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
Civilization V
Our final game, Civilization 5, gives us an interesting look at things that other RTSes cannot match, with a much weaker focus on shading in the game world, and a much greater focus on creating the geometry needed to bring such a world to life. In doing so it uses a slew of DirectX 11 technologies, including tessellation for said geometry, driver command lists for reducing CPU overhead, and compute shaders for on-the-fly texture decompression.
Because of the fact that Civilization V uses driver command lists, we were originally not going to include it in this benchmark suite as a gaming benchmark. If it were solely a DCL test it would do a good job highlighting the fact that AMD doesn’t currently support the feature, but a poor job of actually explaining any hardware/architectural differences. It was only after we saw AMD’s reviewer’s guide that we decided to go ahead and include it, because quite frankly we didn’t believe the numbers AMD had published.
With the GTX 580 and the 6970, the 6970 routinely lost to the GTX 580 by large margins. We had long assumed this was solely due to NVIDIA’s inclusion of DCLs, as we’ve seen a moderate single-GPU performance deficit and equally moderate multi-GPU lead for AMD melt away when NVIDIA added DCL support. The 7970 required that we rethink this.
If Civilization V was solely a DCL test, then our 2560 results would be impossible – the 7970 is winning by 12% in a game NVIDIA previous won by a massive margin. NVIDIA only regains their lead at 1680, which at this resolution we’re not nearly as likely to be GPU-bound.
So what changed? AMD has yet to spill the beans, but short of a secret DCL implementation for just CivV we have to look elsewhere. Next to DCL CivV’s other killer feature is its use of compute shaders, and GCN is a compute architecture. To that extent we believe at this point that while AMD is still facing some kind of DCL bottleneck, they have completely opened the floodgates on whatever compute shader bottleneck was standing in their way before. This is particularly evident when comparing the 7970 to the 6970, where the 7970 enjoys a consistent 62% performance advantage. It’s simply an incredible turnabout to see the 7970 do so well when the 6970 did so poorly.
Of course if this performance boost really was all about compute shaders, it raises a particularly exciting question: just how much higher could AMD go if they had DCLs? Hopefully one day that’s an answer we get to find out.
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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.