AMD Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition & Radeon HD 7850 Review: Rounding Out Southern Islands
by Ryan Smith on March 5, 2012 12:01 AM ESTTotal War: Shogun 2
Total War: 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 (on higher end hardware at least).
Shogun 2 ends up being an interesting benchmark for the 7800 series today for a number of different reasons. First and foremost of course is a strong performance lead for the 7800 compared to both the 6900 series and NVIDIA’s lineup. The 7870 leads the GTX 570 by 26%, and even the GTX 580 is over 10% slower. At the same time the 7850 ties the GTX 570, while taking a smaller 14% lead over the GTX 560 Ti.
More importantly however, it’s the first test in our suite where even the 1.25GB of VRAM on the GTX 570 isn’t enough. One of AMD’s planks for marketing the 7800 series will be that they have 2GB of VRAM versus 1.25GB on the GTX 570 or 1GB on the GTX 560 Ti, and this is a showcase of that difference. Shogun 2 knows how much VRAM it needs for any given setting configuration and won’t run on cards that don’t meet the requirements – as a result the GTX 570 and GTX 560 Ti can’t even compete at 2560. This is admittedly a higher resolution than most of the cards were designed for, but it showcases the importance of moving beyond 1GB of VRAM going forward. Between Shogun, BF3, and Skyrim, we’re seeing modern games that need 1.5GB of VRAM or more to fully spread their wings.
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CeriseCogburn - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link
Yet if one is not running gigantic resolutions, they look at the usual, 1920 and 1650 p resolutions, and likely want to crank all the eye candy to the limit, which is still IMPOSSIBLE at those common resolutions with 60+ frames in so many of the popular games.So the real problem is you go from "can't do it all" to "still can't do it all" but at least you've got 40 frames going to 55 on your one screen... with maybe one more setting of 7 at ultra...
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For others with 3x 2560 most of us really don't give a crap if they claim they get 2x frames - because if they don't have 2 or 3 or 4 of them running, they are stuck in turn down the eye candy crapsville TOO.
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We almost always hear that we are stuck with console ports, the exact opposite of the real truth in the real problem.
A 570 is NOT ENOUGH, a 7870 is not either, nor is a 7970 for 1900x1200.
IT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
SlyNine - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link
75% was wrong, but so is 70-110% faster.Crysis 2560x1600 at the MAX settings its 20 vx 33, which is just over 60%
Drop down to 1920x1200 at the advantage drops to 50%.
Metro its 60% at max res/settings (36vs22.5)
Drop that down to 1920X1200 and its just over 50%
Dirt 3 its just over 50% at max res/settings Drop that down to 1920x1200 and its remains just above 50% ( 104 vs 68.4)
Battlefield 3 its 50% (49.7 vs 32.6) at max settings/res.
So where the heck are you getting 70% to 110% ??
2 1/2 years ago I payed around 66% of your price, and I'm getting 66% of your performence, ALMOST 3 YEARS. THIS IS NOT MOVING THINGS FORWARD
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link
Get back to us krummer when the 7870 is "released" and has "stable drivers" that "work most of the time" in "most of the games" and the IQ cheats of 10% driver default plus ever more now with this new blur job called MLAA and the lack of LOD bias up high enough that "in the case of SSAA" it's another low detail IQ cut down, not to mention other things like PhysX and tessellation above 10 all the way to 32...the other "unneeded" "eye candy" that "sucks" because amd sucks at doing it.*
9% , minus 10% standardized cheat, minus SSAA LOD bias cheat, minus MLAA blur cheat, minus PhysX, minus 8 other things I won't take time to mention doesn't sound like "faster" to me.
I mean come on, if the arch is so superior, why all the hack and cheats and crappy blurring and lack of features ?
Are the drivers going to be another ongoing nightmare for 47% of all ibm pc implementations ?
chizow - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
@ Kiste: Agreed.The "competition is necessary" meme needs to die in the tech sector because it isn't necessary.
Most of this stuff doesn't expire or die on its own, not before it becomes obsolete anyways and in order for it to become obsolete there needs to be innovation and performance increases.
That's what drives innovation with technology and it certainly exists without competition.
medi01 - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
What are you talking about, considering AMD 7850 is faster in most tests than nVidia's 80$ more expensive 570, at the same time consuming 25% less energy.Malih - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
I think this is the decision of the new management, they decide to price something that performs better to price higher.Probably will drop the price in the future, but it would require a new release from nVidia with agressive pricing. It is rumored nVidia will release new cards near the end of March.
biassj - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
Shitty pricing again, if the pricing was 50 bucks cheaper I would probably consider buying 7870 or 7950 at this moment. These high prices will just have me wait to see what Nvidia has to offer.piroroadkill - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
Huh, I thought it was GTX 570 class for less.Seems solid enough.
piroroadkill - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
For the 7850, I mean.chizow - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
This pricing isn't nearly as bad as the 7770 or 7950/7970, but its still pretty poor overall given it once again, slides right in to existing price structures offering very little incentive to upgrade and very little price performance value compared to what has been available for 14+ months.