AMD's Radeon HD 7970 was successfully launched on December 22 last year
as the fastest single GPU graphics card in the world. Until today only
reviews of AMD cards were allowed, so today we bring you a review of the
ASUS Radeon HD 7970 in multi GPU CrossFire mode.
Instead of just placing a simple sticker on their HD 7970, ASUS has decided to go with a little bit more effort. The company has put a 3D shaped metal "cap" on the middle section of the card, where usually an ATI red shines. As you can see from the picture above, the ASUS design looks mighty good and clearly improves the looks of the Raden HD 7970. Great job ASUS! For overclockers ASUS includes their own GPUTweak software which supports the HD 7970 for overclocking, voltage control and GPU information.
In terms of specs, the card comes at the same clock speeds as the AMD reference design, running at 925 MHz core and 1375 MHz memory. Pricing is unchanged too, $550 for a single card, twice that, $1100 for the dual card CrossFire combination we test in this review.
Instead of just placing a simple sticker on their HD 7970, ASUS has decided to go with a little bit more effort. The company has put a 3D shaped metal "cap" on the middle section of the card, where usually an ATI red shines. As you can see from the picture above, the ASUS design looks mighty good and clearly improves the looks of the Raden HD 7970. Great job ASUS! For overclockers ASUS includes their own GPUTweak software which supports the HD 7970 for overclocking, voltage control and GPU information.
In terms of specs, the card comes at the same clock speeds as the AMD reference design, running at 925 MHz core and 1375 MHz memory. Pricing is unchanged too, $550 for a single card, twice that, $1100 for the dual card CrossFire combination we test in this review.
Test System
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.
- 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.
Batman: Arkham City
Batman is back on the LCD screen with Arkham City, a sequel to Batman:
Arkham Asylum, by Rocksteady Games and WB. It was released to the PC
platform in November. Batman is imprisoned in Arkham City, an infamous
district of the DC Universe that contains the scum of Gotham, most of
which Batman helped get in there. In order to get out he must go through
scores of baddies, and encounter many of the iconic super-villains
along the way. He's not entirely alone.
Batman Arkham City uses the same Unreal Engine by Epic, as Arkham Asylum, but thanks to the engine's modularity, it has been overhauled, outfitted with the latest technologies, including a graphics engine that takes advantage of DirectX 11.
Battlefield 3
Arguably the most anticipated online shooter title among real gamers -
PC gamers, Battlefield 3 is the latest addition to some of the most
engaging online multi-player shooter franchises. It combines infantry
combat with mechanized warfare including transport vehicles, armored
personnel carriers, main battle tanks, attack helicopters, combat
aircraft, pretty much everything that goes into today's battlefields.
The infantry combat is coupled with role-playing elements, which makes
the experience all the more engaging. It also has a single-player
campaign which added a few gigabytes to its installer.
Behind all this is a spanking new game engine by EA-DICE, Frostbite 2. It makes use of every possible feature DirectX 11 has to offer, including hardware tessellation, and new lighting effects, to deliver some of the most captivating visuals gamers ever had access to. Not playing this game on PC is grave injustice to what's in store. Faster PCs are rewarded with better visuals.
Call of Duty 4
Call of Duty 4 is a first-person shooter that is built on the award
winning Call of Duty Series. It is the first version to play in modern
times. In a near-future conflict between the United States, Europe and
Russia you get to play as a United States Marine and a British SAS
operative. The engine is Infinity Ward's own creation and has true
dynamic lighting, depth of field, dynamic shadows and HDR. Even though
the game plot is scripted you will find yourself in intense battles,
often working together with computer controlled team mates. Later
installments of the Call of Duty Series use the same game engine, so
this test is also representative of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
performance.
Crysis 2
Crysis 2 takes the player into an alien-infested New York City. The game
adds a tactical options mode that allows several approaches to attack a
heavily infested enemy location. The new Nanosuit 2.0 that the player
uses offers more freedom in ability use, for example multiple abilities
can be used at the same time. To better accomodate a given play style
weapons can be customized with silencers, laser sights or even a sniping
scope.
For rendering Crytek's CryEngine 3 is used which comes with reduced system requirements compared to the first Crysis game. Since Crysis 2 is a multi-platform game, with major development focus on console, the graphics on launch day were only DirectX 9. DirectX 11 functionality was added later in a patch. We use the DX11 version and the high-res texture pack for our benchmarking.
DiRT 3
The latest addition to the Collin McRae Rally franchise, DiRT 3, of
multi-format rally motorsport. DiRT 3 introduced more of the same great
racing experience Collin McRae DiRT 2 gave you, but with better
gameplay, and the new Gymkhana freestyle motor-acrobatics mode, which
you'll more likely love than hate. It uses a more polished,
performance-optimized version of the EGO engine, version 2.0, which
takes advantage of more DirectX 11 features than version 1.0 used on
Collin McRae DiRT 2, did.
Dragon Age II
Dragon Age II is the second game in BioWare's Dragon Age franchise and
was released in March 2011. As player, named Hawke, you will be able to
pick your hero from several classes and grow him over the course of the
adventure. Gameplay takes you through a linear narrated story of Hawke's
rise to become the legendary "Champion of Kirkwall".
BioWare's Lycium Engine has support for DirectX 11, using tesselation, advanced dynamic lighting and camera effects like depth of field. We benchmark the DX11 version with details set to highest.
StarCraft II
StarCraft II, released in July 2010, is a sequel to Blizzard's
award-winning strategy game StarCraft. In the 26th century three species
Terrans, Protoss and Zerg are at war. The campaign takes you through
many missions on different planets where you have to face the various
enemy factions, sometimes several of them. StarCraft II features a
similar number of units as the original game, some of them new. Due to
the massive success of the first game, Blizzard chose to focus large
aspects of the game on multiplayer combat through Battle.net. The
campaign serves as a good introduction to units and concepts and
competitive multiplayer is where the action is at.
The StarCraft 2 engine supports only DirectX 9, but several patches have improved rendering quality and available options considerably. We test using a recorded 1 vs. 1 multiplayer replay in the late game phase. Please note that Star Craft II is very CPU limited on high-end cards, especially on lower resolutions, so you may not see much scaling between some cards.
The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
This isn't just a game, it's a masterpiece. A very large sandbox game
that rejects the quality-quantity inverse-proportionality. By genre a
role-playing game, TES: Skyrim combines some of the best elements of
older titles in the franchise, with some new sandbox elements to churn
out an extremely engaging, and addictive game. It makes use of
Bethesda's Creation Engine, which isn't visually-intensive in that it
doesn't use taxing graphics features, but the game's presentation
itself, with large open worlds, end up taxing your hardware. Faster GPUs
result in smoother gameplay with most eyecandy turned on.
3DMark 11
3DMark 11 is the very latest from the house of Futuremark, which has given out some of the most comprehensive benchmark applications for PC enthusiasts and gamers. 3DMark 11, as the name might probably suggest, makes use of Microsoft DirectX 11 API, and puts every feature at its disposal to use, creating astonishingly-realistic visuals. In the process, it evaluates DirectX 11 compliant GPUs, and lets gamers know what to expect from games from the near future that make use of the API, in terms of visual realism. The tessellation and depth of field tests are particularly of interest here.
source:www.techpowerup.com
