AMD Radeon HD 7950 Review Feat. Sapphire & XFX: Sewing Up The High-End Market
by Ryan Smith on January 31, 2012 9:02 AM ESTCivilization V
Our final game, Civilization 5, gives us an interesting look at things that other RTSes cannot match, with a much weaker focus on shading in the game world, and a much greater focus on creating the geometry needed to bring such a world to life. In doing so it uses a slew of DirectX 11 technologies, including tessellation for said geometry, driver command lists for reducing CPU overhead, and compute shaders for on-the-fly texture decompression.
As we saw in our 7970 review, Tahiti’s performance under Civ V is quite interesting—it’s well ahead of the 6000 series, more so than we would have expected. The 7950 continues this trend, keeping it relatively competitive with the GTX 580, trailing by only 5% at 2560. AMD has continued to stay mum on why their Civilization V performance on Tahiti is so good, and in light of the 14% gap between the 7970 and 7950, it looks like shader performance—particularly compute shader performance—seems to be the deciding factor. Meanwhile the factory overclocked XFX and Sapphire cards once more tilt the results in the 7950’s favor, with their performance turning the tables on the GTX 580 to take a 4-5% lead.
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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...