Radeon HD 7990 Vs. GeForce GTX 690: The Crowd Picks A Winner

[cangelini]

Tom's Hardware enlists the help of /r/Bakersfield, plus some of its Facebook community, to test AMD's Radeon HD 7990 with the latest Catalyst 13.8 beta driver against GeForce GTX 690. The all-day event turned up some interesting observations.

Radeon HD 7990 Vs. GeForce GTX 690: The Crowd Picks A Winner : Read more

 

[iam2thecrowe]

can you please show cpu useage before and after the driver update, and also show results on a lower end system, like an fx6300 with dual 7850's? That would be interesting.

 

[bin1127]

A great article with some very interesting results.

Chris really knows use funny and imaginative metaphors to start of his articles. Keep up the good work!

 

[iam2thecrowe]

can you please show cpu useage before and after the driver update, and also show results on a lower end system, like an fx6300 with dual 7850's? That would be interesting.

 

[merikafyeah]

If I had $700 to spend on graphics, I'd buy the fastest single-gpu card there is:
The Galaxy GeForce GTX 780 HOF Edition

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/08/14/galaxy_geforce_gtx_780_hof_edition_review/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DZIFN4M/

Out of the box it beats the Titan in pretty much everything and when overclocked I'd bet performance would be indistinguishable from a GTX 690. And did I mention single GPU? Frame-pacing = non-issue. And those temps/noise ratios are in a league of their own.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

If I had $700 to spend on graphics, I'd buy the fastest single-gpu card there is:
The Galaxy GeForce GTX 780 HOF Edition

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/08/14/galaxy_geforce_gtx_780_hof_edition_review/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DZIFN4M/

Out of the box it beats the Titan in pretty much everything and when overclocked I'd bet performance would be indistinguishable from a GTX 690. And did I mention single GPU? Frame-pacing = non-issue. And those temps/noise ratios are in a league of their own.

you are pretty much right on there. people often overlook galaxy cards (i know i do), for obvious reasons (quality/after sales support) . but this card is insane, with extremely good OC capabilities. If i had a choice between this and a 690, i would certainly take this card. Althogh i would take 2 x of the cheapest 770's available before any of the mentioned cards.

 

[spentshells]

How was the beer?

 

[AndrewJacksonZA]

I think the most important part of this article is this little gem:
"My wife is in the background with our then-two-week-old baby girl"
Congratulations Chris!!!

 

[geok1ng]

With due respect for TH efforts on the subject, but keeping Metro LL results is a BIAS. How about some piecharts WITHOUT METRO LL?

 

[Bill Reinhardt]

You know how wine is matched for optimal flavor compatability with certain foods?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_and_food_matching

You should have done that with beer and video games.

 

[Iron_Sean]

Why did you only test Triple monitors with no frame pacing versus single high res monitor with frame pacing?

You're confounding variables and making your results hard to compare directly: Is the difference 6 MP vs 4 MP, frame pacing, or their crossfire/surround technology? This is an interesting idea, but I'd really like to see it narrowed to a single variable to better compare the technologies.

 

[opmopadop]

"But when you hop on a forum and ask, “Which graphics card should I buy, AMD’s Radeon HD 7970 or Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 770?” get ready for an epic war of words, often waged by folks who don’t own either one."

More likely folks who have only owned the same brand for the last 10 years.

 

[geok1ng]

To reinforce how absurd it is to include metro ll numbers: Nvidia to Bundle Metro: Last Light with GTX 660 and Above

 

[ddpruitt]

Sorry Chris but 6 people does not a

room full of people

make. This and the results on Bioshock make me think that a bias has been inadvertently been added to your data. Don't know what kind of effect the beer would have though, hopefully beneficial. Unfortunately this type a survey can't be taken too seriously with such a small group. Hopefully Tom's can survey a large group on a number of platforms in the future making the survey useful, even if it means dropping a couple of games.

 

[Treynolds416]

Very interesting article, but you guys really need to get a larger sample size. You could make it a week-long event, stagger in participants, and even include many more varieties of systems like dual 7850's, 760's, etc so that more people can play and not waste as much time. This article was pretty much a test run, now you should do the real thing

 

[NinjaNerd56]

I just built a new Windows 8 game / test box last weekend.

Budget dictated a single GPU and I went with nVidia.

Performs well but I had a massive failure with beta 326 drivers (originally had 320.49 but ran into stuttering issues with Thrustmaster HOTAS stick and Xbox controller - known Win 8 issue) that forced a reload of the OS...no amount of scraping worked.

