AMD Radeon HD 7870 And 7850 Review: Pitcairn Gets Benchmarked

[verbalizer]

I got a N560GTX-Ti HAWK on sale for $225 shipped ($195 after rebate) for my main unit, not my gamer.
For that price getting a HAWK edition, I'm quite content.

I need an upgrade for my gamer unit.

 

[airborne11b]

No, nVidia does not have viable options at all tiers. For example, it has nothing to compete with the HD5670/HD6670, which need no auxiliary power (nevermind the HD7750). The best they had, the GT240, is almost impossible to find new; the GT440 doesn't compare even to the HD6570.
I'm not a fanboy of either company; I really hope Kepler addresses the low end; I think AMD's options there need to be 15%-20% cheaper.

I disagree. Nvidia offers low end GPUs, all the way down to mobile phones and ultra light laptops, and all the way up to enthusiest class.

Where gaming is concerned, ATI and Nvidia have all viable price points covered.

550ti's perform great at low resolutions, DX11, and are just over $100.

Seriously, how low do you need to go before you don't consider it a "gaming gpu".

 

[airborne11b]

I got a N560GTX-Ti HAWK on sale for $225 shipped ($195 after rebate) for my main unit, not my gamer.
For that price getting a HAWK edition, I'm quite content.

I need an upgrade for my gamer unit.

Ya the 560ti's were great value with awesome future upgrade potential (SLI 560ti's make a nice 1080p rig).

 

[Guest]

The 7870 is destined to drop below $250 in the next 6 months. Then I'll probably be buying 2, but for now AMD looks to still be shafting their consumers with the 7 series parts by pricing them against last generation instead of current, which they feel is fine until Nvidia arrives at 28nm, but I am not going to be the fool who spends $700 now to have $400 worth of graphics power in July.

 

[Onus]

How low? Depending on resolution and budget, I can imagine there are a whole lot of people who would be very happy to have a "mere" HD6570; I think that's as low as I'd go, although I still remember not so long ago the HD4650 was the entry level gamer. There are dozens; hundreds, of yesteryear's games out there that would run quite nicely on even that.
The GTX550Ti is pretty much trampled on bang/buck by the HD5770/HD6770, so it's no competition unless you want PhysX. The GTX460 was competition there, but has been killed off.
The GTX560Ti, however, does sit in a nice place. I don't think I'd choose differently today; that's my primary card. It's health may be failing, but that could happen to anyone or any card.

 

[clownbaby]

Where is this misconception that the pricing is anywhere near acceptable on these new parts coming from? So they fit right in with the current price/performance ration. So what? AMD has basically put out a new line of cards that match their competitors previous generation and cost SLIGHTLY less.

Aren't technologies supposed to get better? What's the point in upgrading if you get basically the same amount of performance for your dollar today as when you bought you last part?

Intel's new top end processors cost the same as last generation's, and the generation before that. New products replace old ones in pricing structures. AMD is raking in cash on these cards. They're less expensive to produce than last generation and retail for MORE money.

AMD is taking full advantage of their current market position, and instead of passing on ANYTHING to the consumer, is milking every profitable drop.

These cards' performance is impressive when compared apples to apples against last generation's equivalents. But since they basically all occupy a price slot a full tier higher than their predecessors, the comparison is moot.

Too bad the only 2 companies in the graphics card race are so ill equipped to advance the industry. AMD, Nvidia, get a clue.

 

[blazorthon]

It's ATI, AMD same company, doesn't matter. Way to get off topic with a moot point. I'm a bit older of a guy, so it'll always be ATI imo. Besides, why would you even want to put the same label on these decent GPUs as the fail CPUs? ATI works for me.



First of all, 7870 according to this article is about the same price as a stock 580 GTX. So it doesn't matter. Price/performance is the same.

They had to release this because the newly released 7970 cost about $100 more then the Over a Year Old 580 GTX, and in many top titles like Crysis 2 and BF3 it achieves nearly the same, or a tiny bit more FPS, sorry, where's that ATI Price/perfomance win you were talking about? Oh ya, get your facts straight before you talk to someone on my level kid.

