AMD Radeon HD 7970 Review: 28nm And Graphics Core Next, Together As One
by Ryan Smith on December 22, 2011 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Radeon
- ATI
- 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 4 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.
This year we’ve finally cranked our settings up to full Enthusiast quality for 2560 and 1920, so we can finally see where the bar lies. To that extent the 7970 is closer than any single-GPU card before as we’d imagine, but it’s going to take one more jump (~20%) to finally break 60fps at 1920.
Looking at the 7970 relative to other cards, there are a few specific points to look at; the GTX 580 is of course its closest competitor, but we can also see how it does compared to AMD’s previous leader, the 6970, and how far we’ve come compared to DX10 generation cards.
One thing that’s clear from the start is that the tendency for leads to scale with the resolution tested still stands. At 2560 the 7970 enjoys a 26% lead over the GTX 580, but at 1920 that’s only a 20% lead and it shrinks just a bit more to 19% at 1680. Even compared to the 6970 that trend holds, as a 32% lead is reduced to 28% and then 26%. If the 7970 needs high resolutions to really stretch its legs that will be good news for Eyefinity users, but given that most gamers are still on a single monitor it may leave AMD closer to 40nm products in performance than they’d like.
Speaking of 40nm products, both of our dual-GPU entries, the Radeon HD 6990 and GeForce GTX 590 are enjoying lofty leads over the 7970 even with the advantage of its smaller fabrication process. To catch up to those dual-GPU cards from the 6970 would require a 70%+ increase in performance, and even with a full node difference it’s clear that this is not going to happen. Not that it’s completely out of reach for the 7970 once you start looking at overclocking, but the reduction in power usage when moving from TSMC 40nm to 28nm isn’t nearly large enough to make that happen while maintaining the 6970’s power envelope. Dual-GPU owners will continue to enjoy a comfortable lead over even the 7970 for the time being, but with the 7970 being built on a 28nm process the power/temp tradeoff for those cards is even greater compared to 40nm products.
Meanwhile it’s interesting to note just how much progress we’ve made since the DX10 generation though; at 1920 the 7970 is 130% faster than the GTX 285 and 170% faster than the Radeon HD 4870. Existing users who skip a generation are a huge market for AMD and NVIDIA, and with this kind of performance they’re in a good position to finally convince those users to make the jump to DX11.
Finally it should be noted that Crysis is often a good benchmark for predicting overall performance trends, and as you will see it hasn’t let us down here. How well the 7970 performs relative to its competition will depend on the specific game, but 20-25% isn’t too far off from reality.
Looking at our minimum framerates it’s a bit surprising to see that while the 7970 has a clear lead when it comes to average framerates the minimums are only significantly better at 2560. At that resolution the lowest framerate for the 7970 is 23.5 versus 20 for the GTX 580, but at 1920 that becomes a 2fps, 5% difference. It’s not that the 7970 was any less smooth in playing Crysis, but in those few critical moments it looks to be dipping a bit more than the GTX 580.
Compared to the 6970 on the other hand the minimum framerate difference is much larger and much more consistent. At 2560 the 7970’s minimums are 29% better, and even at lower resolutions it holds at around 25%. Clearly even with AMD’s new architecture their designs still inherit some of the traits of their old designs.
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Wreckage - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
That's kind of disappointing.atticus14 - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
oh look its that guy that was banned from the forums for being an overboard nvidia zealot.medi01 - Tuesday, January 3, 2012 - link
Maybe he meant "somebody @ anandtech is again pissing on AMDs cookies"?I mean "oh, it's fastest and coolest single GPU card on the market, it is slightly more expensive than competitor's, but it kinda sucks since AMD didn't go "significantly cheaper than nVidia" route" is hard to call unbiased, eh?
Kind of disappointing conclusion, indeed.
ddarko - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
To each their own but I think this is undeniable impressive:"Even with the same number of ROPs and a similar theoretical performance limit (29.6 vs 28.16), 7970 is pushing 51% more pixels than 6970 is" and
"it’s clear that AMD’s tessellation efficiency improvements are quite real, and that with Tahiti AMD can deliver much better tessellation performance than Cayman even at virtually the same theoretical triangle throughput rate."
Samus - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
I prefer nVidia products, mostly because the games I play (EA/DICE Battlefield-series) are heavily sponsered by nVidia, giving them a developement-edge.That out of the way, nVidia has had their problems just like this card is going to experience. Remember when Fermi came out, it was a performance joke, not because it was slow, but because it used a ridiculous amount of power to do the same thing as an ATI card while costing substantially more.
Fermi wasn't successful until second-generation products were released, most obviously the GTX460 and GT430, reasonably priced cards with quality drivers and low power consumption. But it took over a year for nVidia to release those, and it will take over a year for ATI to make this architecture shine.
kyuu - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
Wat? The only thing there might be an issue with is drivers. As far as power consumption goes, this should be better than Cayman.CeriseCogburn - Sunday, March 11, 2012 - link
He's saying the 28mn node will have further power improvements. Take it as an amd compliment - rather you should have.StriderTR - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
EA/Dice are just as heavily sponsored by AMD, more in fact. Not sure where your getting your information, but its .. well ... wrong. Nvidia bought the rights to advertize the game with their hardware, AMD is heavily sponsoring BF3 and related material. Example, The Controller.Also, the GTX 580 and HD 6970 perform within a few FPS of each other on BF3. I run dual 6970's, by buddy runs dual 580's, we are almost always within 2 FPS of one and other at any given time.
AMD will have the new architecture "shining" in far under a year. They have been focused on it for a long time already.
Simple bottom line, both Nvidia and AMD make world class cards these days. No matter your preference, you have cards to choose from that will rock any games on the planet for a long time to come.
deaner - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
Umm, yea no. Not so much with nvidia and EA/DICE Batttlefield series giving nvidia a development edge. (if it does, the results are yet to be seen)Facts are facts, the 5 series to our current review today, the 7970, do and again continue to edge the Nvidia lines. The AMD Catalyst performance of particular note, BF3, has been far superior.
RussianSensation - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
."..most obviously the GTX460 and GT430, reasonably priced cards with quality drivers and low power consumption. But it took over a year for nVidia to release those"GTX470/480 launched March 26, 2010
GTX460 launched July 12, 2010
GT430 launched October 11, 2010
Also, Fermi's performance at launch was not a joke. GTX470 delivered performance between HD5850 and HD5870, priced in the middle. Looking now, GTX480 ~ HD6970. So again, both of those cards did relatively well at the time. Once you consider overclocking of the 470/480, they did extremely well, both easily surprassing the 5870 in performance in overclocked states.
Sure power consumption was high, but that's the nature of the game for highest-end GPUs.