTG 680s. I went head to head with 2*7970s in BF3 Operation Swordbreaker and the 7970s eat me for breakfast. I am an Nvidia Fan btw and the original benchs in the opening post, I know the user from OcUK and he is in no way biased to either GPU. Those results I consider fair and that doesn't mean I like it but they are correct.

I shant be getting rid of my LTGs anytime soon though
Edited by Gregster - 11/14/12 at 12:44pm

Thank you for your honesty. Many people underestimate or do not realize the potential of the 7950 (*cough cough*) I came from a Lightning 680 and know full well just how potent this particular card is. Unfortunately, it did not sit well with me that my Gigabyte 7950(1280/7200) that I had bought for $300 matches and ousts the $600 Lightning(1372/7100) in just about every game and synthetic excluding 3DMark 11. I ended up returning it for the Matrix 7970 Platinum and couldn't be happier.

7950 TFIII here -- Just got this one: -- (single card)




BF3 gameplay log: (game played super-smooth on my Shimian)

No problem and at this extreme resoloution, the 7970/50 realy excel with the 384Bit memory bus. 1080P is fine but higher res's, the Keplers lose ground and fast.

I see alot of hate going on about the 680's in sli surround mode and thats the setup I've got , so I took a couple of days to get this big post up http://www.hardwarepal.com/article/gtx-680-sli-benchmark . I would please like if anyone with 7950's in crossfire has some time to send me the data so I can work on, to see the difference and how much "better" the 7950s are side by side in real numbers not just flaff talk against my 680's.