PC Hardware → Radeon HD 7000 series

I see that the 7000 series GPUs are restricted to 7750 and above. Is AMD finished with this series? Meaning if I want a lower performance card then I need to choose something from the 6000 series, or I would need to wait until the (presumed) 8000 series?

On one of my PC I have a 5670, and want something comparable for another PC.

TIA

HD 8000 series 2013
»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Se ··· _family)

HD 7670, HD 7570, HD 7470, HD 7450, HD 7350 is for OEM.
»www.tomshardware.com/new ··· 431.html

Both sides have slowed down their low end rollout, as integrated GPUs are making them unnecessary. You'll probably continue to see rebranding or even a complete withdrawal eventually from the extremely low-end market sector. I think this might happen for two different, but related reasons--this market segment is about to be sucked dry as people upgrade to at least Sandy Bridge chips with beefy iGPUs. AMD is already having severe sustainability issues on the CPU front, and Nvidia is aggressively pursuing the mobile market. With a declining number of vanilla PCs shipping, you may see both companies set sail for calmer waters in the next couple years.

Looks to me even though the 7670 exists (at least on the internet ) getting a standalone card with it won't be easy, and the same may hold true for the upcoming 8000 series, though that's still up in the air. In any case, I may just get a 7750 or 6670 instead.

I would stay away from the 6000 series, they are less efficient than the 7000 series.

If you are going to spend the money get the 7770 2gb or if you want save a little bit or money get the 1gb version.

Compare benchmarks here:
»www.anandtech.com/bench/ ··· 8?vs=536
(compare 5770 to 7770 - The 5670 is going to even slower than the 5770.)

Once you get below the 7770 1gb you are just wasting your money as performance drops off quite sharply.

This one is $130 -
»www.amazon.com/MSI-Radeo ··· 7770+1gb

7670 and the 6670 are the same card. OEMs love their bigger numbers=better marketing so they get rebranded.

7750 and up uses AMD's newer GCN architecture. Anything below that uses their older VLIW5 architecture (VLIW4 for 6950/6970/Trinity APU), meaning it's basically rebranded 6000/5000-series stuff.

One place I like to check to get a quick rundown on good cards in various price brackets is this list on Tom's Hardware. It gets updated monthly so you can get a rough idea on what's a decent deal or not.

What are the differences between those two architectures?

I have a 5670 in another PC, and I'm very satisfied with it. I do not play games, and the only activities that really use GPU acceleration are either watching movies in HD, or watching h264 encoded videos (usually not HD), meaning that a really high performance card would be a waste of money and electricity in my case.

My i3-550 (first gen i3) plays Blu-rays back and streams HD without a problem on the iGPU--it has no discrete GPU.

GCN is much better for compute-based stuff. With gaming, it depends on what you're running. For what you listed, any new CPU with integrated graphics will suffice.

But I'm not planning on getting any new system, at least not in the foreseeable future.

What are the specs of what you have?

A Dell Precision 490 with two dual core Xeons (5160), 16 GB RAM, 240 GB SSD, 2x 2TB HDs, BD writer, dual booting XP (32-bit) and Win7. (64 bit)

Currently it has a Geforce 6600GT -- it would be enough, but the text is somewhat fuzzy. The HD5670 in another PC has a noticeably better image using the same display, a Dell 2709W.

Ah, forgot about that little detail. Here's a cheap 6670. Is the current 6600GT connected via DVI or VGA?