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
Crysis: Warhead
Kicking things off as always is Crysis: Warhead. It’s no longer the toughest game in our benchmark suite, but it’s still a technically complex game that has proven to be a very consistent benchmark. Thus even 4 years since the release of the original Crysis, “but can it run Crysis?” is still an important question, and the answer continues to be “no.” While we’re closer than ever, full Enthusiast settings at a 60fps is still beyond the grasp of a single-GPU card.
This year we’ve finally cranked our settings up to full Enthusiast quality for 2560 and 1920, so we can finally see where the bar lies. To that extent the 7970 is closer than any single-GPU card before as we’d imagine, but it’s going to take one more jump (~20%) to finally break 60fps at 1920.
Looking at the 7970 relative to other cards, there are a few specific points to look at; the GTX 580 is of course its closest competitor, but we can also see how it does compared to AMD’s previous leader, the 6970, and how far we’ve come compared to DX10 generation cards.
One thing that’s clear from the start is that the tendency for leads to scale with the resolution tested still stands. At 2560 the 7970 enjoys a 26% lead over the GTX 580, but at 1920 that’s only a 20% lead and it shrinks just a bit more to 19% at 1680. Even compared to the 6970 that trend holds, as a 32% lead is reduced to 28% and then 26%. If the 7970 needs high resolutions to really stretch its legs that will be good news for Eyefinity users, but given that most gamers are still on a single monitor it may leave AMD closer to 40nm products in performance than they’d like.
Speaking of 40nm products, both of our dual-GPU entries, the Radeon HD 6990 and GeForce GTX 590 are enjoying lofty leads over the 7970 even with the advantage of its smaller fabrication process. To catch up to those dual-GPU cards from the 6970 would require a 70%+ increase in performance, and even with a full node difference it’s clear that this is not going to happen. Not that it’s completely out of reach for the 7970 once you start looking at overclocking, but the reduction in power usage when moving from TSMC 40nm to 28nm isn’t nearly large enough to make that happen while maintaining the 6970’s power envelope. Dual-GPU owners will continue to enjoy a comfortable lead over even the 7970 for the time being, but with the 7970 being built on a 28nm process the power/temp tradeoff for those cards is even greater compared to 40nm products.
Meanwhile it’s interesting to note just how much progress we’ve made since the DX10 generation though; at 1920 the 7970 is 130% faster than the GTX 285 and 170% faster than the Radeon HD 4870. Existing users who skip a generation are a huge market for AMD and NVIDIA, and with this kind of performance they’re in a good position to finally convince those users to make the jump to DX11.
Finally it should be noted that Crysis is often a good benchmark for predicting overall performance trends, and as you will see it hasn’t let us down here. How well the 7970 performs relative to its competition will depend on the specific game, but 20-25% isn’t too far off from reality.
Looking at our minimum framerates it’s a bit surprising to see that while the 7970 has a clear lead when it comes to average framerates the minimums are only significantly better at 2560. At that resolution the lowest framerate for the 7970 is 23.5 versus 20 for the GTX 580, but at 1920 that becomes a 2fps, 5% difference. It’s not that the 7970 was any less smooth in playing Crysis, but in those few critical moments it looks to be dipping a bit more than the GTX 580.
Compared to the 6970 on the other hand the minimum framerate difference is much larger and much more consistent. At 2560 the 7970’s minimums are 29% better, and even at lower resolutions it holds at around 25%. Clearly even with AMD’s new architecture their designs still inherit some of the traits of their old designs.
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RussianSensation - Saturday, January 14, 2012 - link
BF3 is not a 2012 game.......Also, most of us have been gaming on our older cards. Who in the world who has a previous high-end card is going to drop $600 for BF3 alone? No thanks.
SSIV - Saturday, February 18, 2012 - link
Since there's a new driver out for there cards we can now regard these results with a grain of salt. Revise the benchmarks!DaOGGuru - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
I don't know why people keep forgeting about the 560ti 2win. Yes I said 2win = 2 560ti processors on one card. It still kills the 7970 numbers in BF3 by 20Fps. and is same price. It also beats the 580 and is cheaper. It's a single card with 50amp min. draw and it will smoke anything except 590 and the 6990...http://www.guru3d.com/article/evga-geforce-gtx-560...
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link
Oh, right, well this isn't an nvidia card review, so we won't hear from 50 posts about how some CF (would be SLI of course in this case) combo will whip the crap out of it in performance and price...You know ?
That's how it goes...
Usually the articel itself rages on about how some amd CF combo is really so much good and better and blah blah blah.... then the rpice perf, then the results - on and on and on ....
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The angry ankle biters are swarmed up on the under red dog radeon side...
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So you made a very good point, I'm just sorry it took 29 pages of reading to get to it, in it's glorious singularity.... you shouldn't strike out in independent thought like that it's dangerous.... not allowed unless the card being reviewed is an nvidia !!!!
