AMD Radeon HD 7950 CrossFire Review

Name: AMD Radeon HD 7950 CrossFire
Brand: AMD

W1zzard

on Jan 30th, 2012,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: AMD

(8 Comments) »

Introduction

Today AMD launched their new HD 7950, which aims at being a high-end graphics card due to its pricing, which is comparative to NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580 with its current market pricing. AMD is aiming at higher energy efficiency compared to its market rival product, and a scope for aggressive cost-cutting, if competition from future NVIDIA product so dictate. In essence, HD 7950 will serve as a fulcrum for both today's high-end price-point, and tomorrow's gamer sweet-spot, again, depending on its competitive environment. This is what makes it an important model for AMD.

The Radeon HD 7950 supports running in CrossFire, just like all AMD graphics cards. In this review we will test two HD 7950 cards to investigate whether they deliver the performance they promise and whether they are an interesting buy, at $900, which is a lot of money, especially in these times.

We also have the following reviews for you today:

AMD Radeon HD 7950 Review (reference design)
PowerColor HD 7950 PCS+ 3 GB Review (custom cooler & overclocked)

Radeon HD 7950 CrossFire Market Segment Analysis
	Radeon HD 6950	GeForce GTX 570	Radeon HD 6970	GeForce GTX 580	Radeon HD 7950	Radeon HD 7970	Radeon HD 6990	GeForce GTX 590	Radeon HD 7950 CrossFire
Shader Units	1408	480	1536	512	1792	2048	2x 1536	2x 512	2x 1792
ROPs	32	40	32	48	32	32	2x 32	2x 48	2x 32
Graphics Processor	Cayman	GF110	Cayman	GF110	Tahiti	Tahiti	2x Cayman	2x GF110	2x Tahiti
Transistors	2640M	3000M	2640M	3000M	4310M	4310M	2x 2640M	2x 3000M	2x 4310M
Memory Size	2048 MB	1280 MB	2048 MB	1536 MB	3072 MB	3072 MB	2x 2048 MB	2x 1536 MB	2x 3072 MB
Memory Bus Width	256 bit	320 bit	256 bit	384 bit	384 bit	384 bit	2x 256 bit	2x 384 bit	2x 384 bit
Core Clock	800 MHz	732 MHz	880 MHz	772 MHz	800 MHz	925 MHz	830 MHz	607 MHz	800 MHz
Memory Clock	1250 MHz	950 MHz	1375 MHz	1002 MHz	1250 MHz	1375 MHz	1250 MHz	855 MHz	1250 MHz
Price	$250	$330	$340	$500	$449	$549	$700	$750	$898

Test System

Test System - VGA Rev. 16
CPU:	Intel Core i7 920 @ 3.8 GHz (Bloomfield, 8192 KB Cache)
Motherboard:	Gigabyte X58 Extreme Intel X58 & ICH10R
Memory:	3x 2048 MB Mushkin Redline XP3-12800 DDR3 @ 1520 MHz 8-7-7-16
Harddisk:	WD Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS 500 GB
Power Supply:	Antec HCP-1200 1200W
Software:	Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1
Drivers:	NVIDIA: 285.62 ATI: Catalyst 11.12 HD 7950 & 7970: 8.921.2 RC11
Display:	LG Flatron W3000H 30" 2560x1600

Benchmark scores in other reviews are only comparable when exactly the same hardware & software configuration is used as in this review.

All video card results were obtained on this exact system with the exact same configuration.
All games were set to their highest quality setting unless indicated otherwise.
AA and AF are applied via in-game settings, not via the driver's control panel.

Each benchmark was tested at the following settings and resolution:

1024 x 768, No Anti-aliasing. This is a standard resolution without demanding display settings.
1280 x 1024, 2x Anti-aliasing. Common resolution for most smaller flatscreens today (17" - 19"). A bit of eye candy turned on in the drivers.
1680 x 1050, 4x Anti-aliasing. Most common widescreen resolution on larger displays (19" - 22"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
1920 x 1200, 4x Anti-aliasing. Typical widescreen resolution for large displays (22" - 26"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
2560 x 1600, 4x Anti-aliasing. Highest possible resolution for commonly available displays (30"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.

Aliens vs. Predator

Aliens vs. Predator is based on a merger of the Aliens and the Predators franchise: two legendary alien species that are in conflict with each other, fighting to the death with human marines caught in between. The first person shooter game was developed by Rebellion Studios, who also developed the first AVP PC title and released in February 2010. It is one of the first DirectX 11 games with support for new features like tesselation, which is why AMD heavily promoted it at the time of their DX 11 card launches. We use the AVP benchmark utility with tesselation and advanced DX11 shadows enabled.