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
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.
Since the launch of the GTX 680 it’s been clear that Crysis is a game that favors AMD’s products and this is no clearer than with the 7970GE. AMD was already handily beating the GTX 680 here, most likely due to the GTX 680’s more limited memory bandwidth – so the faster 7970GE widens that gap even further. The 7970GE is a full 25% faster than the GTX 680 here at 2560 and is extremely close to hitting 60fps at 1920, which given Crysis’s graphically demanding nature is quite incredible, and for all practical purposes puts the 7970GE in its own category. Obviously this is one of AMD’s best games, but it’s solid proof that the 7970GE can really trounce the GTX 680 in the right situation.
As for the 7970GE versus the 7970, this is a much more straightforward comparison. We aren’t seeing the full extent of the 7970GE’s clockspeed advantage over the 7970 here, but the 7970GE is still at the lower bounds of its theoretical performance advantage over its lower clocked sibling with a gain of 8% at 2560. The 7970GE is priced some 16% higher than the 7970 so the performance gains aren’t going to keep pace with the price increases, but this is nothing new for flagship cards.
When it comes to minimum framerates the 7970GE further expands its lead. It’s now 35% faster than the GTX 680 (and just short of 30fps) at 2560, which neatly wraps up the 7970GE’s domination in Crysis. Even its performance lead versus the 7970 improves, with the 7970GE increasing its lead to 13%. A year ago NVIDIA and AMD were roughly tied with Crysis, but now AMD has clearly made it their game. So can it run Crysis? Yes, and a lot better than the GTX 680 can.
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piroroadkill - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
There will be custom designs with nice quiet coolers flooding the market in no time..raghu78 - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7970..."There’s a silver lining on this one, though. Ahead of this review, I let AMD know about our acoustic concerns and the company claims that most partner boards will employ third-party cooling, not its reference configuration."
So noise is not an issue at all. Cards like sapphire with dual x , gigabyte with windforce, powercolor with PCS+ have good cooler designs. Power will be more. But the Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition frankly more than makes up for that with its performance at 1600p and multi monitor setups.
If you are on a 1080p monitor and want perf/watt , price perf and a cooler setup go for custom GTX 670. For the rest who have 1600p or multi monitor frankly there is only one option - a custom Radeon HD 7970 card or a custom Radeon HD 7970 Ghz edition.
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
Hogwash, the GTX 680's and GTX 670's are still SMOOTHER, and more enjoyable at high rez and multi monitor.Check the hundreds of reviews.
Tuvok86 - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
AMD should have released a balanced 7970 in the first place, somewhere halfway in performance between the 7970 and GE. Now they have an overconservative card and an powerhungry monsterReikon - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
On page 3:"For AMD the 7970GE will be launching with the Catalyst 10.7 beta, while NVIDIA has released the 304.48 betas for the entire lineup."
I think you mean 12.7
Ryan Smith - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
Whoops. Thanks.fausto412 - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
Will these new Power Tune and overclocking advancements trickle down 6900 series cards to unleash more performance safely?What would prevent AMD from affective the 6990 with these new advancements?
kyuu - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
These features would require a new BIOS. As far as I'm aware, AMD does not support flashing their cards with new BIOS. Anyway, there's nothing there that you can't acheive via normal overclocking anyway (asides from the slightly better chip binning).silverblue - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
...Another Mention (of) Deterministic, it seems.gonchuki - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
Did you try reaching AMD to comment on the rather low performance ceiling on Skyrim? looks as if their drivers are way more CPU hungry than Nvidia's and that's why they are getting capped at a lower rate.Maybe that's what usually hinders performance in other CPU limited titles like WoW?