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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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.