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
DiRT 3
For racing games our racer of choice continues to be DiRT, which is now in its 3rd iteration. Codemasters uses the same EGO engine between its DiRT, F1, and GRID series, so the performance of EGO has been relevant for a number of racing games over the years.
With AMD’s recent and significant performance gains under DiRT 3 due to their latest drivers, what was once an NVIDIA dominated game has flipped to an AMD-leading game before we even factor in the 7970GE. The 7970GE in turn only adds insult to injury, opening up an 18% lead at 2560. At this point framerates are so far above 60fps that it’s largely an academic difference, but 120Hz gamers will appreciate the difference. Otherwise we’ll be switching to DiRT: Showdown soon enough, and that should help to pull everyone’s framerate back down.
We should note that this is one of a few games where multi-monitor performance looks good across the board. Generally speaking having 2 high-end GPUs is still necessary for multi-monitor gaming (at least at comparably high quality), but in DiRT 3 even a single 7970GE can push past 71fps with ultra quality and 4x MSAA.
The minimum framerates largely reflect what we’ve already seen with the average framerates. DiRT 3 is already pretty consistent so the minimums aren’t much lower than the averages, which means at 2560 everything sails past 60fps with the 7970GE taking a clear lead. Even 5670 sees the 7970GE clearing 60fps.
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HighTech4US - Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - link
LOLor
AMD sucks, but in a good way
Margalus - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
In the normal clock tests you test 5760x1200 which is a very good thing. Could you not do the same resolution with your overclock tests as well? I would really like to see how triple monitor performance is overclocked.Another thing I was wondering, does running triple monitor at 5760x1200 increase power usage of the card or make it run hotter?
Ryan Smith - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
1) Obviously it's a bit too late for that in this article, but we can certainly look into doing that for future articles.2) Generally speaking, no. Unless a card is already operating well under its PT limit (in which case the game is likely CPU-bound), increasing the resolution doesn't significantly shift the power consumption. The actual display controllers are effectively "free" at these power levels.
Margalus - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
thanksmedi01 - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
Not retaking back performance crown?cmdrdredd - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
Nope because it doesn't win every single benchmark. Just because it wins one resolution doesn't equate to being the fastest one.CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - link
If any of these people had been paying any attention at all in between articles ( meaning checking on the net) they would already know it takes about 1250 on the 7970 core to equal the 680oc.1000 doesn't do it. 1050 nope. 1150 nay.
Hexus already proved same core speed results in the 7970 behind. That's already been linked in replies.. so here it is because the amd fans will descend calling names and declaring liar (though they likely saw it before and just can't for the fanboy of themremember, as most brains use the delete key a lot)
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/37209-gefor...
RaistlinZ - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
My regular stock 7970 overclocks higher than this Ghz Edition, and does it on lower voltages. At least this makes the prices drop on regular 7970's.owendingding - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
I think we can find a 7970ghz edition bios and put it on a regular 7970 and achieve the same performance. I also assume that you have a non reference 7979, like mine a gigabyte wind force you can get a lower temperature and 680 like performance. I just hope that bios is universal.CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - link
Someone already posted Tom's shows it is NOT universal and cannot just be flashed to any 7970.NOPE. Amd locks you out, because they are evil.