AMD Radeon HD 7750 & Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition Review: Evading The Price/Performance Curve
by Ryan Smith & Ganesh T S on February 15, 2012 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- HTPC
- GCN
- Radeon HD 7000
Crysis: 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 four 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.
With AMD’s GCN architecture, Crysis is finally losing some of its predictive power, but it’s still a good indicator of overall performance. And the indicators aren’t very good.
From a price/performance perspective the 7700 needs to beat at least the 6850 on the AMD side and at least the GTX 560 on the NVIDIA side in order to ensure a clear-cut victory. Unfortunately it’s falling well short of that, underperforming the 6850 by 20% never mind the GTX 560. On paper the 7770 is outgunned on everything from texture performance to ROP performance to shader performance, so take your pick on what’s holding back Crysis performance, but the end result is that it’s well behind its previous-generation peers. In fact it’s closer to the 2.5 year old 5770 than it is the 6850.
As for the 7750, things are a bit better. In spite of its massive texture and shader deficit compared to the 7770, it’s only behind by 15%, offering some strong support that the actual performance difference between the two cards won’t be nearly as big as it is on paper. That said, on a price/performance basis it should be able to beat the 5770, and it isn’t quite there. But as the only card here that’s sub -75W, it has other favorable attributes.
Elsewhere XFX’s R7770 BESDD shows us that 7770 performance scales well with clockspeeds, with a 12% core overclock netting 11% better performance. This is a good sign for overclockers, but for factory overclocked cards it’s a mixed bag, as the higher price these cards fetch only puts them more in competition with the 6870.
The story of minimum framerates is much the same. The 7700 series continues to underperform its last-generation competition by quite a bit, and unfortunately we’re still several frames per second away from being able to sustain 30fps+ in Crysis at 1680.
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anactoraaron - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
What happened there at 1920x1200 for the 6870? 23.2 fps seems a bit off to me. I get a solid 60 just about everywhere (occasional dips to ~50) at 1080.I am so glad I bought a 6870 ICEQ a month ago. Got the email today that I will be getting my rebate so your point about getting a 6870 for 159 AR is absolutely true. And the ICEQ edition I have is rocking a 1000/1150 oc all day long 32c idle 69c load via furmark 15 min run. Best part is it's much quieter than a reference card.
All of the 7xxx releases seem a bit lackluster to me.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
I go over this a bit in the commentary for that benchmark, but basically the 1GB cards are running out of memory in that benchmark. For reasons I've yet to determine, even though the 7700 series cards still only have 1GB they are handling the situation better than the 6800 and 5700.bazinga77 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
first thing that should be pointed out is that i believe that the 7700 series cards that launched today only have a 128 bit memory interface so no one should expect miracles especially at higher resolutions. the memory bandwidth on x700 cards and lower has always held them back a little, where as nvidia for instance on their 550ti uses a 192 bit memory interface. if this card used a higher bandwidth memory it would do better. also the 79xx series from amd upped the bandwidth from the 69xx series from 256 bit to 384 bit which is probably one of the reasons it was so impressive.well the gtx 460 is starting to disappear and amd discontinued the 6850 and 6870 two months ago so once they are gone they are gone. this is directly from amd. so i think this card fits in nicely and i expect once the 7850 launches that the price of this card will drop. i think that the 7770 almost being as fast as the 6850 isn't all that bad, especially because of how cool it runs and it seems like the factory oc cards close that gap even closer. considering how much power some of these cards took a couple of generations ago it seems like we are making progress. once the 7850 launches, which i believe happens next month, i think it will be the card to get, just as the 6850 was.
so all in all it seems like the 7770 will fit in nicely with a small price drop and and the discontinuation of some of the older amd and nvidia cards that has been happening, let alone taking into account the promotions we might see with rebates on these cards or bundled games etc.
lastly the 7750 seems like it will now be the best card on the market that doesn't require an external power connector and it will come in at only about $10 more than the current champ in that arena. so it looks like a nice card for the casual gamer or someone looking for an htpc card and it looks like the encoding features of the 77xx cards are pretty great.
chizow - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
Like I said in the 7970 and 7950 review comments, the reality of the situation is only going to get worst as AMD reveals the rest of their 7-series product stack.Ryan I can tell you're doing your best not to be too hard on AMD but there comes a time we need to call a spade a spade. What AMD is doing here in terms of price and performance with the 7-series is easily the worst we've ever seen in the last decade from a new GPU architecture, especially considering they're also on a new process node.
If/when Nvidia pulls an RV770 on AMD, I really hope you and the rest of the media is up to the task the same way they were with the GTX 280. I don't think you were head GPU editor at that time but I'm sure you remember the backlash.
jjj - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
So AMD either went stupid all of the sudden or they just can't produce enough cards yet and priced them to not sell.Either way,this is a mistake and they are only hurting their image (something they can't afford since Nvidia is still the stronger brand).Lets hope Nvidia wants market share and gives us something exciting soon.
stolid - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
Arg. Might as well hang on to my 5770's. :/adonn78 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
And these cards are supossed to be an upgrade over the 6000 series how?Targon - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
There is still a 7800 series set of cards that we have not seen yet. We saw the 7900 cards, and now the 7700 series. The comparisons here are 7700 vs. 6800 series, and that is ONE issue.Price vs. performance is the primary issue that I can see, and TIME will hopefully bring down the prices to a reasonable level. I also hope/expect that there are reasons for the prices that will be fixed quickly, so will reduce the prices. We shall see, but if NVIDIA is having problems, it may be that AMD is giving NVIDIA a chance to come back, and is saving their next big performance jump for that release.
chizow - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
"Price vs. performance is the primary issue that I can see, and TIME will hopefully bring down the prices to a reasonable level."But that's exactly the problem, time hasn't brought price down to a reasonable level because we've already had 14+ months of this performance level at the same or better prices. AMD's pricing does nothing to shift the price performance metric and if anything, they are actually falling behind the curve a bit as you can get "old" parts that perform the same or better than these "new" ones at much lower prices.
The 7800 series will only emphasize this point further with similar performance relative to the 6900 series, but at much worst prices. But that's the trickle down effect of pricing a new "high-end" flagship part that's only 15-25% faster than the last-gen at a 10% price hike. There just isn't much value derived as you go further down the ladder.
ET - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
This is disappointing, although I agree that the 7750 does have a place due to its low power. Let's see what NVIDIA will offer.The only ray of sunshine is that as always with a new architecture it takes a while for the drivers to take full advantage of the hardware, so it's possible to see performance improvements of tens of percents over time. Let's hope that's the case here.