AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition Review: Battling For The Performance Crown
by Ryan Smith on June 22, 2012 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- GCN
- Radeon HD 7000
Portal 2
Portal 2 continues the long and proud tradition of Valve’s in-house Source engine. While Source continues to be a DX9 engine, Valve has continued to upgrade it over the years to improve its quality, and combined with their choice of style you’d have a hard time telling it’s over 7 years old at this point. Consequently Portal 2’s performance does get rather high on high-end cards, but we have ways of fixing that…
The great thing about having such powerful cards is that we can push image quality to the max on better performing games, and in no place is that better evident than Portal 2. Here we can get away with 4x Super Sample Anti-Aliasing even at 2560, providing smooth and beautiful gameplay.
Unfortunately for AMD, they just don’t do very well on this test and the 7970GE doesn’t do much to remedy that. Where the GTX 680 can surpass 60fps the 7970GE can only manage 55fps, giving the GTX 680 a commanding 25% lead (or causing the 7970GE to trail by 20%). The 7970GE is more than playable here, but it would be nice to see it pass 60fps to maximize how fluid the game is. The situation of course improves without SSAA, but at these performance levels it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense not to use it at single-monitor resolutions.
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clumsyalex - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
the first chart, the regular 7970 is priced higher than the ghz edition. the second chart shows it as lower howeverRyan Smith - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
Actually those are a list of launch prices up top. The 7970 launched at $550, which is indeed higher than the $500 launch price of the 7970GE.EnerJi - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
It's confusing and misleading. The first thing I thought when I saw it was that you had accidentally reversed the prices between the two models.Iketh - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
that certainly isn't what I thought... i understood what was being presented to meCeriseCogburn - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
I love how amd has a birthday for tahiti at 6 months....Why wait a year for a birthday when you're a lying sack of crap corporate monster rip off crummy drivers fan boy mass brainwash co ?
Heck, two birthdays a year !!! amd is so great, they get two birthdays a year !
silverblue - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
People in the first few months of a relationship like to mention anniversaries a lot despite the (rather obvious) point that the word denotes a yearly period. "Milestone" would be more appropriate though it does sound less glamourous and perhaps a bit pessimistic (well, in the case of relationships, anyway). Might even seem cynical.Captmorgan09 - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
Just read the chart and it's not confusing... I did a double take the first time I glanced at it, but when I actually read it it made perfect sense. :)Ryan Smith - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
In case it's not clear, since we have a price comparison chart at the bottom, the purpose of the prices up top is to help describe the cards. The fact that the 7970GE is listed for $500 next to the $550 7970 for example is to make it clear that it's launching at a lower price than the 7970. It helps offer some perspective on capabilities and the market segment it's designed for.That said, we can always get rid of it if it's a problem.
QChronoD - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
Could I suggest adding when they launched on the line right above the prices? I can easily see how that is confusing, but also knowing how old each generation would be useful to see.Ryan Smith - Friday, June 22, 2012 - link
Now that's an excellent idea!