Tried it out: AMD GCN - Introducing the Radeon HD 7970 and HD 7950

Applications used during measurements:

• GPU-Z 0.5.9
• MSI Afterburner 2.2 beta 12
• 3DMark Vantage 1.0.2
• 3DMark11 1.0
• Unigine Heaven Benchmark 2.5
• MediaEspresso 6.5
• Battlefield 3 + FRAPS 3.4.7 build 13809
• Crysis 2 1.9 + Adrenaline Crysis 2 benchmark tool 1.0.1.13
• Far Cry 2 + Far Cry 2 benchmark tool 1.0.0.1
• F1 2011 (built-in measurement)
• Hawx 2 demo benchmark
• Alien vs Predator benchmark
• Batman Arkham City (built-in measurement)

Test configuration:

* For some reason, we couldn't force the 590 beta drive on the GeForce GTX 295.51, so this card was still measured with last year's 275.33 WHQL driver, which was a clear disadvantage for some games.

Using graphics drivers:

Before describing the results of the tests, we need to clarify how we performed them. For the synthetic measurements (3DMark11, 3DMark Vantage / PhysX off /, Unigine Heaven Benchmark) we did not tweak the settings of the GeForce driver or Catalyst, everything ran according to the factory configuration. However, after the synthetic measurements, we manually turned on the 16 × anisotropic filtering for the games, because in many applications this is not possible from the program, but we felt its presence was necessary for the measurements.

Consumption and heating measurement:

Opponents were also subjected to consumption and warm-up measurements. The appetite of the cards was tested with a wattmeter by recording the value of no-load consumption at rest under Windows, this time by testing the systems with Blu-ray and Furmark running. During all measurements, we tried to form an approximate average from the data seen, but as these are not measurements performed under laboratory conditions, they are for information only. MSI Afterburner 2.2 beta 12 was used to monitor temperature values, load levels, and fan speeds, monitoring was performed after a short period of rest during the FurMark load phase, and then the cards were allowed to cool.

The numbers show that AMD has not forgotten the importance of consumption in connection with the Graphics Core Next architecture either. We measured that the idle consumption of the new Radeon cards was reduced compared to the HD 6970 and HD 6950, with only the GTX 560 Ti eating less than them in unloaded mode. Bluray playback places a lighter load on graphics cards. Although GeForces are still better here, there is also an improvement over VLIW4. FurMark already produces near-maximum load on VGAs. The HD 7950 consumed 15 to 16 watts less than the HD 6950, and more than 40 watts less than the HD 6970, and with much more solid power than the GeForces. By definition, the HD 7970 already requires more cocoa, consuming the same amount as the GTX 580 overall, but since in many cases it is a noticeably faster model that also represents a more advanced level of technology, this can be considered a good result overall. The HD 7950 ate a lot more as a result of the tuning, while the HD 7970 already required +13 watts at full load for aggressive overdriving, but in terms of extra power it is still worth it (we turned off the HD 7970 Powertune limit for tuning).

Examination of clock, temperature data, load and fan speed of GCN cards working in configurations:

 ASUS HD 7950

GIGABYTE HD 7950

ASUS HD 7970

Card settings:  

GeForce card clocks: set for all reference recommendations

Cayman Radeons Clocks: set for all reference recommendations     

We first benchmarked the GIGABYTE HD 7950 with 800/1250 MHz clocks as recommended by AMD's reference, then reset the original 100 MHz higher GPU clock values ​​and ran the tests again. ASUS' tuned card works at the same clock rates as GIGABYTE's, so these results are listed as "HD 7950 OC" in the graphs. The HD 7950 CrossFireX measurement was again performed with standard clock settings.

We first measured the ASUS HD 7970 with its base clock, and then started tuning, during which it was proven that the Tahiti "XT" GPU still has plenty of reserve, since the 925 MHz GPU frequency was increased to 1100 MHz, the The 1375 MHz (5500 MHz) GDDR5 clock signal was increased to 1575 MHz (6300 MHz). This can be considered a very serious tuning.

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