Second, I laughed when you compared the duel GPU 5970 to the single GPU 580 GTX. A huge Fail argument if I've ever seen one.



Ya, +5 fps in BF3 for +$100, when comparing the brand new 7000 flagship VS the 1 year and 4 month old 580 GTX. I thought you were bragging about price/performance here? I'm all about having a beast rig myself, been building my own for about 15 years now, and I have a good amount of disposable income, but even I wouldn't touch a +5-10fps gain for $100 pricetag lol, especially when the cheaper GPU comes with better features (CUDA, 3D Vision 2, etc)




Ah yes, because when you build a SLI or Xfire power rig, OCed to the max, to push 2560 x 1600 resolution, with a 1200 watt PSU on a 30" LCD monitor, those 30-40 watts really matter! Seriously, do the math, even from an economic standpoint, the few watts difference don't make a real difference money wise. We're talking running the GPUs at load for 20 hours straight to add 10 cents to your power bill as opposed to the 580 GTX. Haha.




What's the point you're trying to make here? My wife's single 580 GTX that I got here a year ago plays BF3 and other top titles very smoothly. Buying a card depends a lot on where your current system really is. These 7000s are not really worth the upgrade cash if you're already sporting a similar teir 500 or 6000 GPU. However, those looking to upgrade are making a mistake buying this $470 ATI card right now because, for one, 580s run almost exactly the same performance wise for the same cost, yet come with better additional features I already covered above, AND the 600 series will drive down costs even more. So anyone on a budget should wait for the 600s before making a choice.



This is absolute garbage, the 580 GTXs perform almost exactly the same for the same price, how is that better? If anything it's on par.

Also, Nvidia has options at all teirs, saying they've abondoned the low-end market is based on zero fact.

Your frothing like a fanboy, stop it before you get your nasty froth on my suit.

You make a few good points, but you're the fanboy here, if anyone. 7870 is supposed to go for about $350 according to this article, that is within the price range of the 570, NOT the 580. It performs right behind the 580 and is priced more like the 570, that is some price/performance there. One of the good points you make is about the 7970 not having great price/performance at stock... However, it can overclock to about the position of the 6990/590. Even at stock, it averages about 15-25% faster than the 580. The only way it's a 5FPS difference in most games is if the game is specifically optimized to run on Nvidia cards better than AMD/Ati cards, or if the 580 is only getting 25-30FPS on a very high resolution/quality settings config, at which point even 5-6FPS is a pretty big jump percentage wise, well in line with it's performance spot and price. Remember, the 7970 is a 3GB card, so it should be compared to the 3GB GTX 580s for a more fair comparison. At that point you see it being rather similar to the 580 in value, at stock. As I said, the 7970 has HUGE overclocking potential, so when overclocked it has far more value than an overclocked 580.

That the 5970 is a dual GPU card doesn't matter, it has similar performance to the 580 and to ignore it for being a dual GPU card is ridiculous. You choose to ignore the MANY circumstances where AMD/Ati is competing with Nvidia, and competing well. As for where that Ati/AMD price/performance advantage in other areas? Well, the last time I was on Newegg, the 5970 was going for $320... Up against the GTX 580 that has similar performance but at a much higher cost, there is a pretty big advantage there.

At any given point below the 580 too, AMD/Ati is winning in price/performance and/or has other advantages. Why do you think that Radeons dominate the recommended graphics card lists here on Toms? It sure isn't because they are AMD fanboys. The 6870 competes with the GTX 560. The 560 uses FAR more power, is more expensive, and doesn't even beat the 6870 in performance to compensate for this. The difference in power usage is something like 60-70w here, that does add up within a year or two to considerable amounts of money, especially if you keep the system even longer. The 560 TI competes with the 6950 fairly well, it is the only Nvidia card I'd consider from the 500 cards. However, going with what you said about it being better to upgrade a system with a second card you already have than replacing your current card, the 6950 has far better performance scaling than SLI 560 TIs. In fact, Tom's proved that 6950 Crossfire can trade blows with GTX 570 SLI. Now that's some price/performance there too.

