| Soleron said: BlueFalcon, the 8970 will be barely faster than the 7970 and not worth upgrading to, |
I don't disagree that HD8970 will be a minor speed bump but you are forgetting that HD7970GE has a 7-10% lead over GTX680 and GTX690 is not 80% faster than HD7970GE. GTX680 SLI is just 64% faster than HD7970GE at 1600P and those 680s are faster than a single 690:
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/2012/3x-gtx-680-und-3x-hd-7970-mit-i7-3970x/5/
Essentially, if we assume a 15-20% increase from HD7970GE for the 8970, then the HD8970 would already be 25%-32% faster than a GTX680. Based on the links above, GTX680 has 1.88x scaling over the GTX680. 85% of GTX680 SLI implies 85% x 1.88 ~ 1.60x performance advantage for the Titan over a single GTX680. HD8970 could end up at 1.25-1.32x of a GTX680 because HD7970GE is 10% faster than the 680. Suddenly the Titan is barely more than 20% faster than an HD8970 and for $900 that doesn't look so hot if the 8970 costs $549.
Using TechPowerUP's more extensive review and actual benches of the GTX690, we can narrow it down even further. Going off the rumors for Titan's performance at 85% of GTX690 here are my back of the envelope calculations:
Based on GTX690's performance at TechPowerup, GTX690 is on average 55% faster than HD7970GE at 1080P and 58% faster at 1600P. If GTX780 Ti is 85% of the performance of the GTX690, then it will be 31% faster (85% x 204/132) than HD7970GE at 1080P and 34% faster (85% x 216/137) at 1600P.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/VTX3D/Radeon_HD_7870_XT_Black/28.html
If HD8970 is just 15-20% faster than HD7970GE but costs $549 and Titan ends up 31-35% faster than HD7970GE but costs $899, then GTX780 Ti is less than 20% faster than HD8970 for $350 more!! GTX580 was about 18-20% faster than HD6970 for $130 more. That wouldn't look like such a great deal once again for the Titan. If AMD adds 2560 SPs to HD8970, and more mature 28nm node allows HD8970s to overclock to 1200mhz on air more easily, the bitcoin mining performance will rise 30% over my 7970s clocked at 1150mhz because BTC performance scales 100% linear with ALU performance.
So now, I could buy $550x 3 HD8970s for the price of 2x Titans and get faster gaming performance + bitcoin mining $$$. We'll see how things play out because if Titan can overclock to 1Ghz+, then things would play out totally differently :). Also, if Titan is just a limited run of 20,000 cards (similar to 7800GTX 512MB), I wonder what the 'real' GTX700 series will be like.
I am not in a rush to upgrade anyway since most 2013 PC games aside from Metro LL and Crysis 3 seem to be console ports, especially in the first half of the year. I might upgrade but more likely than not leaning towards 20nm chips in 1H 2014.
