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.
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CrystalBay - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
Hi Ryan , All these older GPUs ie (5870 ,gtx570 ,580 ,6950 were rerun on the new hardware testbed ? If so GJ lotsa work there.FragKrag - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
The numbers would be worthless if he didn'tAnand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
Yep they're all on the new testbed, Ryan had an insane week.Take care,
Anand
Lifted - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
How many monitors on the market today are available at this resolution? Instead of saying the 7970 doesn't quite make 60 fps at a resolution maybe 1% of gamers are using, why not test at 1920x1080 which is available to everyone, on the cheap, and is the same resolution we all use on our TV's?I understand the desire (need?) to push these cards, but I think it would be better to give us results the vast majority of us can relate to.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
The difference between 1920 x 1200 vs 1920 x 1080 isn't all that big (2304000 pixels vs. 2073600 pixels, about an 11% increase). You should be able to conclude 19x10 performance from looking at the 19x12 numbers for the most part.I don't believe 19x12 is pushing these cards significantly more than 19x10 would, the resolution is simply a remnant of many PC displays originally preferring it over 19x10.
Take care,
Anand
piroroadkill - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
Dell U2410, which I have :3and Dell U2412M
piroroadkill - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
Oh, and my laptop is 1920x1200 too, Dell Precision M4400.My old laptop is 1920x1200 too, Dell Latitude D800..
johnpombrio - Wednesday, December 28, 2011 - link
Heh, I too have 3 Dell U2410 and one Dell 2710. I REALLY want a Dell 30" now. My GTX 580 seems to be able to handle any of these monitors tho Crysis High-Def does make my 580 whine on my 27 inch screen!mczak - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
The text for that test is not really meaningful. Efficiency of ROPs has almost nothing to do at all with this test, this is (and has always been) a pure memory bandwidth test (with very few exceptions such as the ill-designed HD5830 which somehow couldn't use all its theoretical bandwidth).If you look at the numbers, you can see that very well actually, you can pretty much calculate the result if you know the memory bandwidth :-). 50% more memory bandwidth than HD6970? Yep, almost exactly 50% more performance in this test just as expected.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
That's actually not a bad thing in this case. AMD didn't go beyond 32 ROPs because they didn't need to - what they needed was more bandwidth to feed the ROPs they already had.