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
Final Words
The launch of the Radeon HD 7970 has presented us with a great deal of data and even more subjects to consider, so it’s difficult in the best of times to try to whittle this down to a single conclusion. Nevertheless, based on our testing I believe there are two distinct conclusions to be drawn: the case for gaming, and the case for computing.
Gaming
At the end of the day the 7970 is specifically targeted as a gaming workhorse. Regardless of any architecture changes, what’s important is how fast the card is, how much it costs, whether it works correctly, and what its physical attributes are like. With respect to all of these aspects AMD has made an acceptable card, but this is not a groundbreaking product like we’ve seen in the past.
The fact of the matter is that since 2008 we’ve become spoiled by AMD’s aggressive pricing. More than anything else the low prices of the Radeon HD 4870 and Radeon HD 5870 made those products superstars thanks to their performance for the price and their undercutting of NVIDIA’s competing cards. The Radeon HD 5870 was definitely fast, but at $379 it was a steal, which is part of the reason prices for it never stabilized at that low a level.
At the same time the 7970 is not the 5870. The 5870 relative to both NVIDIA and AMD’s previous generation video cards was faster on a percentage basis. It was more clearly a next-generation card, and DX11 only helped to seal the deal. Meanwhile if you look at straight averages the 7970 is only around 15-25% faster than the GTX 580 in our tests, with its advantage being highly game dependent. It always wins at 2560 and 1920, but there are some cases where it’s not much of a win. The 7970’s domination of the 6970 is more absolute, but then again the 6970 is a good $200 cheaper at this point in time.
Meanwhile the presence of previous generation dual-GPU cards will continue to muddle the picture a bit further. We remain as sheepish as ever on multi-GPU cards and believe a high performance single GPU card is still a better investment in most situations, but there’s no denying that the GTX 590 and Radeon HD 6990 are quite capable cards today if you can put up with the noise and the inherent issues with alternate frame rendering.
Ultimately the past few years have seen AMD make great technical progress, but on the business side of things it’s NVIDIA that has made all the money. GCN will help AMD here by improving their professional product line, but the other part of that equation is for AMD to stop selling their cards for so little when they don’t have to. And this is what we’re seeing with the Radeon HD 7970. AMD has chosen to price the 7970 like a current generation card – it’s priced relative to a 3GB GTX 580 – and that’s a fair metric. What it isn’t is groundbreaking in any sense.
So at the end of the day AMD has once again retaken the performance crown for single-GPU cards, bringing them back to a position they last held nearly 2 years ago with the 5870. To that AMD deserves kudos, and if you’re in the market for a $500+ video card the 7970 is clearly the card to get – it’s a bit more expensive than the GTX 580, but it’s reasonably faster and cooler all at once. However if you’ve been waiting for 28nm GPUs to bring about another rapid decrease in video card prices as we saw with the 5870, you’re going to be waiting a bit longer.
Compute
The Radeon HD 7970 may be a gaming product, but today was just as much a launch for AMD’s Graphics Core Next architecture as it was for their new single-GPU king. GCN is the biggest architecture overhaul for AMD since R600 in 2007, and it shows. AMD has laid out a clear plan to seriously break into the GPU computing market and GCN is the architecture that will take them there. This is their Fermi moment.
At this point I’m not comfortable speaking about the compute performance of GCN in absolutes, but based on our limited testing with the 7970 it’s clear the potential is there. At times it’s competitive with the Fermi-based GTX 580 and at other times it’s quite a bit faster. In the hands of experienced developers and given enough time to learn the quirks of GCN, I believe GCN will prove itself. It’s much too early to tell if it will be able to withstand the eventual arrival of NVIDIA’s Kepler, but certainly this is the best shot AMD has ever had.
Performance aside, it’s clear that AMD’s SIMD architecture will make GPU compute development for GCN much easier; of that there is no question. This is important as GCN isn’t just about HPC computing, it’s about fully embracing Fusion. AMD’s CPU plans are built upon GCN just as much as they’re built upon Bulldozer, and for GCN to deliver on its half of the heterogeneous computing aspect of Fusion it will need to be easy to program and it will need to perform well. It would appear AMD has the hardware to make the former happen, now time will tell if GCN Fusion can deliver on the latter.
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RussianSensation - Saturday, January 14, 2012 - link
BF3 is not a 2012 game.......Also, most of us have been gaming on our older cards. Who in the world who has a previous high-end card is going to drop $600 for BF3 alone? No thanks.
SSIV - Saturday, February 18, 2012 - link
Since there's a new driver out for there cards we can now regard these results with a grain of salt. Revise the benchmarks!DaOGGuru - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
I don't know why people keep forgeting about the 560ti 2win. Yes I said 2win = 2 560ti processors on one card. It still kills the 7970 numbers in BF3 by 20Fps. and is same price. It also beats the 580 and is cheaper. It's a single card with 50amp min. draw and it will smoke anything except 590 and the 6990...http://www.guru3d.com/article/evga-geforce-gtx-560...
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link
Oh, right, well this isn't an nvidia card review, so we won't hear from 50 posts about how some CF (would be SLI of course in this case) combo will whip the crap out of it in performance and price...You know ?
That's how it goes...
Usually the articel itself rages on about how some amd CF combo is really so much good and better and blah blah blah.... then the rpice perf, then the results - on and on and on ....
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The angry ankle biters are swarmed up on the under red dog radeon side...
