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
DiRT 3
For racing games our racer of choice continues to be DiRT, which is now in its 3rd iteration. Codemasters uses the same EGO engine between its DiRT, F1, and GRID series, so the performance of EGO is has been relevant for a number of number of racing games over the years.
With DiRT 2 NVIDIA often held a slight edge in performance, and due to the reuse of the EGO engine this hasn’t really changed in DiRT 3. As a result the 7970 is still faster than the GTX 580, but not by as much as in other games. At 2560 this manifests itself as a 19% lead, while at 1920 it’s down to 6%, and embarrassingly enough at 1680 the 7970 actually falls behind the GTX 580 by just a hair. DiRT 3 is not particularly shader heavy so that may be part of the reason that the 7970 can’t easily clear the GTX 580 here, but that doesn’t fully explain what we’re seeing. At the end of the day this is all academic since everything north of the GTX 570 can clear 60fps even at 2560, but it would be nice to eventually figure out why NVIDIA does better than average here.
Meanwhile compared to the 6970 the 7970 enjoys one of its bigger leads. Here the 7970 leads by about 45% at 2560 and 1920, and finally falls slightly to 37% at 1680.
We’ve had a number of requests for more minimum framerates throughout the years, so we’re also going to include the minimum framerates for DiRT 3 as the minimums have proven to be reliably consistent in our benchmarks.
Given that the 7970 was already seeing a smaller than typical lead over the GTX 580, it’s not wholly surprising to see that it fares a bit worse when it comes to minimums. At 2560 its minimum framerate of 64.2fps means that the 7970 will deliver smooth performance every last moment, but at the same time this is only 11% better than the GTX 580. At 1920 this becomes a dead heat between the two cards. Meanwhile compared to the 6970 the 7970 is always about 45% ahead.
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gevorg - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
37.9dB is a horrible testbed for noise testing! WTF!mavere - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
Seriously!With the prevalence of practically silent PSUs, efficient tower heatsinks, and large quiet fans, I cannot fathom why the noise floor is 37.9 dB.
Finally - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
As usual, AT is shooting straight for the brain-dam, I mean, ENTHUSIAST crowd feat. a non-mentioned power supply that should be well around 1000W in order to drive over-priced CPUs as well as quadruple GPU setups.If you find that horrendous they will offer you not to read this review, but their upcoming HTPC review where they will employ the same 1000W power supply...
B3an - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
*face palm*1: 1000+ Watt PSU's are normally more quiet if anything as they're better equipped to deal with higher power loads. When a system like this uses nowhere near the PSU's full power the fan often spins at a very low RPM. Some 1000+ PSU's will just shut the fan off completely when a system uses less than 30% of it's power.
2: It's totally normal for a system to be around 40 dB without including the graphics cards. Two or 3 fans alone normally cause this much noise even if they're large low RPM fans. Then you have noise levels from surroundings which even in a "quiet" room are normally more than 15 dB.
3: Grow some fucking brain cells kids.
andymcca - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
1) If you were a quiet computing enthusiast, you would know that the statement"1000+ Watt PSU's are normally more quiet if anything"
is patently false. 1000W PSUs are necessarily less efficient at realistic loads (<600W at full load in single GPU systems). This is a trade-off of optimizing for efficiency at high wattages. There is no free lunch in power electronics. Lower efficiency yields more heat yields more noise, all else being equal. And I assure you that a high end silent/quiet PSU is designed for low air flow and uses components at least as high in quality as their higher wattage (non-silent/non-quiet) competitors. Since the PSU is not decribed (a problem which has been brought up many times in the past concerning AT reviews), who knows?
2) 40dB is fairly loud if you are aiming for quiet operation. Ambient noise in a quiet room can be roughly 20dB (provided there is not a lot of ambient outdoor noise). 40dB is roughly the amplitude of conversation in a quiet room (non-whispered). A computer that hums as loud as I talk is pretty loud! I'm not sure if you opinion is informed by any empirical experience, but for precise comparison of different sources the floor should be at minimum 20dB below the sources in question.
3) You have no idea what the parent's age or background is, but your comment #3 certainly implies something about your maturity.
formulav8 - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link
Seriously grow up. Your a nasty mouth as well.piroroadkill - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
Haha, yeah.Still, I guess we have to leave that work to SPCR.
Kjella - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
High-end graphics cards are even noisier, so who cares? A 250W card won't be quiet no matter what. Using an overclocked Intel Core i7 3960X is obviously so the benchmarks won't be CPU limited, not to make a quiet PC.Ryan Smith - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
Our testing methodology only has us inches from the case (an open case I should add), hence the noise from our H100 closed loop radiator makes itself known. In any case these numbers aren't meant to be absolutes, we only use them on a relative basis.MadMan007 - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
[AES chart] on page 7?