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
Display Tech, Cont: Fast HDMI
Moving on from multi-monitor applications, AMD has not only been working on technologies for multi-monitor users. Southern Islands will also include some video and movie technologies that will be relevant for single and multi-monitor uses alike.
With the 6000 series AMD upgraded their DisplayPort capabilities from DP 1.1 to DP 1.2. With Southern Islands AMD will be upgrading their HDMI capabilities. Currently AMD supports a subset of the complete HDMI 1.4a specification; they can drive S3D displays (the killer feature of 1.4a), but that’s the only thing out of 1.4a they support. HDMI also introduced support for 4K x 2K displays, but both displays and devices that can drive them have been rare. As displays start to become available so too does support for them with AMD’s products.
As per the relevant specifications, both DP 1.2 and HDMI 1.4a can drive 4K x 2K displays, but with the 6000 series the hardware could only handle such a display over DP 1.2. With HDMI it was an issue of bandwidth, as HDMI is based on DVI and uses the same TMDS signaling technology. At normal speed HDMI only has as much bandwidth as single-link HDMI (~4Gbps) which is not enough to drive such a large display. DVI solved this with dual-link DVI, whereas as of HDMI 1.3 the HDMI consortium solved this by tightening their cable specifications to allow for higher clocked transmissions, from 165MHz up to 340MHz.
It’s this higher transmission speed that AMD is adding support for in Southern Islands. AMD calls this Fast HDMI technology, which as near as we can tell is not any kind of HDMI trademark but simply AMD’s branding for high speed HDMI. With Fast HDMI AMD will be able to drive 4K x 2K displays over HDMI – which looks like it will be the common connector for TVs at those high resolutions – along with being able to support 1080P S3D at higher framerates with next-generation TVs. Currently AMD’s cards and TVs alike can only handle 1080P frame packed S3D at up to 48fps (24Hz/eye), or with a bit of hacking up to 60fps (30Hz/eye), which is fine for 24fps movies but much too low for gaming. As next-generation TVs add support for 1080P frame packed S3D at 120fps (60Hz/eye) Southern Islands products will be the first AMD products able to drive them over HDMI through the use of Fast HDMI.
The only remaining questions at this point are just how high does AMD’s Fast HDMI clock (they don’t necessary have to hit 340MHz), and if AMD will add support for any other features that higher bandwidths enable. AMD says that Southern Islands supports “3GHz HDMI”, which appears to be a misnomer similar to how we commonly refer to GDDR5 by its “effective clockspeed” in GHz, even though that’s not actually how it operates. In which case with Fast HDMI AMD may be referring to the maximum throughput per channel, which at 300MHz would be 3Gbps. 300Mhz would still be enough to implement features such as Deep Color (48bpp) over most current resolutions.
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RussianSensation - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
That's not what the review says. The review clearly explains that it's the best single-GPU for gaming. There is nothing biased about not being mind-blown by having a card that's only 25% faster than GTX580 and 37% faster than HD6970 on average, considering this is a brand new 28nm node. Name a single generation where AMD's next generation card improved performance so little since Radeon 8500?There isn't any!
SlyNine - Friday, December 23, 2011 - link
2900XT ? But I Don't remember if that was a new node and what the % of improvement was beyond the 1950XT.But still this is a 500$ card, and I don't think its what we have come to expect from a new node and generation of card. However some people seem more then happy with it, Guess they don't remember the 9700PRO days.
takeulo - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
as ive read the review this is not a disappointment infact its only a single gpu card but it toughly competing or nearly chasing with the dual gpu's graphics card like 6990 and gtx 590 performance...imagine that 7970 is also a dual gpu?? it will tottally dominate the rest... sorry for my bad english..
eastyy - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
the price vs performance is the most important thing for me at the moment i have a 460 that cost me about £160 at the time and that was a few years ago...seems like the cards now for the same price dont really give that much of a increaseMorg. - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
What seems unclear to the writer here is that in fact 6-series AMD was better in single GPU than nVidia.Like miles better.
First, the stock 6970 was within 5% of the gtx580 at high resolutions (and excuse me, but if you like a 500 bucks graphics board with a 100 bucks screen ... not my problem -- ).
Second, if you put a 6970 OC'd at GTX580 TDP ... the GTX580 is easily 10% slower.
So overall . seriously ... wake the f* up ?
The only thing nVidia won at with fermi series 2 (gtx5xx) is making the most expensive highest TDP single GPU card. It wasn't faster, they just picked a price point AMD would never target .. and they got i .. wonderful.
However, AMD raped nVidia all the way in perf/watt/dollar as they did with Intel in the Server CPU space since Opteron Istanbul ...
If people like you stopped spouting random crap, companies like AMD would stand a chance of getting the market share their products deserve (sure their drivers are made of shit).
Leyawiin - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
The HD 7970 is a fantastic card (and I can't wait to see the rest of the line), but the GTX 580 was indisputably better than the HD 6970. Stock or OC'd (for both).Morg. - Friday, December 23, 2011 - link
Considering TDP, price and all - no.The 6970 lost maximum 5% to the GTX580 above full HD, and the bigger the resolution, the smaller the GTX advantage.
Every benchmark is skewed, but you should try interpreting rather than just reading the conclusion --
Keep in mind the GTX580 die size is 530mm² whereas the 6970 is 380mm²
Factor that in, aim for the same TDP on both cards . and believe me .. the GTX580 was a complete total failure, and a total loss above full HD.
Yes it WAS the biggest single GPU of its time . but not the best.
RussianSensation - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
Your post is ill-informed.When GTX580 and HD6970 are both overclocked, it's not even close. GTX580 destroyed it.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/...
HD6950 was an amazing value card for AMD this generation, but HD6970 was nothing special vs. GTX570. GTX580 was overpriced for the performance over even $370 factory preoverclocked GTX570 cards (such as the almost eerily similar in performance EVGA 797mhz GTX570 card for $369).
All in all, GTX460 ~ HD6850, GTX560 ~ HD6870, GTX560 Ti ~ HD6950, GTX570 ~ HD6970. The only card that had really poor value was GTX580. Of course if you overclocked it, it was a good deal faster than the 6970 that scaled poorly with overclocking.
Morg. - Friday, December 23, 2011 - link
I believe you don't get what I said :AT THE SAME TDP, THE HD6xxx TOTALLY DESTROYED THE GTX 5xx
THAT MEANS : the amd gpu was better even though AMD decided to sell it at a TDP / price point that made it cheaper and less performing than the GTX 5xx
The "destroyed it" statement is full HD resolution only . which is dumb . I wouldn't ever get a top graphics board to just stick with full HD and a cheap monitor.
Peichen - Friday, December 23, 2011 - link
According to your argument, all we'd ever need is IGP because no stand-alone card can compete with IGP at the same TDP / price point.