AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition Review: Battling For The Performance Crown
by Ryan Smith on June 22, 2012 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- GCN
- Radeon HD 7000
Portal 2
Portal 2 continues the long and proud tradition of Valve’s in-house Source engine. While Source continues to be a DX9 engine, Valve has continued to upgrade it over the years to improve its quality, and combined with their choice of style you’d have a hard time telling it’s over 7 years old at this point. Consequently Portal 2’s performance does get rather high on high-end cards, but we have ways of fixing that…
The great thing about having such powerful cards is that we can push image quality to the max on better performing games, and in no place is that better evident than Portal 2. Here we can get away with 4x Super Sample Anti-Aliasing even at 2560, providing smooth and beautiful gameplay.
Unfortunately for AMD, they just don’t do very well on this test and the 7970GE doesn’t do much to remedy that. Where the GTX 680 can surpass 60fps the 7970GE can only manage 55fps, giving the GTX 680 a commanding 25% lead (or causing the 7970GE to trail by 20%). The 7970GE is more than playable here, but it would be nice to see it pass 60fps to maximize how fluid the game is. The situation of course improves without SSAA, but at these performance levels it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense not to use it at single-monitor resolutions.
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CeriseCogburn - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
They can justify it, the are the amd fanboy. Ever DOLLAR counts when it comes to card pricing, five or ten bucks makes amd the WINNER !!!!!!!! and greatest card value ever for enthusiasts !!!!!!!!!!!But then, moments later, the nearly unavailable and much more expensive montior is all theirs, at their bosom (moments before they harped amd wins in high rez triple screen no matter the data) - now suddenly they have a 1920x1200 IPS or whatever...
Here's why...
1920x1080: " GeForce GTX680 is on average 17.61% more efficient than the Radeon 7970.
Here, the performance difference in favor of the GTX680 are even greater "
1920x1200: " GeForce GTX680 is on average 10.14% more efficient than the Radeon 7970.
At slightly higher resolution appears to have slightly worse performance of the new card (compared to 1920x1080). "
That's an over 7% performance difference overall... nVidia still kicks amd's lousy second placer, but it's not SO embarrassing at 17%+....
See, now they all love 1920x1200 and will DEMAND as hyper-harpies that anand keep the monitor rez as is...
In the end it will just be anand "listening" to it's fan base.... R O F L
Dude, they COULD just run their 1920x1200 in 1920x1080 for the benches - it's not hard at all - but you know... amd doesn't look better than crappy as heck then..
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
link (since the descending swarm won't see it above)http://translate.google.pl/translate?hl=pl&sl=...
silverblue - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
I couldn't care less which it is as long as the image is good. I do think you're downplaying the framerate advantage of 1080p over 1200p though as we're talking an extra 11% screen area going from one to the other.1200p used to be far more common and Apple are one of the manufacturers keeping it alive (along with 4:3 ratios).
Ananke - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
Real good dudes use 1920*1200silverblue - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
Nah. With a card like these, I'd rather use 2560xwhatever. :PZok - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
Maybe I missed it in the article, but does the lack of hardware changes mean that existing 7970s can be "upgraded" by being flashed with a 7970GE BIOS (so long as they can hit the clock speeds)?haukionkannel - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
No it can not be upgraded... So what else has been changed?http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7970...
Zok - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
Well that's disappointing. Wonder if there are hardware changes or a workaround is possible.haukionkannel - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
You said that you may use some extra setting for Scyrim... How about using some popular extra large texturemap upgrade? It would be more punishing to use those larger texturemaps, and In Scyrim, like Oblivion before, those texturemaps are guitep popular among users of more poverfull graphic cards!milkod2001 - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
7950/70 games+computing /trade off :noise+power less efficient670/80 games/trade off:weak in computing
the only card I find as a good choice would be 670 but it needs to get to 300-350 price level