AMD Radeon HD 7950 Review Feat. Sapphire & XFX: Sewing Up The High-End Market
by Ryan Smith on January 31, 2012 9:02 AM ESTGetting the Most Out of GCN: Driver Improvements
With the launch of any new architecture there’s still a lot of room for improvement on the part of driver developers, and GCN is no exception. On January 20th AMD released the first driver update for the 7000 Series, which brought with it an interesting mix of bug fixes, new features, and performance improvements. On the feature side AMD enabled support for Analytical Anti-Aliasing and Super Sample Anti-Aliasing for DX10+ games, an overdue feature that we’re very happy to see finally make it to AMD cards. Meanwhile on the performance side the new drivers improved the performance of the 7000 series in several games. Game performance typically rises slowly over time, but as this is one of the first post-launch driver releases, the gains are larger than what we’re used to seeing farther down the line.
To get an idea of where performance has improved and by how much, we reran our entire benchmark suite on the 7970.
As to be expected, at this point in time AMD is mostly focusing on improving performance on a game-by-game basis to deal with games that didn’t immediately adapt to the GCN architecture well, while the fact that they seem to be targeting common benchmarks first is likely intentional. Crysis: Warhead is the biggest winner here as minimum framerates in particular are greatly improved; we’re seeing a 22% improvement at 1920, while at 2560 there’s still an 11% improvement. Metro:2033 and DiRT 3 also picked up 10% or more in performance versus the release drivers, while Battlefield 3 has seen a much smaller 2%-3% improvement. Everything else in our suite is virtually unchanged, as it looks like AMD has not targeted any of those games at this time.
As one would expect, a result of these improvements the performance lead of the 7970 versus the GTX 580 has widened. The average lead for the 7970 is now 19% at 1920 and 26% at 2560, with the lead approaching 40% in games like Metro that specifically benefited from this update. At this point the only game the 7970 still seems to have trouble pulling well ahead of the GTX 580 is Battlefield 3, where the lead is only 8%.
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chizow - Saturday, February 4, 2012 - link
Well I'm not one to totally dismiss metrics like power consumption, thermals, noise but really those types of considerations are tertiary for anyone looking in this segment, especially when its very clear relative pricing is based on performance and performance only.Performance is primary, secondary considerations would be actual features (API, multi-mon, 3D, compute, etc.) and these fringe considerations like power, noise, heat a distant 3rd for anyone interested in this segment. It is more important for some people, but generally, performance is not the primary consideration for those people. Generally those who shop in this segment look at performance without compromise.
In any case, Nvidia's strategy for their flagship ASICs have always been big die since the G80 and from that they've generally derived their top two desktop SKUs and X2 parts. But on top of that, they also put these ASICs in their highly lucrative professional parts like Tesla and Quadro. This is not unlike Intel's strategy with their highest-end CPUs (Westmere, SB-E) where the highest-end parts are shared between their high-end server and enthusiast desktop platform.
AMD's strategy used to be "small die" after the R600 fiasco, where they would release a much smaller chip and still remain competitive through smaller process node and higher clock speeds with a halo X2 part made easier because of these smaller die sizes. But if you look at the die comparisons over the years, you can clearly see this small die strategy is getting away from them as well, as their chips have grown in size and power consumption through each generation.
There was always internal conflict over this "small die" decision though, but it looks to me like the "big die" folks are back in favor at AMD GPU as they realize they will never be able to beat Nvidia with a smaller die and higher clocks alone and aren't going to fetch a higher asking price based on just good looks and more attractive thermals.
Arnir69 - Saturday, February 4, 2012 - link
I was looking forward to 7950 but the perf jump from my 580 is negligible so I'm going to pass, was expecting more from AMD, loved their 6950 in cfx which was awesome value. If I was still running those there would be even less reason to buy 79xx. I agree with Chizow's point: Nothing new or exciting here, now looking at Kepler to shakeup 2012's high end graphics scene.chizow - Saturday, February 4, 2012 - link
Thanks, I knew there were reasonable minds out there that felt similarly. Reading through the comments there are definitely more who feel the same way, which is assuring, because I really don't want to see a $750 flagship card from Nvidia.It just seems there's a few unreasonable folks out there who just want to ignore the obvious along with mountains of historical data points that tells us what AMD has done here with Tahiti pricing is unprecedented and frankly, quite shocking.
RussianSensation - Saturday, September 8, 2012 - link
"If GK110 beats the 7970 by 20-25% and costs only $500, AMD execs will be jumping out of windows."GK104 $500 ended up losing the performance and price/performance crown to the HD7970 OC on air and on water. Looks like your prediction didn't come true this round.
HaydenOscar - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
"[partner cards]"In the middle of the first page. :)
prime2515103 - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
"On January 20st..."Paragraph one, line two, sentence two.
jjj - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
with the 6970 starting at 300$,this one is a tough sellcasteve - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
looks like a cut/paste error creeped in. :)casteve - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
sapphire pricing in the table needs to be updated, too.Ryan Smith - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Please reload. It should already be fixed.