The 570 isn't even considerable at all against the 6970. It has far less memory and again, uses more power and is more expensive. 1280MB is simply not enough, especially for a dual 570 setup. The 2560MB 570 is too expensive to compensate for this.

Two 7950s or 7970s will reduce your power bill (if on 24/7 and assuming you pay about the national average of the USA) by more than $40 a year. I could do the math if you want, it's probably more than that. Sure, it's not hundreds of dollars, but it is still wasted money if you buy the Nvidia setup. I'd really like to see Kepler because I'm expecting it to beat GCN (Yeah, I'm not a fanboy for either camp), or at least close the gap for performance per watt. It will also bring down prices.

Also, $470? That is the price point for the 3GB 7950, NOT the 7870. If you failed to read the price point of the 7870 properly, I'd understand, but if you knew anything about the 7950 at all then you should know that something like $465 is it's MSRP. Are you trying to tell me that you think the 7870 is more expensive than the MSRP for the 7950? CUDA is not used by all applications and the list isn't growing as fast as OpenGL/CL supporting programs so it's hardly a deciding factor unless you need it. AMD also has 3D graphics for 3D monitors and unless you can tell me that you have seen two setups side by side that were roughly identical in performance and the only difference was the monitor and video cards, both still being the same quality as the other, you don't have any credibility as too saying it's worse. I don't do 3D gaming so I don't know what's better or worse, (I heard that Nvidia's is a little better, but AMD's is easier/cheaper to get set up, I offer no proof and don't claim this is right myself).

Nvidia has offerings on all markets? Okay, where are the competitors for the Radeon 6450, 6570, and 6670? Don't give me crap about older generations from Nvidia competing, they don't have the support for everything the modern low end cards from AMD have. There are some facts.

Try again Nvidia fanboy. If you want some serious price/graphics performance, how about a triple Crossfire 6770 setup? It beats the GTX 580 and can be had for ~300, cheaper than any comparably performing Nvidia setup.

 

[verbalizer]

You make a few good points, but you're the fanboy here, if anyone. 7870 is supposed to go for about $350 according to this article, that is within the price range of the 570, NOT the 580. It performs right behind the 580 and is priced more like the 570, that is some price/performance there. One of the good points you make is about the 7970 not having great price/performance at stock... However, it can overclock to about the position of the 6990/590. Even at stock, it averages about 15-25% faster than the 580. The only way it's a 5FPS difference in most games is if the game is specifically optimized to run on Nvidia cards better than AMD/Ati cards, or if the 580 is only getting 25-30FPS on a very high resolution/quality settings config, at which point even 5-6FPS is a pretty big jump percentage wise, well in line with it's performance spot and price. Remember, the 7970 is a 3GB card, so it should be compared to the 3GB GTX 580s for a more fair comparison. At that point you see it being rather similar to the 580 in value, at stock. As I said, the 7970 has HUGE overclocking potential, so when overclocked it has far more value than an overclocked 580.

That the 5970 is a dual GPU card doesn't matter, it has similar performance to the 580 and to ignore it for being a dual GPU card is ridiculous. You choose to ignore the MANY circumstances where AMD/Ati is competing with Nvidia, and competing well. As for where that Ati/AMD price/performance advantage in other areas? Well, the last time I was on Newegg, the 5970 was going for $320... Up against the GTX 580 that has similar performance but at a much higher cost, there is a pretty big advantage there.

At any given point below the 580 too, AMD/Ati is winning in price/performance and/or has other advantages. Why do you think that Radeons dominate the recommended graphics card lists here on Toms? It sure isn't because they are AMD fanboys. The 6870 competes with the GTX 560. The 560 uses FAR more power, is more expensive, and doesn't even beat the 6870 in performance to compensate for this. The difference in power usage is something like 60-70w here, that does add up within a year or two to considerable amounts of money, especially if you keep the system even longer. The 560 TI competes with the 6950 fairly well, it is the only Nvidia card I'd consider from the 500 cards. However, going with what you said about it being better to upgrade a system with a second card you already have than replacing your current card, the 6950 has far better performance scaling than SLI 560 TIs. In fact, Tom's proved that 6950 Crossfire can trade blows with GTX 570 SLI. Now that's some price/performance there too.

