AMD Radeon HD 7950 Review Feat. Sapphire & XFX: Sewing Up The High-End Market
by Ryan Smith on January 31, 2012 9:02 AM ESTCrysis: 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.
AMD’s first round of driver optimizations have given the 7900 a very solid footing in Crysis, putting the 7950 off to a great start. The 7950 is 19% ahead of the GTX 580 at 2560 and 14% ahead at 1920, putting the card in a comfortable position that for single-GPU cards is second only to the 7970. In spite of Crysis being shader-bound most of the time the 7950 is generally within 15% of the 7970, so it’s doing better than the theoretical performance gap between the two cards would predict. Meanwhile compared to AMD’s last generation offerings it’s not much of a contest: the 7950 is 20-25% ahead.
As for our factory overclocked Sapphire and XFX cards, they further close the gap between the 7950 and 7970. The 12.5% core overclock on these cards puts them between 7% and 10% faster than the stock clocked 7950, with the XFX card edging out the Sapphire due to its memory overclock. These cards do so well here than the reference 7970’s lead is reduced to just 5%.
The minimum framerates in Crysis are also looking good on the 7950, with the 7950 turning in a 10-22% better minimum framerate than the GTX 580 depending on whether we’re talking about 1920 or 2560. As like we saw with the 7970, the biggest lead is at the highest resolutions, which has typically been the case for AMD cards for some time now. The overclocked partner cards add to this, tacking on an extra 5-10% in performance.
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mczak - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
page 4 states that the clocks of the OC 7950 are the same as the shipping clocks of the 7970 (so the cards only differ by the shader units) which isn't true as the reference core clock of the 7970 is 925Mhz, not 900Mhz.Now that's only a 3% difference but given the performance difference from those OC 7950 to 7970 often ends up only being ~5% this definitely is significant.
carage - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
When will the actual cards be available for sale?I've just checked Newegg, Tiger Direct, Micro Center, Fry's, and Amazon, none of them have the 7950 listed.
antef - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
I feel like I'll be waiting forever for a $250 28 nm part (whatever that may be...)casteve - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Thanks for the review. Looking at the Sapphire card, it's a 30%+ speed bump over the 6950 for just 13 watts more power. I look forward to the 78xx and the GTX 6xx this spring and more reasonably priced mid-ranged gaming cards.Articuno - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
That's why the 7950 is so absurdly expensive. The 5850 was miles ahead of anything nVidia had when it launched, and remained miles ahead throughout the entire first Fermi generation, yet it was launched at a very affordable and acceptable $259 price point.Despoiler - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
I'm not sure what kind of fantasy land you are living in, but the 7950 beats the 580 in everything. It's priced at $450, which ~$17 is cheaper than tier 3 PNY 580 cards. Most 580 cards sit around $500. Why should AMD price the 7950 at $250 and make zero or likely lose money? AMD has better cards. They are actually charging what they should be charging. It was a complete blunder to launch the 5850 and 5870 cards at the prices they did. The only saving grace is they likely converted a lot of Nvidia buyers. The 5850 was my first AMD card and I'm not likely to go back to Nvidia with my bad experiences with their card makers.AnandThenMan - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Is it true that you did not update the BIOS on the XFX card as per emailed instructions from AMD? According to Hardwarecanucks.com retail versions of the card have an updated BIOS that review samples sent out did not.Ryan Smith - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
We're using the latest BIOS from XFX, 015.013.000.010.000705.http://images.anandtech.com/doci/5476/XFX.gif
AnandThenMan - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Thanks. It looks like the XFX is just too damn loud, I'm finding their stuff is quite sub par lately.AnandThenMan - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Page 3 of this thread, no BIOS version is given however.http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php...
"Basically, XFX emailed all media days before launch stating that their retail cards had revised fan speed profiles that allowed for slightly increased temperatures but kept the fans MUCH quieter. They sent us all a the retail BIOS file with the proper speeds. What you see above are the differences between the beta and the final release BIOS"