HD7970 - My Review (BF3 Eyefinity vs HD7970)

[Xaser04]

Another quick BF3 Eyefinity update.

Just started trying out the Jan 25th HD7970 "beta" drivers (I don't know if they are beta or not but they are newer than the 11.12 Disc drivers I have been using) and well, wow!

I have only tested at my HD7970OC2 clocks (1125/6600) but immediately the difference is very noticable.

Just ran my normal benchmark and achieved the following:

Min - 45.00
Avg - 62.45

Compared to my old HD6970 this is ~ 76% faster.... Even compared to the HD7970 @ 1125/6600 on the old drivers it is 10% faster.

Now I was not expecting such an improvement (especially one so immediately noticeable) but it is there. I will have to do further testing but so far so good.

 

[DRDNA]

WOW nice review! Do you fold? Would you mind testing them babies on some ppd numbers? I would be so grateful!

 

[Xaser04]

WOW nice review! Do you fold? Would you mind testing them babies on some ppd numbers? I would be so grateful!

Alas not. I havn't folded since I used to do it 24/7 until I got my electricity bill. Never again.

Sorry.

 

[DRDNA]

Alas not. I havn't folded since I used to do it 24/7 until I got my electricity bill. Never again.

Sorry.

yeah man folding really eat up the Watts....best just done on the green cards.

 

[Xaser04]

yeah man folding really eat up the Watts....best just done on the green cards.

Definately.

Another update, this didn't need a post of its own.

Just tried a couple of different settings with the new driver and quite frankly I had to re-run the test a few times to make sure the increased settings were actually taking effect.

I don't have my normal Min & Avg results but the card clocked to 1125/6600 can run Ultra Settings with SSAO at around 50FPS average. If I bump up to 2x Deferred AA it still returns between 35 and 40FPS.

4xAA and HBAO remains unplayable at below 30FPS average, but still, 2xAA with Ultra settings at 3560x1920 looks incredible.


These cards really do come into their own at very high resolutions. It is such a shame that we haven't seen more custom GTX580's capable of multi monitor gaming. It would be so interesting to see how they stack up in real world gaming terms.

 

[MatTheCat]

Another quick BF3 Eyefinity update.

Just started trying out the Jan 25th HD7970 "beta" drivers (I don't know if they are beta or not but they are newer than the 11.12 Disc drivers I have been using) and well, wow!

Where did you get these 'beta drivers'?

When I went to download the 12.1 (full drivers) I ended up with just nothing (i.e. no drivers, no CCC). I then read that 7000 series owners were advised to stick with drivers that came on disc with the card.

 

[Xaser04]

Where did you get these 'beta drivers'?

When I went to download the 12.1 (full drivers) I ended up with just nothing (i.e. no drivers, no CCC). I then read that 7000 series owners were advised to stick with drivers that came on disc with the card.

Here we go:

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/RC11Driver.aspx

 

[Xaser04]

Right I am in the middle of a system rebuild (swapping over to difference SSD) so this will be a quick update. I was interested to see how much of a difference the 25th Jan RC drivers & the new 14th Feb BF3 patch had on performance and well I will let the numbers speak for themselves.

To keep things consistent I am running my standard 5 minute FRAPS run through of Operation Swordbreaker, setup as shown below.

1920x1080, Ultra Settings, 4xAA & HBAO (all settings max in game)

HD7970 @ 1125/6600 CAT 11.12, BF3 pre patch

Min - 40
Avg - 58.07


HD7970 @ 1125/6600 25/1 RC driver, BF3 14/2 patch

Min - 49
Avg - 74.23 (+27.82%)

Well, er, blimey that is an improvement! As I have shown in my post above, the RC drivers add around 10% performance at Eyefinity resolutions. If we assume a similar performance improvement for 1080p, the patch alone is adding a further 15-20%!

Please note I could not run a performance comparison to see exactly what performance improvement the RC drivers alone are bringing as the game auto updates.

Not bad Dice, not bad at all.

I think the same settings but with 2xAA should result in nigh on 60fps constant. IMO there is bugger all difference between 2xAA and 4xAA when post AA is running anyway so its win win.

I will try out a full Eyefinity run down at the weekend once I have my machine back up and running properly on my "new" SSD.

 

[Kickback1972]

Great write up Xaser04! The 7970 is surely a beastly card.

I am very interested to know how much VRAM USAGE you had on your x3 screen set up with BF3? I am trying to hold out for a 7970 6GB and am wondering if it is worth the wait. My ancient 1GB 4870 is so painful. Dunno how much longer I can hold out. I have the money now but am prepared to wait a little longer.

Do you guys reckon the Saphire Toxic FLEXe6 could actually utalize any of that extra VRAM with current games?

 

[Xaser04]

Great write up Xaser04! The 7970 is surely a beastly card.

I am very interested to know how much VRAM USAGE you had on your x3 screen set up with BF3? I am trying to hold out for a 7970 6GB and am wondering if it is worth the wait. My ancient 1GB 4870 is so painful. Dunno how much longer I can hold out. I have the money now but am prepared to wait a little longer.

Do you guys reckon the Saphire Toxic FLEXe6 could actually utalize any of that extra VRAM with current games?

At 3560x1920, All Ultra settings with maxed AA/AF in game I have seen memory usage peak at around 2800MB.

Whether BF3 is actually using all of this memory is a different matter though (it could just be caching it instead).

 

[Kickback1972]

Good to know. Thanks for the response. There have been varied reports on VRAM usage on the internets. Some people suggest that their your GPU will use close to its max in most cases no matter what card they have. If yours is close to max now it might actually be worth me waiting for the 6GB before upgrading. Thanks very much and keep up the great work!

On another note. I am thing about getting 3 X 27" Asus VE278Q monitors with display ports but am concerned they might be too big for eyefinity. I currently have a 1920 x 1200 25.5" viewsonic. Really looking forward to being able to see out the side windows with my flight stick.