AMD Radeon HD 7950 Review Feat. Sapphire & XFX: Sewing Up The High-End Market
by Ryan Smith on January 31, 2012 9:02 AM ESTCrysis: Warhead
Kicking things off as always is Crysis: Warhead. It’s no longer the toughest game in our benchmark suite, but it’s still a technically complex game that has proven to be a very consistent benchmark. Thus even 4 years since the release of the original Crysis, “but can it run Crysis?” is still an important question, and the answer continues to be “no.” While we’re closer than ever, full Enthusiast settings at a 60fps is still beyond the grasp of a single-GPU card.
AMD’s first round of driver optimizations have given the 7900 a very solid footing in Crysis, putting the 7950 off to a great start. The 7950 is 19% ahead of the GTX 580 at 2560 and 14% ahead at 1920, putting the card in a comfortable position that for single-GPU cards is second only to the 7970. In spite of Crysis being shader-bound most of the time the 7950 is generally within 15% of the 7970, so it’s doing better than the theoretical performance gap between the two cards would predict. Meanwhile compared to AMD’s last generation offerings it’s not much of a contest: the 7950 is 20-25% ahead.
As for our factory overclocked Sapphire and XFX cards, they further close the gap between the 7950 and 7970. The 12.5% core overclock on these cards puts them between 7% and 10% faster than the stock clocked 7950, with the XFX card edging out the Sapphire due to its memory overclock. These cards do so well here than the reference 7970’s lead is reduced to just 5%.
The minimum framerates in Crysis are also looking good on the 7950, with the 7950 turning in a 10-22% better minimum framerate than the GTX 580 depending on whether we’re talking about 1920 or 2560. As like we saw with the 7970, the biggest lead is at the highest resolutions, which has typically been the case for AMD cards for some time now. The overclocked partner cards add to this, tacking on an extra 5-10% in performance.
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mak360 - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
i would easily buy the HD7950 over the old tech - outdated - hot - power hungry - loud GTX580 junk. The HD7950 is same price, new tech, uses 72 watts less, is cooler, is silent, is 28nm, is faster, has compute, has pcie3, has x3 monitors, has audio over each channel, also slaps the 590 if thats what you want lol.its a win-win, you would have to be an idiot to buy anything nvidia has currently in the high end.
chizow - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - link
Anyone interested in high-end already owns Nvidia and is hitting the snooze button on this launch until Kepler.There's only a 15-25% reason to buy a 7970, 0-5% reason to buy a 7950.
Death666Angel - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - link
You keep repeating it, and you keep being wrong. There are a million reasons for someone to upgrade their system now. Maybe they got a better monitor for christmas and need the graphics card upgrade but waited a month until AMD revealed their new tech? Maybe it's someones birthday and he can get a big card. Or someone got a new job and wants a new card today? Not everyone who has the money and need for such a card now had it in the months before it.chizow - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - link
In that case, they should probably wait for the real next-gen, since that's what most anyone was doing prior to the disappointing Tahiti reveal.Or go ahead and pick up a 6970/570 for much better price/performance return. Although we may actually see the prices go back up now that its obvious Tahiti did nothing to force downward pricing pressure.
yankeeDDL - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - link
Just look at the review from Tomshardware.Based on performance, they were expecting the 7950 to be prices around $480. Then they were informed about the MSRP of $450 and took it extremely well.
Just sayin'
Spunjji - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - link
Unfortunately you gave yourself away as a bit of an idiot as soon as you failed to address anything about the product other than its raw performance.Precisely what makes you think that AMD /has/ to price their products at this level? They have a smaller chip that performs better for less power. As soon as nVidia releases competing products they'll drop trou on the price and everyone can be happy. Right now they're price-gouging the performance-obsessed, just like nVidia have been for as long as they've had the top product.
Personally, I'm disappointed that they've abandoned the 3/4/5000 series approach of providing fantastic value for money, but apparently that wasn't earning them any money. Big shame, don't care, move on. I'll be waiting for Kepler to show before I make any buying decisions.
chizow - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - link
If the only thing AMD is able to bring to the table from a full node process shrink is a reduction in power consumption, they've already failed.What compounds their failure however, is the fact they're trying to price this card that doesn't even significantly outperform last-gen parts at existing prices.
If they actually priced this where it should be ~$380-$400, it'd be a completely different story. Because they'd actually be offering you all of those fringe benefits you listed as well as either high-end performance at a much lower price OR significantly higher performance at the same price.
These are the kinds of metrics people look at when deciding to upgrade, or not. Pricing a product that performs the same as a part that's been available for 14 months already just doesn't make any sense, sorry.
ven - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link
after all the conversation you have given i came to only one conclusion you all guys created as much hype for the kepler. Nvidia will be much delighted for this.after reading all these I would be not surprised if Nvidia print a link to these website page on their kepler card boxes as part of their advertisement.chizow - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link
I don't think Nvidia cares about what's written here tbh, I don't think it took more than looking at the benchmarks for them to get excited.What they care about:
-AMD's top 28nm = only 15-25% faster than their last-gen top 40nm
-AMD's 2nd 28nm = only 0-5% faster than their last-gen top 40nm
The result is the rumors and indirect quotes attributed to Nvidia personnel at CES amounting to:
"We expected more from AMD's HD7900 series."
But really, this quote could and should be attributed to anyone, especially at the asking price. It seems most people feel this way, makes you wonder why AMD fans don't.
Galidou - Saturday, February 4, 2012 - link
it's fun to see comparison of parts only by the size of the transistor..... the thing is the 40nm parts from nvidia from last gen are BIG gpus, you gotta compare the quantity of transistor to transistor to understand the % increase in performance....AMD's smaller gpus smaller power enveloppe that maxes performance/die size vs Nvidia's maximum die size/max performance attainable with good yields...