The 570 isn't even considerable at all against the 6970. It has far less memory and again, uses more power and is more expensive. 1280MB is simply not enough, especially for a dual 570 setup. The 2560MB 570 is too expensive to compensate for this.

Two 7950s or 7970s will reduce your power bill (if on 24/7 and assuming you pay about the national average of the USA) by more than $40 a year. I could do the math if you want, it's probably more than that. Sure, it's not hundreds of dollars, but it is still wasted money if you buy the Nvidia setup. I'd really like to see Kepler because I'm expecting it to beat GCN (Yeah, I'm not a fanboy for either camp), or at least close the gap for performance per watt. It will also bring down prices.

Also, $470? That is the price point for the 3GB 7950, NOT the 7870. If you failed to read the price point of the 7870 properly, I'd understand, but if you knew anything about the 7950 at all then you should know that something like $465 is it's MSRP. Are you trying to tell me that you think the 7870 is more expensive than the MSRP for the 7950? CUDA is not used by all applications and the list isn't growing as fast as OpenGL/CL supporting programs so it's hardly a deciding factor unless you need it. AMD also has 3D graphics for 3D monitors and unless you can tell me that you have seen two setups side by side that were roughly identical in performance and the only difference was the monitor and video cards, both still being the same quality as the other, you don't have any credibility as too saying it's worse. I don't do 3D gaming so I don't know what's better or worse, (I heard that Nvidia's is a little better, but AMD's is easier/cheaper to get set up, I offer no proof and don't claim this is right myself).

Nvidia has offerings on all markets? Okay, where are the competitors for the Radeon 6450, 6570, and 6670? Don't give me crap about older generations from Nvidia competing, they don't have the support for everything the modern low end cards from AMD have. There are some facts.

Try again Nvidia fanboy. If you want some serious price/graphics performance, how about a triple Crossfire 6770 setup? It beats the GTX 580 and can be had for ~300, cheaper than any comparably performing Nvidia setup.

It's ATI, AMD same company, doesn't matter. Way to get off topic with a moot point. I'm a bit older of a guy, so it'll always be ATI imo. Besides, why would you even want to put the same label on these decent GPUs as the fail CPUs? ATI works for me.



First of all, 7870 according to this article is about the same price as a stock 580 GTX. So it doesn't matter. Price/performance is the same.

They had to release this because the newly released 7970 cost about $100 more then the Over a Year Old 580 GTX, and in many top titles like Crysis 2 and BF3 it achieves nearly the same, or a tiny bit more FPS, sorry, where's that ATI Price/perfomance win you were talking about? Oh ya, get your facts straight before you talk to someone on my level kid.

Second, I laughed when you compared the duel GPU 5970 to the single GPU 580 GTX. A huge Fail argument if I've ever seen one.



Ya, +5 fps in BF3 for +$100, when comparing the brand new 7000 flagship VS the 1 year and 4 month old 580 GTX. I thought you were bragging about price/performance here? I'm all about having a beast rig myself, been building my own for about 15 years now, and I have a good amount of disposable income, but even I wouldn't touch a +5-10fps gain for $100 pricetag lol, especially when the cheaper GPU comes with better features (CUDA, 3D Vision 2, etc)




Ah yes, because when you build a SLI or Xfire power rig, OCed to the max, to push 2560 x 1600 resolution, with a 1200 watt PSU on a 30" LCD monitor, those 30-40 watts really matter! Seriously, do the math, even from an economic standpoint, the few watts difference don't make a real difference money wise. We're talking running the GPUs at load for 20 hours straight to add 10 cents to your power bill as opposed to the 580 GTX. Haha.




