OC: Gaming Performance

Moving on to our gaming performance section, let’s see what our 15% overclock can do for gaming performance. Assuming the 7970GE’s performance continues to scale well with clockspeeds, we should see around a 10-12% real world performance gain.

Starting as always with Crysis, what was already an incredible lead for the 7970GE becomes increasingly absurd. The 7970GE OC sees a further 8% performance improvement here, pushing it past 60fps at 1920 and past 40fps at 2560. Against the stock GTX 680 it’s now leading by 35% on average framerates.

Minimum framerates on the other hand haven’t changed by nearly as much. Given what we know about PT Boost and Crysis’s love of memory bandwidth, it’s reasonable to assume we’re being held back by memory bandwidth limits here.

Moving on to Metro, the 7970GE once again gains 8-9% due to our overclock. The earlier 56W jump in power consumption at the wall makes it an expensive gain, but as it stands this is by far the fastest we’ve seen a single-GPU card perform at Metro.

With Batman we once more see gains of around 9% from our overclock. Even at 2560 our framerates are now in excess of 70fps.

With Portal 2 being one of the 7970GE’s biggest defecits relative to the GTX 680, a solid overclock can help to close the gap but it’s not enough to eliminate it. Still, it’s enough to push the average framerate over 60fps at 2560 with SSAA. The overall scaling from the overclock also looks very good here, with the 7970GE OC picking up a larger than normal 11-12%.

Finally we have AMD’s other notable weak spot, Battlefield 3. Much like with Portal 2 overclocking can’t eliminate the GTX 680’s lead, but it can significantly cut into it. At 2560 and at 1920 with MSAA this is enough to push past 60fps, making for a solid 10% performance gain from overclocking.

OC: Power, Temperature, & Noise Final Words
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  • behrouz - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link

    nevermind i got it
  • Lepton87 - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link

    I don't agree that 7970GHz isn't any faster than GTX680.

    http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970_GHz...

    Just look at the performance summaries. At 2560x1600 it's clearly the faster card.
  • Homeles - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link

    Keep in mind, every 680 boosts differently. Every site is going to have different opinions because of this.
  • CeriseCogburn - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link

    That's why a collated average is so helpful.

    "
    Summary of results at a resolution of 2560x1600:

    GeForce GTX680 is on average 32.36% more efficient than GeForce GTX580,

    GeForce GTX680 is on average 6.39% more efficient than the Radeon 7970. "

    http://translate.google.pl/translate?hl=pl&sl=...

    The GTX 680 wins. It's clear beyond any amd fanboys illusions, wishes, and fantasies, most often stated every time, till the day they croak it.

    It's "their opinion" though, so "it's not wrong"... (if that tracks as true for you check your forehead for 3 stamped letters.)
  • thebluephoenix - Sunday, June 24, 2012 - link

    Efficiency? You know that 5870 was far more efficient than GTX480. 6970 also compared well to GTX 580.

    Before calling people fanboys be sure that you aren't one.

    For me it's simple, 7970 has good compute performance, and GTX 680 has PhysX.

    7970 GE = 7970 OC Edition, still a very good card.
  • CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - link

    It's the wording used by the collator, a foreigner no doubt, "efficiency" you fool, since you didn't check the link.

    It MEANS FRAME RATE.

    Leave it to the retarded, once again, to jump, screech, and FAIL.
  • thebluephoenix - Thursday, June 28, 2012 - link

    Efficiency usually means energy efficiency. Perf/Watt, (or rMAX/rPeak, on Top500 site).

    Except for google translated polish pages, obviously.

    Frame rate is speed, so the card is faster, not more efficient.

    Go now, be (nV)idiot somewhere else.
  • CeriseCogburn - Saturday, June 30, 2012 - link

    It is ALSO more efficient. How clueless are you still ? Why do clueless Cluseau's respond ?

    Look, if you ever decide to click the link and take a gander for an hour or two ( my estimation about how long it would take for you to get a round opinion of the massive database of the most popular reviewers concerning these tow cards, don't get back to me.

    A gigantic thank you would be nice but I'm not expecting it.

    Maybe silverblue needs a friend too, then you can spew name calling together, and giggle, that is likely the extent of the mental capacities, so have at it.
  • silverblue - Friday, June 29, 2012 - link

    Yet amusingly, you failed to point out the error of the author's ways before somebody here pulled you up on it... I doubt that efficiency is a word that can be mis-translated; the author just used the wrong term. The very fact that you quoted two lines with the same incorrect term proves that you were happy enough to treat it - as is so often in your case - as factual. If anything, the 680 is probably something in the region of 10-15% more efficient per frame than the 7970 based off the collated results on that article, notwithstanding the fact that drivers have been significantly revised for both architectures since then.

    You also stated that the article was '"their opinion" though, so "it's not wrong"' but you slate everybody else's conflicting opinions as wrong. Am I the only person seeing an issue with this approach?

    I'm really confused as to why you even bother to visit here except to be a class-A troll, and I'm going to take some of my own advice and flat out ignore you from now on unless you actually say something of any use. Ordinarily, I wouldn't tell others what to do but on this occasion, I implore them to follow suit. We should put you in a room with Beenthere just for the hell of it.
  • CeriseCogburn - Saturday, June 30, 2012 - link

    You're goners in the head dude.
    The article, which you still obviously never looked at (as it will crush your amd fan heart), collates reviews from around the web, including this sites.

    It's not an opinion, it's FACTS, as best we can get them, in one BIG mathematically deduced pile, and the word is meant to be FRAME RATES, which of course is all you amd fan boys claim you care about, unless of course you were spewing about eyefinity without 3 monitors and no $100 adapter that took a year and a half to come down to $35 not available...

    Just face the facts for once, like a man.

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