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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FaaR - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
It's a lot more than 6% faster, don't be such a ridiculous fanboy.It also draws a lot less power than a 580, saving back (some) of the price difference in the long run as a lower electricity bill.
wonderpookie - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
What's a "pre-binned" card?Thanks! :)
Rick83 - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
A card which has been tested to have tighter tolerances (in this case) than others and has been selected with this in mind.Technically "pre-binned" is not a very sensible word creation, as the "pre" refers to the fact that it is done by the manufacturer and not the end-user-over-clocker -- but these days more people by manufacturer over-clocked cards than there are people that actually buy a dozen cards, test them all for the highest achievable OC, and then resell/send back the less stable cards.
Morg. - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
binning : the process of separating *PU's according to their maximum operating frequency.Called like that because you would test all your GPU's and put all those between 1200-1300 mhz stable @ xyz volts in bin 1, all those between 1100-1200 in bin 2, etc. in order to present differentiated offerings.
In the past, many CPU part numbers were just different binnings of the same part (like C2D 2.33 or 2.4 ghz etc.), same goes for GPU's, and AMD even introduced a different kind of binning with their x2,x3,x4 variants based on how many cores were stable at the target speed, and locking those that weren't (x2s were quickly made from x2 parts, and then x1 (sempron) selected from failed x2s).
So in this case, it would mean XFX tested the cards and selected the better performers to sell as DDBE, leaving the others for non-overclocked cards.
This works that way because no CPU or GPU is perfect and all dies are more or less failed prints of the actual design.
The most flawed cannot be used at all and go to the trash.
The slightly flawed get some parts of the die disconnected (faulty cache, broken core, ...).
The slightly less flawed just get overvolted / underclocked in order to run.
The best parts come closer to the intended result and will thus operate at lower voltages or higher frequencies in comparison.
Usually, binning isn't perfect and some better dies can fall in lower bins, hence the unlockable cores on older phenom/sempron x2,x3, etc. -
It is also not as fine-grained as some pro OCers would like it to be, and because of that, they tend to buy a bunch of CPU's and bin them themselves in order to break WR's (look at kingpincooling.com).
Iketh - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
"However it’s interesting to note that temperatures under load end up being identical to the reference 7970. The BEDD is no cooler than the reference 7970 even with its radically different cooling apparatus. This is ultimately a result of the fact that the BEDD is a semi-custom card; not only is XFX using AMD’s PCB, but they’re using AMD’s aggressive fan profile. At any given temperature the BEDD’s fans ramp up to the same speed (as a percentage) as AMD’s fans, meaning that the BEDD’s fans won’t ramp up until the card hits the same temperatures that trigger a ramp-up on the reference design. As a result the BEDD is no cooler than the reference 7970, though with AMD’s aggressive cooling policy the reference 7970 would be tough to beat."You do realize overclocking increases temps, right? Even if voltages aren't touched.
NJoy - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
have you tried to understand what is written in the bit you copypasted?Iketh - Tuesday, January 10, 2012 - link
Sorry, but it's you that isn't understanding. My point is that I believe the cooler to be 2-4C cooler than the reference considering it's holding the same temps with an overclock. That's all.Morg. - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
Very true ...But this is Anandtech ;)
-- mainstream tech news for the masses
It's like their new config advice .. every config they advise is at least 10% pure waste of cash .. but it's still better than no advice for those who don't know better.
And furthermore, the temperature points are simply a result of what XFX wanted for this card. nothing else.
AMD's fan profile is part of that but you can rewrite it in the BIOS iirc so they just didn't bother / their fans don't run reliably below voltage xyz.
I could mod that card to make it silent, so could XFX, they just didn't want to go into such detail when they could simply slap their cooler on it, change clocks and ship it - all there is to it.
B3an - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
WTF are you on about you stupid little kid. Many of Anand's articles on here are unrivalled for technical details and insight.Morg. - Tuesday, January 10, 2012 - link
lol .And you would know ... with a fake 1337speak nick ... if you think they're so good it only goes to show your ignorance makes anandtech a perfect fit for you, a fact I was pointing to in the post you replied to.
At your level of understanding, Anandtech is a perfect fit.
Good for Anand and for you tbh . enjoy it.