What's the point you're trying to make here? My wife's single 580 GTX that I got here a year ago plays BF3 and other top titles very smoothly. Buying a card depends a lot on where your current system really is. These 7000s are not really worth the upgrade cash if you're already sporting a similar tier 500 or 6000 GPU. However, those looking to upgrade are making a mistake buying this $470 ATI card right now because, for one, 580s run almost exactly the same performance wise for the same cost, yet come with better additional features I already covered above, AND the 600 series will drive down costs even more. So anyone on a budget should wait for the 600s before making a choice.



This is absolute garbage, the 580 GTXs perform almost exactly the same for the same price, how is that better? If anything it's on par.

Also, Nvidia has options at all tiers, saying they've abandoned the low-end market is based on zero fact.

Your frothing like a fanboy, stop it before you get your nasty froth on my suit.

 

[Marcus52]

For me, it's too late (or too early) to buy one of these cards; AMD has fooled around with releasing them long enough I've decided I may as well wait for Kepler. (Hopefully, Kepler will be here in another 3 months and not 6. If Kepler doesn't come out by the end of May I may well be looking at a 7970 again. Assuming, of course, they are available.)

 

[spentshells]

[citation][nom]reynod[/nom]Your a compete troll ... away with you fanboi.The benchmarks speak for themselves ... they are quality cards.[/citation]
[citation][nom]airborne11b[/nom]It's ATI, AMD same company, doesn't matter. Way to get off topic with a moot point. I'm a bit older of a guy, so it'll always be ATI imo. Besides, why would you even want to put the same label on these decent GPUs as the fail CPUs? ATI works for me.First of all, 7870 according to this article is about the same price as a stock 580 GTX. So it doesn't matter. Price/performance is the same.They had to release this because the newly released 7970 cost about $100 more then the Over a Year Old 580 GTX, and in many top titles like Crysis 2 and BF3 it achieves nearly the same, or a tiny bit more FPS, sorry, where's that ATI Price/perfomance win you were talking about? Oh ya, get your facts straight before you talk to someone on my level kid.Second, I laughed when you compared the duel GPU 5970 to the single GPU 580 GTX. A huge Fail argument if I've ever seen one.Ya, +5 fps in BF3 for +$100, when comparing the brand new 7000 flagship VS the 1 year and 4 month old 580 GTX. I thought you were bragging about price/performance here? I'm all about having a beast rig myself, been building my own for about 15 years now, and I have a good amount of disposable income, but even I wouldn't touch a +5-10fps gain for $100 pricetag lol, especially when the cheaper GPU comes with better features (CUDA, 3D Vision 2, etc)Ah yes, because when you build a SLI or Xfire power rig, OCed to the max, to push 2560 x 1600 resolution, with a 1200 watt PSU on a 30" LCD monitor, those 30-40 watts really matter! Seriously, do the math, even from an economic standpoint, the few watts difference don't make a real difference money wise. We're talking running the GPUs at load for 20 hours straight to add 10 cents to your power bill as opposed to the 580 GTX. Haha. What's the point you're trying to make here? My wife's single 580 GTX that I got here a year ago plays BF3 and other top titles very smoothly. Buying a card depends a lot on where your current system really is. These 7000s are not really worth the upgrade cash if you're already sporting a similar teir 500 or 6000 GPU. However, those looking to upgrade are making a mistake buying this $470 ATI card right now because, for one, 580s run almost exactly the same performance wise for the same cost, yet come with better additional features I already covered above, AND the 600 series will drive down costs even more. So anyone on a budget should wait for the 600s before making a choice.This is absolute garbage, the 580 GTXs perform almost exactly the same for the same price, how is that better? If anything it's on par.Also, Nvidia has options at all teirs, saying they've abondoned the low-end market is based on zero fact.Your frothing like a fanboy, stop it before you get your nasty froth on my suit.[/citation]

It is a better card just accept it. If the choice between the two of them was a current upgrade choice you would be fooling to buy The NV card

 

[blazorthon]

Also, yes AMD isn't trying to compete in performance against Nvidia. It seems that way right now because Nvidia hasn't gotten any of their 28nm cards out yet. Nvidia's GTX 580 has a 530mm2 die. The Radeon 6970 has something like a 370 or 375 mm2 die. The 7970 is a little smaller, about 365mm2.

