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
Starcraft II
Our next game is Starcraft II, Blizzard’s 2010 RTS megahit. Much like Portal 2 it’s a DX9 game designed to run on a wide range of hardware so performance is quite peppy with most high-end cards, but it can still challenge a GPU when it needs to.
For 2560 and 1920 we’re using 4x MSAA, which must be forced through the driver control panel as Starcraft II does not natively support anti-aliasing. As is often the case with forced MSAA the resulting performance hit is rather high, which is why SC2 can still tax our high-end GPUs.
Starting at 2560, things are looking good for the 7960. At 70.2fps it takes a 19% lead over the GTX 580, and is the only single-GPU card to crack 60fps at that resolution. Against the 6970 it also looks quite good, with a lead of just under 40%.
But when we drop down to 1920, the 7970’s tendency for its lead to drop with the resolution takes full force. Here the 7970 is only 2% ahead of the GTX 580, and looking at 1680 (without MSAA) has the 7970 being outright outgassed by the older GTX 580 by nearly 33%. Interestingly enough however we don’t see the same thing happen against AMD’s own cards, as the 7970 remains ahead of the 6970 by about 35%.
While it’s primarily 1920 and 2560 we’re interested in, it’s still worth pondering on 1680 for a moment. Given the consistent performance of the 7970 versus the 6970, it looks like we’re not simply seeing architectural strengths and weaknesses here. AMD simply cannot hit the high framerates of the GTX 580 here, and at this point we have to suspect that unless AMD is somehow ROP-bound, that we’re looking at a driver limitation of some kind that starts to particularly manifest itself at 1920 and below.
In any case while Starcraft II is not a particularly strong game for the 7970, at the very least the raw performance is there. The performance differences are largely academic as the 7970 is more than capable of powering through even 2560. As such if the 7970 is going to struggle to beat the GTX 580 at any game, this is one of the less meaningful games to struggle at.
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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