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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chizow - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
You want to talk about respect while throwing out inflammatory comments like fanboy every reply while ignoring the actual facts and logic of an argument? Respect is given where its due.Anyways, like I said, just draw out the pricing history on these high-end parts for the last 5-6 years and you will see what AMD is doing here is unprecedented. At no point has one of these GPU makers ever asked for flagship prices with so little improvement over the last-gen flagships when using a new process node/GPU architecture.
If you are a reasonable person who is deserving of respect, I think you will find truth and reason in what I've written here, fanboyism and lack of respect aside.
Galidou - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
Find me anywhere I called you an idiot or a stupid or anything, the worse I said is that ultimate knowledge is crazyness, never called you crazy or ANYTHING, while you did it again., sad to see you have to resolve to those strategy as arguments....The lowest price I can find right now of the 7970 is 520$ and lowest I can find for 6950 is 240$, a little more than double as I said.
I said I trolled and I know it inflammatory comments and lack of respect is different, I was poking your ''facts'' and the way you react and still lack of respect toward me just shows even more...
''who is deserving of respect''
EVERYONE deserves respect and I will still respect you even if you don't for me because respect can't be bought, it is acquired or applied...
Galidou - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
And btw you still forgot to input the amount of memory which is 3gb that you forget everytime in your comments....Galidou - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
''If you are a reasonable person who is deserving of respect''I just still can't beleive you said that... ''who is deserving respect'' it's deceiving to see such lack of respect in a conversation about gpus,
I understand what you mean, Nvidia as always been about giving double the performance of last gen but they are hitting a wall where it won't be possible until they change the limit of the max TDP which is 300w, they are very close to it, I guess they left some space for double chip cards, but nvidia which isn't their strenght of watt/performance will probably have to change things if they want to squeeze double the gtx580 in their gtx680 in 300w TDP...
Considering ATI are the best at watts/performance and they only squeezed that kind of performance in 250w.....
chizow - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
6950 was as cheap as $180-$200 in some sales and the 7970 is $550-$600, so yes at times it was 3x.But the point remains, the 7970 does a worst job at upholding your standard than the GTX 280.
Also, it was a full 2x framebuffer, 8800GT was only 512MB, same as the 9800GX2 which was a massive amount of VRAM at the time. It was also more than the 512MB on the original 4870 with a full 512-bit bus.
Once again, the 280 was a flagship card by every metric, if you want to argue honestly over the facts, at least try to be honest about it.
Galidou - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
Yes you're right the 8800gt was 512mb, wasn'T there a 1gb version? I can'T remember...4870 was cheating, it used the first ddr5 memory so it doubled the bandwidth without adding die size, which helped ALOT to it'S great performance, I still like my 4870 which can almost still run everything very well...
Galidou - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
ok you want to go in the ''as cheap as'' well my friend got right after me a rebate with special and had a 8800gt for 150$ after everything, I was using regular price for my 8800gt at 180$, so consider a 8800gt at 150$ times 4.33 = 650$, wow, 4 times and a third....Galidou - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
IT WAS A FLAGSHIP CARD LOL the radeon 4870 got so close to it with a die half as big and that was what, a month and a half later... speak about flagship at 650$Galidou - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
worse than that, the radeon 4870 wasn't even meant to compete with the high end, AMD had left that market for single GPU but still it came SO CLOSE... speak about Flagshipn amzingness that doubles the previous generation.....Galidou - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
If you find something to say against my last comment I'm over with you, your closed mind will be the strognest I have ever seen. He will find a reason of the gtx 280 selling so high because of the Nvidia's CEO not having enough food on the table so they had to adjust the price....Poor them, send them food, they're starving!!