This means that more GTX 580 dies fail binning than 6970 dies because a larger die has more chances to have a problem. AMD can make their cards for less money than Nvidia because they don't rely on huge dies for their performance. AMD use's smaller, more efficient dies. A smaller die is cheaper outright and fewer fail binning so they cost even less because each big wafer has more of them and a higher percentage of them succeed in binning than the 580's GF-110.

If AMD wanted to compete through beating Nvidia in performance, then they would use larger dies. Larger dies would let them have much more shaders and have higher clock rates. Of course, then they wouldn't be all to much more efficient than Nvidia, but they would win in performance. Think about it. How much does the 580 beat the 6970 by? How much larger is it's die?

You don't seem to care about power usage, but I do. I don't have a lot of disposable income right now so if I can save money, then I will. AMD offers more performance, less power usage, etc, at lower prices than Nvidia and that's a simple fact. There is no price point that AMD doesn't have an advantage in the GTX 500s vs. Radeon 6000s until you go past like $1000 graphics card budgets, at which point Nvidia only wins because three GTX 580s are faster than thee 6970s, the 6970 still has more value. There's also the dual GTX 580s that beat GTX 590s, but those make the 590 look cheap.

If I had to have a single GPU card right now, I would probably go for he 7950 and I'll explain why. The 7970 is about $100 more expensive, yet the main difference between it and the 7950 is just clock frequencies and 256 shaders. The problem with this is that increasing shader count doesn't improve performance as linearly as clock frequencies. Due to this, the 7950 @ 7970 clocks will be indistinguishable from the 7970 because then the difference is just 256 shaders, not a big difference at that point, not much difference at all.

In that sense, yes, the 7970 is worthless to me too. The same is true for the 6970 and the 6950 2GB. Fairly big difference in price, performance difference at the same clock frequencies is negligible. I haven't checked if the same is true for Nvidia cards. Considering hot-clocking and the different architecture, I think that Nvidia scales better with more shaders than AMD, but hot-clocking decreases power efficiency so it off-sets the benefits.

However, even the 7970 is most certainly still a better value than the 3GB GTX 580 that it is stuck competing with until Kepler shows up. I'll even say a highly enough overclocked 7950 has almost as good price/performance as the 6870, one of the staple price/performance cards.

Considering that most of the high overclocks of these two cards can be achieved without even increasing voltage, they are still more power efficient than Nvidia, although that is attributable simply to the die shrink in that case. We still need to wait and see how Kepler does. Like I said earlier, the GCN Radeons are just all over the place for one reason or another right now so it's hard to say what AMD's doing. Do to the 7870 being so close to the 7950, we might see the 7950 have a big performance hike with better drivers, maybe a bigger one than the 7870, but the similarity in performance is because of the clock frequency/shader difference. Trading shaders for clock frequency doesn't work well, so the 1280 shader 7870 is right behind the 1792 shader 7950 because it has a higher clock frequency. If the 7870 overclocks even better than 7900, then we could have a card for very cheap that would outperform the 6990 and 590 easily, all for under $400 and with incredible energy efficiency, at least compared to the 6990 and 590 it would beat. It should have lower efficiency than 7900 with clock rates too much higher than 7900. Also makes me wonder where the 7890 is supposed to fit in.

If the 7870 competes with the 660 like the 6870 competes with the 560, and both the 7870 and the 660 are about as good as the 580, and both are supposed to be priced in the sub $300 range, then we might see some serious competition this time, so long as the 660 doesn't have the same power usage as the 660 TI like the 560 has the same power usage as the 560 TI (According to Tom's performance scaling article that features the AMD Radeon 6870X2). In this sense, both AMD's and Nvidia's upper mid-range / entry level high end cards may be roughly equal to the 580. If the latest Kepler leaks strait from Nvidia are true (Nvidia did admit to not knowing for sure if the leak would be final info for the GK-104), then we can say that it is no surprise at all that the 7870 is about as fast as the 580. I should have thought of this when I was speculating about the 7870's performance earlier, but it slipped my mind.