Now on 314.22 and all is well. Still glad I went NV...the box runs well with no issues/artifacts in 10 games tested so far.

 

[Computered]

The premise of the testing methodology was good but the execution was flawed. You began the test by using the first example that was NOT a true test and you admitted it. By using the multi-monitor test first you gave the test participants a much higher likely hood of detecting which system used which card. The testing to be accurate should have done the single monitor first to begin opinions on closer to a level playing field.

 

[cheesyboy]

Who was the muppet that picked AMD in the Metro: LL multi-monitor test

 

[flexxar]

When the benchmark numbers support nvidia, the numbers are what matters. When the benchmark numbers support amd, all of a sudden benchmark numbers aren't important anymore. This is the best example of "fuzzy science" that I've ever seen.

 

[06yfz450ridr]

still buying another 7970 haha

 

[Au_equus]

fuzzy science? there are some things that current analytical methods cannot explain, but the reason may become more apparent in the future as new methods come out. Example? Microstuttering. About 2yrs ago, FRAPS was telling us we were getting consistent 60-70 fps but our eyes were telling us something different. then the guy at techpowerup had the notion of evaluating seconds per frame and found the problem. don felt some games were choppy, even with the frame pacing and the FPS/FCAT benchmarks were telling us everything was alright. The purpose of this test, although subjective, was to confirm what don has found and he has achieved that purpose. IMO, a double blind study with at least 10-15 participants would be more definitive, but testing again with a larger group is only going to confirm what don has already found. time and effort would be better suited to find what is going on rather than carrying out subsequent tests or bashing a legit qualitative study.

 

[flexxar]

fuzzy science? there are some things that current analytical methods cannot explain, but the reason may become more apparent in the future as new methods come out. Example? Microstuttering. About 2yrs ago, FRAPS was telling us we were getting consistent 60-70 fps but our eyes were telling us something different. then the guy at techpowerup had the notion of evaluating seconds per frame and found the problem. don felt some games were choppy, even with the frame pacing and the FPS/FCAT benchmarks were telling us everything was alright. The purpose of this test, although subjective, was to confirm what don has found and he has achieved that purpose. IMO, a double blind study with at least 10-15 participants would be more definitive, but testing again with a larger group is only going to confirm what don has already found. time and effort would be better suited to find what is going on rather than carrying out subsequent tests or bashing a legit qualitative study.

Ever seen the tv show Brain Games? They did several studies where they gave products to about 6 people to analyze. In each study, each person gave intricate answers about why one product was better than another one. The twist was that they were given multiple copies of the exact same item. Without us even knowing it, the human brain will make up reasons for why it prefers one thing over another even when there is no difference at all.

There just isn't enough science in this study to declare a winner in anything. It's based off the observation of a few people that realistically, probably couldn't even see a difference. So they made up a reason to choose one over the other.

 

[cangelini]

I think the most important part of this article is this little gem:
"My wife is in the background with our then-two-week-old baby girl"
Congratulations Chris!!!

Thank you =)

 

[cangelini]

With due respect for TH efforts on the subject, but keeping Metro LL results is a BIAS. How about some piecharts WITHOUT METRO LL?

Is it equally biased to use a number of AMD Evolved titles? Do folks who play Metro not want to know that, while a previous driver update might have improved the game for Radeon owners that 13.8 has issues? Don gave AMD a free pass yesterday in his calculations, factoring Metro out completely.

 

[cangelini]

Sorry Chris but 6 people does not a

room full of people

make. This and the results on Bioshock make me think that a bias has been inadvertently been added to your data. Don't know what kind of effect the beer would have though, hopefully beneficial. Unfortunately this type a survey can't be taken too seriously with such a small group. Hopefully Tom's can survey a large group on a number of platforms in the future making the survey useful, even if it means dropping a couple of games.

Where'd you see a room of six people? I'd estimate we had between 20 and 30 throughout the day, but the number of respondents we had (12--6 with frame pacing and 6 without) represented a full day of testing. I would have loved to have had 100, but that would have been a full work-week of gaming.

Basically it comes down to this--we could have run one game with A-B comparison testing and accommodated five times as many people (but they had issues with game sample size) or five games with the number of people we did (but had issues with participants). As it was, many people had to go home without getting to do the experiment because it simply consumes too much time to have two people test two systems in five games.