DaOGGuru - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
oops... forgot to say look at previous post links BF3 rating for the 560ti 2win and compare to this charts 7970 fps. The 2win is pumping out @20 more FPS and is $50.00 - $100.00 cheaper than the 7970... lame.. ATi is still behind Nvidia but proud of it! lol They are just now catching up to Nvidia's tessellations and oh and AFTER they changed to a "cuda core copy" architecture and posting it as big news... Evga's older 560ti 2win still dusts it by 20FPS.. lame.DaOGGuru - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
sorry 10FPS not 20.. it's late.DaOGGuru - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
I don't get what's the hub-bub about the 7970.. sure it's the fastest single cpu;BUT, for $50.00-$100.00 less you can get the 560Ti 2win (dual cpu) that smokes the 7970 and the 2win PCB does have an SLI bridge and is cabapable of doing SLI to a second card but it's currently locked by Nvidia (see paragraph 3).Also, the 2win draws a min of only 50amps (way less than most sli configurations) 1. has a considerably lower noise dba, 2. runs cooler and with less power than almost all the high end cards and 3. will run 3 montiors in Nvidia 2D and 3D surround off a single card! 4.Will kill the GTX 580 by @33-23% (depending on review) 5. Will beat the 590 in some sample testing for TDP. And finally 6. will kill the 7970 by 10-20FPS in BF3 including by 10FPS in 1920x1200 4AA-16AF Ultra high mode. So, why have people forgotten the 2win? It's a singlecard, multi-GPU, full 3D/2D surround without a second card in SLI, $500.00USD beast !
OH and for those that say you can't SLI with a second 2win.... http://www.guru3d.com/article/evga-geforce-gtx-560... (this review states on conclusion page) > quote " you will have noticed there is a SLI connector on the PCB. Unfortunately you can not add a second card to go for quad-SLI mode. It's not a hardware limitation, yet a limitation set by NVIDIA, the GTX 560 Ti series is only allowed in 2-way SLI mode, which this card already is."
... So actually, the card is cabale 2card SLI but Nvidia for some (gosh aweful reason) won't let the dog off the chain. Probably because it will absolutely kill the need for a GTX580, 570, 560 Ti SLI configuration for ever!
Resources: (pay attention to BF3 FPS and compare to 7970 FPS in this article.)
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5048/evgas-geforce-g...
http://www.guru3d.com/article/evga-geforce-gtx-560...
Peace...
DaOGGuru - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
I don't get what's the hub-bub about the 7970.. sure it's the fastest single CPU; BUT, for $50.00-$100.00 less you can get the 560Ti 2win (dualCPU) that smokes the 7970 and the 2win PCB does have an SLI bridge and is capable of doing SLI to a second card but it's currently locked by Nvidia (see paragraph 3).Also, the 2win draws a min of only 50amps (way less than most sli configurations) 1. Has a considerably lower noise DBA, 2. runs cooler and with less power than almost all the high end cards and 3. Will run 3 monitors in Nvidia 2D and 3D surround off a single card! 4.Will kill the GTX 580 by @33-23% (depending on review) 5. Will beat the 590 in some sample testing for TDP. And finally 6. will kill the 7970 by 10-20FPS in BF3 including by 10FPS in 1920x1200 4AA-16AF Ultra high mode. So, why have people forgotten the 2win? It's a single card, multi-GPU, full 3D/2D surround without a second card in SLI, $500.00USD beast !
OH and for those that say you can't SLI with a second 2win.... http://www.guru3d.com/article/evga-geforce-gtx-560... (this review states on conclusion page) > quote " you will have noticed there is a SLI connector on the PCB. Unfortunately you cannot add a second card to go for quad-SLI mode. It's not a hardware limitation, yet a limitation set by NVIDIA, the GTX 560 Ti series is only allowed in 2-way SLI mode, which this card already is."
... So actually, the card is capable 2card SLI but Nvidia for some (gosh awful reason) won't let the dog off the chain. Probably because it will absolutely kill the need for a GTX580, 570, 560 Ti SLI configuration forever!
Resources: (pay attention to BF3 FPS and compare to 7970 FPS in this article.)
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5048/evgas-geforce-g...
http://www.guru3d.com/article/evga-geforce-gtx-560...
Peace...
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link
Ummm.... I read you, I see your frustration with all the posts - just refer to my one above there - you really should not be dissing the new amd like that - they like are 1st and uhh... nvidia is evil... so no comparisons like that are allowed when the fanboy side content is like 100 to 1....Now next nvidia card review you will notice a hundred posts on how this or that CF beats the nvidia in price perf and overall perf, etc, and it will be memorized and screamed far and wide...
Just like... your point "doesn't count", okay ?
It's best to ignore you GREEN fanboy types... ( yes even if you point out gigantic savings, or rather especially when you do...)
Thanks for waiting till page 30 - a wise choice.
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, March 11, 2012 - link
Southern Islands is a whole generation late. AMD promised us this SI in the last generation 6000 series. Then right before that prior release, they told us they had changed everything and 6000 was not Southern Islands anymore. LOLTalk about late - it's what two years late ?
Maybe it's three years....
In every case here, Nvidia beat them to the core architecture by two years. Now amd is merely late to the party crashing copycats....
That's late son, that's not original, that's not innovative, that's not superior, it's tag a long tu loo little sister style.