 

[blazorthon]

@malmental

To be fair, he/she is telling some very misleading lies, so I might as well say something about it. Do you disagree?

 

[X-GAMER]

Is there a website which can calculate both bottelneck and psu

 

[blazorthon]

Is there a website which can calculate both bottelneck and psu

I'm not sure what you mean by bottleneck, but power usage should be similar to the 6870 for the 7870 and the 6850 for the 7850, or thereabouts.

By bottleneck, do you mean the slowest CPU that should be paired with these cards? I would use an i5 and overclock it with the 7870, the 7850 should be fine with most high end CPUs, but an i5 should not have any bottlenecking problems at all with the 7850 either.

However, I wouldn't buy any of these cards until better drivers and Ivy Bridge and Kepler are all out. That way we can see how Kepler fits in and we can get the better Ivy Bridge CPUs and if GCN seems to be better than Kepler, well then it should have more mature drivers that might even work for Crossfire (for anyone who doesn't know, GCN Crossfire isn't working much right now and is not recommended at all by anyone you should listen too about tech info).

 

[alidan]

[citation][nom]Cleeve[/nom]Because that's how the Tom's Hardware DE (Germany) does it, and we had to rely on their gaming benches this time around.[/citation]

i see, it makes sense that you had to go on their benchmarks... however... that doesn't explain the logic behind how it got bench marked... i understand that you cant answer this now and why it showed up that way, and kind of explains a few of the images too.

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]Shane, normally we would be benchmarking at Ultra quality settings, if the results were playable. For this one, however, issues with our 7850 and an extremely short runway provided by AMD meant we needed to use the benchmark results generated by the German team for that title. Don't worry--you'll see a return to the Ultra preset soon!Chris[/citation]

so it was benchmarked that way because of a time constraint or because that's how the german team benchmarks, i can say that i understand if it was a time constraint.

 

[tomfreak]

there is really something wrong with the 7900 series. 40% more raw spec for 10% extra performance on 7950 seems VERY WRONG. I cannot compute this myself.

 

[confish21]

"And sometimes our test bed simply wouldn’t boot with the 7850 installed. Then there’s the whole issue of texture quality issues on both of the new 7800s. Oof." --- oh no!

"both of the Radeon HD 7870s in our labs work great, so there’s little stopping us from recommending that card." ---- wdf?

Umm Don?

 

[benjock]

i was going to buy a gigabyte 6950 oc then iibuy said they could not stock it anymore. now that i have seen these benchmarks this is the best thing that has ever happend to me

 

[blazorthon]

Ya the 560ti's were great value with awesome future upgrade potential (SLI 560ti's make a nice 1080p rig).

SLI 560 TIs shoud be able to do 2560x1440 or 3D 1080p... A single 560 TI is good for 1080p. Besides that, yes, they are decent values (the closest Nvidia has to the value of most Radeons). However, Crossfire Radeon 6950s are better.

"And sometimes our test bed simply wouldn’t boot with the 7850 installed. Then there’s the whole issue of texture quality issues on both of the new 7800s. Oof." --- oh no!

"both of the Radeon HD 7870s in our labs work great, so there’s little stopping us from recommending that card." ---- wdf?

Umm Don?

Your own comment has the answer. Only the 7850 had the problem so only the 7870 gets recommended because it didn't have problems considered worthy of discounting a recommendation.

there is really something wrong with the 7900 series. 40% more raw spec for 10% extra performance on 7950 seems VERY WRONG. I cannot compute this myself.

I've already explained why the 7950 and 7870 are so close. The 7870 has 1280 shaders @1GHz and the 7950 has 1792 shaders @ 800MHz. Increased shader counts don't increase performance nearly as linearly as Clock rates do, so a 40% increase in shaders is easily overwhelmed by a 25% increase in clock frequency. It's a well enough documented phenomenon that can also be seen with the 7950 versus the 7970 and the 6950 versus the 6970. A 6950 that has the same clock rates as a 6970 but still has the lower shader count will be only 3-6% behind the 6970. The 7950 is even closer to the 7970, sometimes it beats it if the clock rates are the same.

