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
Total War: Shogun 2
One of our goals with this iteration of our benchmark suite was to throw in some additional non-FPS games, so we’re broadening our horizons a bit by adding in Total War: Shogun 2. Shogun 2 is the latest installment of the long-running Total War series of turn based strategy games, and alongside Civilization V is notable for just how many units it can put on a screen at once. As it also turns out, it’s the single most punishing game in our benchmark suite.
When deciding on what settings to use with Shogun, it required a bit more creativity on our part. 2560 is a true moonshot; everything is turned on, and it takes a minimum of 1.5GB of VRAM to run the game at this resolution. Accordingly performance is rather dismal, though as this is a TBS 30fps isn’t quite as critical as it is in other games. In any case the 7970 comes the closest to hitting 30fps, coming in just shy at 28.2fps, which is 29% ahead of the GTX 580 and 48% ahead of the 6970.
Meanwhile for 1920 we turned Shogun’s settings down to Very High, and yet we still had to disable MSAA to make it work with 1GB cards (did we mention that Shogun loves VRAM?). At these lower settings performance rockets up, and at the same time so does the 7970’s lead over the GTX 580. Here it’s 36% ahead of the GTX 580, which will be the greatest lead among all of our gaming benchmarks. As for the 7970 compared to the 6970, it’s still 48% of the 6970 showing us just how similar these video cards are at times.
Finally at 1680 the overall performance goes up yet again, but the 7970’s lead remains. It’s ahead of the GTX 580 by 30%, and 48% ahead of the 6970.
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GenSozo - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
Style? Another possibility is that he has no life, a heavily worn F5 key, and lots of angst.Blaster1618 - Monday, December 26, 2011 - link
One request when diving into acronyms (from the “quick refresher”), first one is followed by (definition in parenthesis) or hyperlink. Your site does the best on the web at delving into and explaining the technical evolution of computing. You maybe even able to tech the trolls and shills a thing or to they can regurgitate at there post X-mas break circle jerk. Never underestimate the importance or reach of your work.lordken - Friday, January 6, 2017 - link
mmh quite far from disappointing, still running on 7950 as of today [5 years later] :)Concillian - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
Page 1Power Consumption Comparison: Columns: AMD / Price / NVIDIA
Presumably mislabeled.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
Fixed, thank you!Take care,
Anand
Penti - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
Will the new video decode engine either add software accelerated gpu or fixed function hardware WebM/VP8 video decode? ARM SoC's basically already has those capabilities with rock-chip including hw-decoding, TI OMAP IVA3 DSP-video processor supporting VP8/WebM, Broadcom supporting it in their video processor and others to come. Would be odd to be able to do smooth troublefree 1080p WebM on a phone or tablet, but not a desktop and laptop computer without taxing the cpu and buses like crazy. It's already there hardware-wise in popular devices to do if they add software/driver support for it.Nice to see a new generation card any how.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
It's UVD3, the same decoder that was on Cayman. So if Cayman can't do it, Tahiti can't either.MadMan007 - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
Pretty sure the chart on the first page should be labeled Price Comparison not Power Consumption Comparison.Unless perhaps this was a sly way of saying money is power :)
descendency - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
You list the HD 6870 as 240 on the first page ("AMD GPU Specification Comparison" chart) but then list it as around 160 in the "Winter 2011 GPU Pricing Comparison" chart. 80 dollars is quite a difference.Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
Fixed, sorry those were older numbers.Take care,
Anand