AMD Radeon HD 7950 Review Feat. Sapphire & XFX: Sewing Up The High-End Market
by Ryan Smith on January 31, 2012 9:02 AM ESTBattlefield 3
Its popularity aside, Battlefield 3 may be the most interesting game in our benchmark suite for a single reason: it’s the first AAA DX10+ game. It’s been 5 years since the launch of the first DX10 GPUs, and 3 whole process node shrinks later we’re finally to the point where games are using DX10’s functionality as a baseline rather than an addition. Not surprisingly BF3 is one of the best looking games in our suite, but as with past Battlefield games that beauty comes with a high performance cost
Battlefield 3 was a game the 7970 struggled with at launch, and even with AMD’s driver optimizations they haven’t been able to do a great deal about it so far. As a result the 7950 trails the GTX 580 the entire time by anywhere between 3% and 10%, and unfortunately for AMD BF3 is a very demanding game, making it one of the worst titles to fall behind at. As 2560 is not going to be playable, we’re realistically looking at 1920, where the 7950 is fast enough to crack 60fps, but is where that 10% performance gap is found.
Thankfully for Sapphire and XFX, overclocking is the great equalizer here. With their factory overclocks their cards generally erase the 10% performance gap, taking a very slight lead over the GTX 580 at both 2560 and 1920. Though there continues to be very little difference between the two cards themselves—XFX’s memory overclock is rarely worth more than a frame or two per second.
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Galidou - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
Everyone is against you but still after all that, you continue to beleive in whatever nonsense you say from the beginning. Not even one person in here supported your opinions, whatever the market is, it just means one thing, you are a selfish nvidia HARDCORE fanboy who gets paid by the green goblin to speak your nonsense.....AMD fanboys are intense at times, but you clearly are a madman, the world would say you're wrong that you'd still beleive you're better than everyone else, but if you were, you'd be rich and not spending your time speaking on forums like this one.
SlyNine - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
You're kidding right rarson.What metric do you think we should use to determine value if not through precedence.
If you're questioning using precedent as a metering stick for value. Hell even the legal system uses precedents to try and determine law, but to you it's not good enough for video cards.
SlyNine - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
yea based on old nods. new nods bring cheaper parts with better performence. THATS WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!SlyNine - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
So the 5870 was priced according to the competition.No you're full of shit because new cards always bring better performence for the price.
SlyNine - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
Actually you fail to use logic plenty of times in your arguments. Also I call your consistency in to question.Like for instance, the simple fact that new nods= cheaper performence, not better performence that scales with price.
Not sure why you cannot get that simple bit of logic figured out.
Deo Domuique - Wednesday, February 8, 2012 - link
Hey chizow, your comments kept me eventually away from buying the 7950. I use 12 years gaming PCs and always I had Nvidia. This time would be the first that I'd go to AMD's camp.Although, I already had too many concerns ( especially the high price ), I could't keep myself. But finally, I did. I'll wait for Kepler. If the 7950's price currently was 320-330€ and not 410€, right now I'd have already the card.
Apis - Sunday, April 22, 2012 - link
They are currently dropping the prices for the 7xxx series, I'm found one sapphire 7950 3gb for 360€ when looking right now.Apis - Sunday, April 22, 2012 - link
In this "Compute: Civilization V" benchmark Radeon HD 5870 got 154.9 FPSIn the 6970 review, http://www.anandtech.com/show/4061/amds-radeon-hd-... the 5870 got 181.9 FPS.
Why the regression?
Wolfpup - Friday, July 20, 2012 - link
Traditionally Nvidia's hardware has smashed AMD's for Folding, but it looks like PROBABLY the 7970 and 7950 should be respectable with the new architecture...I can't actually find ANYONE talking about the issue though or benchmarking...