So, the 7950 actually doesn't have "40%" more spec like it seems to. Memory bandwidth is then the only benefit of the 7950 over the 7870, but that doesn't effect performance as much as the GPU clock frequency. Even then, the 7950 should be faster than the 7870 because it's memory bandwidth is just that much higher, but maybe the bandwidth isn't helping enough because of the 7950 and 7870 not being memory bottlenecked. Of course, it could also be crappy drivers used on 7900 too, but AMD must have something going on because they should know how graphics performing scaling works. They should know this far better than some enthusiast.

 

[hannibal]

7900 series and 7800 series also has same number of rops.
I am not sure, but you have to look for very shader heavy games to really benefit from 7900 series or use 3 monitor and benefit larger memory in there.

 

[travish82]

Great card and a marked improvement over the previous 40 nm process.. only..... As an enthusiast, with power prices not really being a factor here in the US, I just can't find any reason to be excited about this. I've also heard a bit too many grumblings from friends of mine regarding driver related issues, and this story touches on that a bit. I'll hold off until I see the card that performs at 85% of the fastest card for 40% the cost. (/me reminiscing on the 8800GT fondly)

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]confish21[/nom]"And sometimes our test bed simply wouldn’t boot with the 7850 installed. Then there’s the whole issue of texture quality issues on both of the new 7800s. Oof." --- oh no!"both of the Radeon HD 7870s in our labs work great, so there’s little stopping us from recommending that card." ---- wdf?Umm Don?[/citation]


The 7870's 'work great', in that they don't crash.

We only had problems with the 7850s in that respect, our test samples did not 'work great'.

As far as the texture quality: it isn't horrendous, it's just not quite as good as the 6000 series at default settings. We're performing an in-depth investigation into image quality now that the launch is out of the way. But this doesn't mean that the 7870 doesn't 'work great'... it does.

 

[eddieroolz]

I'm not as impressed as the author or many other people on this board. The reason is quite simple; this board only manages to reach up to GTX 570 on a few occasions and on a lot of other occasions, can barely beat its predecessor. Most of the time it's a 5-10% gain over the 6970 but unlike the 7950 that destroyed its predecessor and its competition, these boards are underwhelming. Add to that the host of hardware issues and it becomes a much less rosy picture.

Plus, the victories of 7870 may be short-lived. Sure, it beats a GTX 570 in some tests but keep in mind, that architecture is a year old (and if you consider it back to the GTX 470 days, two years old). The real competition is going to come from Kepler.

 

[blazorthon]

7900 series and 7800 series also has same number of rops.
I am not sure, but you have to look for very shader heavy games to really benefit from 7900 series or use 3 monitor and benefit larger memory in there.

That's also a good point. 7900 should have more ROPs than it does. It's as if AMD didn't think the GCN cards through very well. A decent idea until it is actually thought about, then you see the gaping holes and many flaws that are simply because of AMD making some seemingly ignorant designs. GCN is a huge architectural improvement for GPGPU and such over VLIW4, but the way AMD made these cards just seems very ignorant of performance scaling. Granted, the same is true for 6900, but to a much lesser extent because 6800 isn't the same arch as 6900, so they are properly differentiated, and the shader/clock rates make sense there. They just don't for GCN 7000. AMD shouldn't be so fixated on 1GHz cards and should really redo their models here. If AMD wants 1GHz for the 7870, then it shouldn't even have 1280 shaders unless AMD decided to include another bottleneck or two to keep it from catching the 7950, or they fix the 7950.

 

[hixbot]

AMD is killing Nvidia right now, but it's not helping the consumer. No serious price drops in the past year is an issue. AMD will show no interest in dropping prices until there is a competitive need.
I will need to wait for Kepler and price drops from AMD before choosing a new GPU.