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So you made a very good point, I'm just sorry it took 29 pages of reading to get to it, in it's glorious singularity.... you shouldn't strike out in independent thought like that it's dangerous.... not allowed unless the card being reviewed is an nvidia !!!!
DaOGGuru - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
oops... forgot to say look at previous post links BF3 rating for the 560ti 2win and compare to this charts 7970 fps. The 2win is pumping out @20 more FPS and is $50.00 - $100.00 cheaper than the 7970... lame.. ATi is still behind Nvidia but proud of it! lol They are just now catching up to Nvidia's tessellations and oh and AFTER they changed to a "cuda core copy" architecture and posting it as big news... Evga's older 560ti 2win still dusts it by 20FPS.. lame.DaOGGuru - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
sorry 10FPS not 20.. it's late.DaOGGuru - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
I don't get what's the hub-bub about the 7970.. sure it's the fastest single cpu;BUT, for $50.00-$100.00 less you can get the 560Ti 2win (dual cpu) that smokes the 7970 and the 2win PCB does have an SLI bridge and is cabapable of doing SLI to a second card but it's currently locked by Nvidia (see paragraph 3).Also, the 2win draws a min of only 50amps (way less than most sli configurations) 1. has a considerably lower noise dba, 2. runs cooler and with less power than almost all the high end cards and 3. will run 3 montiors in Nvidia 2D and 3D surround off a single card! 4.Will kill the GTX 580 by @33-23% (depending on review) 5. Will beat the 590 in some sample testing for TDP. And finally 6. will kill the 7970 by 10-20FPS in BF3 including by 10FPS in 1920x1200 4AA-16AF Ultra high mode. So, why have people forgotten the 2win? It's a singlecard, multi-GPU, full 3D/2D surround without a second card in SLI, $500.00USD beast !
OH and for those that say you can't SLI with a second 2win.... http://www.guru3d.com/article/evga-geforce-gtx-560... (this review states on conclusion page) > quote " you will have noticed there is a SLI connector on the PCB. Unfortunately you can not add a second card to go for quad-SLI mode. It's not a hardware limitation, yet a limitation set by NVIDIA, the GTX 560 Ti series is only allowed in 2-way SLI mode, which this card already is."
... So actually, the card is cabale 2card SLI but Nvidia for some (gosh aweful reason) won't let the dog off the chain. Probably because it will absolutely kill the need for a GTX580, 570, 560 Ti SLI configuration for ever!
Resources: (pay attention to BF3 FPS and compare to 7970 FPS in this article.)
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5048/evgas-geforce-g...
http://www.guru3d.com/article/evga-geforce-gtx-560...
Peace...
DaOGGuru - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
I don't get what's the hub-bub about the 7970.. sure it's the fastest single CPU; BUT, for $50.00-$100.00 less you can get the 560Ti 2win (dualCPU) that smokes the 7970 and the 2win PCB does have an SLI bridge and is capable of doing SLI to a second card but it's currently locked by Nvidia (see paragraph 3).Also, the 2win draws a min of only 50amps (way less than most sli configurations) 1. Has a considerably lower noise DBA, 2. runs cooler and with less power than almost all the high end cards and 3. Will run 3 monitors in Nvidia 2D and 3D surround off a single card! 4.Will kill the GTX 580 by @33-23% (depending on review) 5. Will beat the 590 in some sample testing for TDP. And finally 6. will kill the 7970 by 10-20FPS in BF3 including by 10FPS in 1920x1200 4AA-16AF Ultra high mode. So, why have people forgotten the 2win? It's a single card, multi-GPU, full 3D/2D surround without a second card in SLI, $500.00USD beast !
OH and for those that say you can't SLI with a second 2win.... http://www.guru3d.com/article/evga-geforce-gtx-560... (this review states on conclusion page) > quote " you will have noticed there is a SLI connector on the PCB. Unfortunately you cannot add a second card to go for quad-SLI mode. It's not a hardware limitation, yet a limitation set by NVIDIA, the GTX 560 Ti series is only allowed in 2-way SLI mode, which this card already is."
... So actually, the card is capable 2card SLI but Nvidia for some (gosh awful reason) won't let the dog off the chain. Probably because it will absolutely kill the need for a GTX580, 570, 560 Ti SLI configuration forever!
Resources: (pay attention to BF3 FPS and compare to 7970 FPS in this article.)
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5048/evgas-geforce-g...
http://www.guru3d.com/article/evga-geforce-gtx-560...
Peace...
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link
Ummm.... I read you, I see your frustration with all the posts - just refer to my one above there - you really should not be dissing the new amd like that - they like are 1st and uhh... nvidia is evil... so no comparisons like that are allowed when the fanboy side content is like 100 to 1....Now next nvidia card review you will notice a hundred posts on how this or that CF beats the nvidia in price perf and overall perf, etc, and it will be memorized and screamed far and wide...
Just like... your point "doesn't count", okay ?
It's best to ignore you GREEN fanboy types... ( yes even if you point out gigantic savings, or rather especially when you do...)
Thanks for waiting till page 30 - a wise choice.
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, March 11, 2012 - link
Southern Islands is a whole generation late. AMD promised us this SI in the last generation 6000 series. Then right before that prior release, they told us they had changed everything and 6000 was not Southern Islands anymore. LOLTalk about late - it's what two years late ?
Maybe it's three years....
In every case here, Nvidia beat them to the core architecture by two years. Now amd is merely late to the party crashing copycats....
That's late son, that's not original, that's not innovative, that's not superior, it's tag a long tu loo little sister style.