XFX’s Radeon HD 7970 Black Edition Double Dissipation: The First Semi-Custom 7970
by Ryan Smith on January 9, 2012 6:00 AM ESTGame Performance: Portal 2, Battlefield 3, Starcraft II, Civilization V
Regardless of the resolution and anti-aliasing setting used, the BEDD’s lead on the reference 7970 is always 7-8%, indicating that it’s another game largely GPU limited and one of the biggest benefactors of XFX’s factory overclock.
Battlefield 3 is also another consistent title. XFX’s 8% core clock and 4% memory clock overclock gets you 6-7% more on BF3, which is good news for XFX as this is one of the hardest games for the 7970 to pull away from the GTX 580.
With Starcraft II we’re back to seeing gains varying with the resolution. At 2560 it’s nearly 8% faster than the reference 7970, but at 1920 it’s only 5% faster. Based on what we’ve seen with AMD’s performance at 1680, AMD seems to have some general frame setup issues with SC2 that are limiting their ability to scale too far past 100fps, hence the weaker scaling at 1920.
Finally with CivV we have the biggest gap of them all. At 2560 the BEDD gains 8%, but at 1680 it’s only 1%. Whatever AMD has done with the 7970 to improve their performance in CivV this much, it apparently is resolution dependent. At lower resolutions the 7970 becomes more reliant on the CPU, probably a consequence of AMD’s lack of driver command list support.
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piroroadkill - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
I'm not one of those people. I'm not buying a 7970.But just because you don't think it offers a large enough increase is an absolutely meaningless statement.
Fact is, people bought stuff like 8800 Ultra, 7800GTX SLI, Vapochill, and so on.
Cost is not a factor.
Morg. - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
you're a head case.VRAM is a non-issue for 2011 games in low resolution.
SlyNine - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
But people do care about heat. Thats the biggest reason to keep power usage down when its not in use.If your like me and your gaming PC is also your server you don't want much more then 100watts idle.
Which is why I love my 2600k @4.4ghz w/ 5870. At idle its only pulling around 120 watts.
Sabresiberian - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
The cheapest GTX 580 on newegg is $480 AFTER rebate (479.99). Even TigerDirect doesn't quite match that price. I did a search and came up with one seller that is pricing the GTX 580 near $400, some company named Starworth Computers. Maybe it's legit, but I'm wondering why they have it listed $100 or more below everyone else.The only thing accurate about your post is your self-appointed name.
WileCoyote - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
I accept your challenge:http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results....
3GB 580, picked one up last week. $429.99 - $300MIR = $399.99
Boo-yeah!
If the 580 hadn't fallen in price I would have purchased the 7970.
Duraz0rz - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
The card you linked is a 1.5GB card.iamezza - Tuesday, January 10, 2012 - link
lol, failMorg. - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
It would take a fanboy to think that card is less than 6% faster than a gtx580 ;)Just bring that 7970 to GTX580 TDP ... and you'll start understanding ;)
The only advantage the GTX580 ever had over any card was that it had the bigger TDP . nothing else.
ET - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
It would take a fanboy to buy a card that's less than 6% faster a Radeon 6970 and costs $200 more. Namely the GTX 580.deaner - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
It would take a fanboy to quote such % to $ value, against a GTX 580. Maybe, just maybe there are people who are AMD fans!!?? That is an intersting thought.... Curious to your stats as well.