AMD Radeon HD 7970 Review: 28nm And Graphics Core Next, Together As One
by Ryan Smith on December 22, 2011 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Radeon
- ATI
- Radeon HD 7000
Batman: Arkham City
After a rocky launch last month, Rocksteady finally got their DirectX 11 problems sorted out for Batman: Arkham City earlier this month. Batman: Arkham City is loosely based on Unreal Engine 3, while the DirectX 11 functionality was apparently developed in-house. With the addition of these features Batman is far more a GPU demanding game than its predecessor was, particularly with tessellation cranked up to high.
At Extreme settings Batman is quite daunting for our entire GPU lineup at 2560. Nothing except the GTX 590 can crack 60fps, though the 7970 begins to come close at 52fps. Relative to NVIDIA’s lineup Batman ends up being one of the weaker games for the 7970, with the 7970 only taking an 18% lead over the GTX 580 at 2560. As for the 6970, the 7970 has another very strong showing opposite AMD’s previous generation, beating the 6970 by 44%.
At 1920 we’re still using Extreme settings and the story is much the same, though the 7970’s lead drops a bit more. Against the GTX 580 it’s now only 14% faster, and against the 6970 it’s 35% faster. Things do eventually pick up at 1680 when we back off to Very High settings and stop using MSAA, at which point the 7970 takes a surprising 32% lead over the GTX 580 while the lead over the 6970 jumps back up to 47%.
Looking at all of our cards it’s really the 5870 that tells the whole story. Tessellation plays a large factor in Batman’s performance, and as a result the partially tessellation-constrained 5870 absolutely struggles even at 1920. Consequently this is further proof that AMD was able to get a great deal of additional performance out of their geometry engines even with the 2 tringle/clock limit.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
292 Comments
View All Comments
RussianSensation - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
I think his comment still stands. In terms of a performance leap, at 925mhz speeds at least, this is the worst improvement from 1 major generation to the next since X1950XTX -->2900XT. Going from 5870 to 6970 is not a full generation, but a refresh. So for someone with an HD5870 who wants 2x the speed increase, this card isn't it yet.jalexoid - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
How's OpenCL on Linux/*BSD? Because I fail to see real high performance use in Windows environments for any GPGPU.For GPGPU the biggest target should be still Linux/*BSD because they are the dominating platforms there....
R3MF - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
"Among the features added to Graphics Core Next that were explicitly for gaming, the final feature was Partially Resident Textures, which many of you are probably more familiar with in concept as Carmack’s MegaTexture technology."Is this feature exclusive to gaming, or is it an extension of a visualised GPU memory feature?
i.e. if running Blender on the GPU via the cycles renderer will i be able to load scenes larger than local graphics memory?
Ryan Smith - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
It's exclusive to graphics. Virtualized GPU memory is a completely different mechanism (even if some of the cache concepts are the same).With that said I see no reason it couldn't benefit Blender, but the benefits would be situational. Blender would only benefit in situations where it can't hold the full scene, but can somehow hold the visibly parts of the scene by using tiles.
R3MF - Friday, December 23, 2011 - link
cheers RyanFinally - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
...the 2nd generation HD8870 feat. GCN, 3W idle consumption and hopefully less load consumption than my current HD6870. Just let a company like Sapphire add a silent cooler and I'm happy.poohbear - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
Btw why didnt Anandtech overclock this card? it overclocks like a beast according to all the other review sites!Esbornia - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
Cause they want you to think this card sucks come on guys everybody in the internet knows this site sucks for reviews that are not from Intel products.SlyNine - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
lol troll. This site has prefered who ever had the advantage in what ever area. They will do a follow up of its OCing and when they first show a card they show it at stock only.I do not OC my videocards, whats the point in adding 5% more gain in games that are running maxed anyways.
RussianSensation - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
Is this comment supposed to be taken seriously? Go troll somewhere else.