Radeon 7970 or should I wait for 8970?

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Cloudster

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So I'm really looking to upgrade my 5970 and have a question for you guys.

Should I wait for the 8970? At first I heard it's coming early second quarter, now I've been hearing it will only be out next year? Does anyone know when it will be released?
 
Start on a launch for next year February or March, 2013 will only see some refreshes of the HD7000 lineup. If you have the cash and have your eye on the HD7970, I'd say go for it!
 
Sweet, thanks for the advice... I think I'm gonna go for it.

Another thing guys, I see that there is a brand named "Powercolor" and their 7970 is going for R4,150 which is about R1,200 cheaper than the ASUS 7970. Do you rate I go for the ASUS or lesse known (well atleast to me anyway) powercolor?
 
Been discussed a few times. Powercolor is a big brand in Asia and have been growing quite substantially. They use reference PCB's so its pretty much the stock card that comes from AMD. Absolutely nothing wrong with the brand and with the bundled games makes it a no-brainer.
 
poffle said:
Been discussed a few times. Powercolor is a big brand in Asia and have been growing quite substantially. They use reference PCB's so its pretty much the stock card that comes from AMD. Absolutely nothing wrong with the brand and with the bundled games makes it a no-brainer.
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Shot, thanks for the advice
 
Okay so I got the card >_< couldn't wait for wootware to get new cards in so I got the ASUS one; here's the link: http://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/HD7970DC2T3GD5/

So I have a 600w power supply and I had to use two 6 to 8 pin converters (from power supply) so that both power LED's went on. The card works fine.. when I play Crysis 3 on high settings though for like 30 minutes or more my PC crashes and the screen freezes.

I downloaded the ASUS GPU tweak tool and it allows you to play with voltages, clock speeds etc. The standard GPU voltage is at 1175... will lowering this solve my problem or is there something else I need to do to fix this problem long term?

Thanks for your time >_<
 
Cloudster said:
Sweet, thanks for the advice... I think I'm gonna go for it.

Another thing guys, I see that there is a brand named "Powercolor" and their 7970 is going for R4,150 which is about R1,200 cheaper than the ASUS 7970. Do you rate I go for the ASUS or lesse known (well atleast to me anyway) powercolor?
Click to expand...

Check the guarantees and decide, powercolor i imagine has one year and asus 3 year. So i dunno if it justifies the extra cash. I bought a powercolour 6990, it was 2k cheaper than anything else, one year warranty, almost two year in service. Worth the saving yes, had it died one year and two month in perhaps not.
 
You're possibly overloading the rails on the PSU, although if you had a HD5970 before this shouldn't be an issue since the HD7970 is so much more efficient. Do you have the latest drivers?
 
NAG - Wesley said:
You're possibly overloading the rails on the PSU, although if you had a HD5970 before this shouldn't be an issue since the HD7970 is so much more efficient. Do you have the latest drivers?
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Yep, I downloaded the latest catalyst drivers... other games play perfectly for as long as I want, but Crysis 3 crashes after like 30 mins. Will try out Farcry 3 and see if it does the same on high settings :/
 
Cloudster said:
Yep, I downloaded the latest catalyst drivers... other games play perfectly for as long as I want, but Crysis 3 crashes after like 30 mins. Will try out Farcry 3 and see if it does the same on high settings :/
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Is your Crysis 3 a original copy or pirated? If it's a pirate it can be the crack your running...
 
UltimateGamer said:
Is your Crysis 3 a original copy or pirated? If it's a pirate it can be the crack your running...
Click to expand...

AMD give you Crysis with the purchase of a 79xx

I don't have any issues on my xfire 7950s (although maybe i've played for less than 30 min) - I'm running a 820w 80+ PSU.
 
UltimateGamer said:
Is your Crysis 3 a original copy or pirated? If it's a pirate it can be the crack your running...
Click to expand...

Its the original.. I don't pirate games :) so I played Farcry 3 for like 2 hrs with directx 11 and high settings. No crashes but.... After exiting, got a blue screen crash after about 15 minutes....

Will adjusting the card's voltage using the tweaking tool help at all.

Thanks for all the responses so far, I appreciate it.
 
No don't adjust the voltages that will rather make your PC freeze if the card gets to hot or even melt something on the PCB and the warranty does not cover if you adjust the voltages (overclocking). Did you format your PC when you installed the new card? Or try running ccleaner this will clear all registry files that are corrupt and not in use. :) Hope this helps
 
Cloudster, what settings are you playing Crysis 3 on? Does this happen with any other game? Both Kepler and GCN cards have a memory leak issue with the game although the latest AMD Beta drivers appear to have patched that up, no clue about if the Geforce drivers have also attended to it. You can download the Beta driver here.
 
Ultimategamer, I didn't format my PC when I installed the card. Sweet bud, I'll try using CCleaner and see if that helps ;-) .. I'm still getting blue screens. It even happens when I'm not gaming and browsing the web?

Thanks Wesley, I'll try out the Beta driver... I'm playing Crysis on high settings. Mmmmm when I play Crysis 3 my PC just freezes up on the current frame. When I'm out of Crysis it crashes to a blue screen?

Thanks for the help guys.
 
Yup, freezing and blue screens sound like the memory leak problem that a lot of people are having. The Beta drivers should help. If not, re-installing Crysis 3 may solve the issue as well once it's forced to patch itself.
 
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