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OCuk HD7970 Bf3 review 1080+1440

Mr. May

Mr. May

Mr. May

Soldato
Joined
23 Apr 2009
Posts
3,473
Location
Derby
Hi and welcome to my mini review of the 7970 in real world performance in bf3 over my GTX 480 AMP edition .....

First off, how I tested:

The tests where done all with the same rig with the following spec... Bare in mind its my spare gaming rig/HTPC

i7 920 D0 @3.6ghz HT Disabled
Asus P6T SE
Corsair xms3 @ 1444mhz
Thermaltake Toughpower 850w XT
Zotac GTX 480 Amp! Edition

The GTX 480 had a overclock as below



The Battlefield gameplay was done for on a full 64 man server on Sharqi Peninsula (as i find this the most demanding map) and i tried to avoid buildings and stay in the thick of the action to represent the worst fps dips.

The HD7970 was benched at stock and at CCC overclock limits which is 1125 core and 1575 memory. I will do a follow up off this over the weekend once i get it under water and in my main rig and overclock it some more.

So here are the result as follows



Seeing as my water block wont be here this is the best i can do on air and its still throtterling back due to the heat :( I know this as i did not see any gains at all till I manually put the fan on 80%. Up till then i was getting the same results as being at the CCC limit so these leaves me to think when you reach about 70 degrees the card will throttle back

This is the overclock i ran and i also put HT on and put the i7 up to 4ghz



And these are the results




I thought this was a good comparison as ...

1.a lot of people wanted to know how a HD7970 handled on the hazro

2.Most people who first splash on the 40nm gen will still have there gtx480 and might have the upgrade itch by now;)

Lastly my thoughts on the OCuk Card which is a VTX card and does come with a Black PCB(which was one of my worrys as i dont had red in my system)

Compared to a GTX480 AMP which has the zalman fan noise levels are about equal and hardly noticable even when over clocked on both

Also for the tempratures from the gtx 480 idles at 38 and toped at 70 due to the zalman cooler, but some how the stock cooler is not only as quite even when overclocked is also cooler topping out 66 and idling 32.


Just to sum up personally over the 480 i would jump at it if your using 2560x1440 but if your using 1920x1080 there are not many games which will tax the gtx 480, unless your looking at upping the settings in bf3 its not really worth it, over a stock gtx480 the noise benifits would be a big plus. If this is your reason to upgrade and have the 'itch' get a aftermarket cooler ;)

Hope this has been helpful for some people.
 
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Nice to see you logged the minimum fps. I am surprised the minimums on the 7970 is so low, when reading people saying BF3 runs perfectly on ultra settings I was expecting more.

Nice averages though!
 
Not impressive at all. That's a card from yesteryear. 2 years ago the 480 came out on an immature 40nm process. :/ I can't see how this is a positive show for the 7970.
 
i get 60 fps at same res 6970 with high settings so basically ten fps more at stock with over clock not bad.

is it worth four hundred quid hell no
 
For the people slating it...

I am not trying to say the 7970 is all singing and dancing i only moved to it as i want more vram over my 3x470's after upgrading to a hazro, it didnt cost me anything after i sold my old cards.


And i compared the 480 gtx as most it was one of the first 40nm card and also the only other card i could benchmark it against. This is information the people who are thinking of upgrading. Also people who wanted to know how good they are at 2560x1440, as this was a burning question for me before i got one, as there was no real world solid testing i could find

And overall dispite the low minmums the only one which does not feel smooth to play is full ultra at 2560x1440, Just remember that this isnt full over clocked yet and iam lookin to gain another 200mhz which will be the same gains over the stock to CCC limit overclock.
 
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Well at 1080p, I get around 38 average FPS on Ultra preset maybe less on BF3. the 7970 gets 68fps. That's a 75% increase by my maths.

would I get one from a 6970 for 1080p usage? No.

If I was buying a card for £400 would I get one? Still no. I'd prolly get the 7950 for £335 ish.
 
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That quite good increase over the last gen considering that this time runs was me running looking at tanks getting blowen up, buildings falling apart and anything that will put a lot of stress on the gpu like looking at the long vistas which is probably why the minimums are so low and almost all gpu configs got about the same score....

but if my math is correct and gain the added 200 mhz my average should jump to 68 fps and minimums should be 46 at ultra on 2560x1440 which is just over twice of the gtx480 all being well
 
xsistor said:
Not impressive at all. That's a card from yesteryear. 2 years ago the 480 came out on an immature 40nm process. :/ I can't see how this is a positive show for the 7970.
Click to expand...

Both cards OCd at 2560x1440 resolution and ultra settings the HD 7970 is giving a ~70% increase in average and minimum FPS , yet you still think it isn't impressive. Add to this the fact that the 7970 still has immature drivers and could conceivably get an extra 10% boost when they mature.

I'm starting to think no matter what the 7970 does you will never be impressed. Yes It's overpriced by around £50 IMHO but I won't talk BS and claim a 70% improvement is unimpressive. Remember both AMD and Nvidia had to refresh their 40nm parts due to TSMCs cancellation of 32nm. This meant that both companies have had to use 40nm for almost two years. It took Nvidia and AMD 8 months to a year just to release a refreshed 40nm card that gave a whopping 10-20% improvement over the first 40nm parts. So AMD eventually release a new card with a new architecture on a new process, months before Nvidia, and with a decent to excellent boost in performance. Yet instead of saying well done AMD on being first, they get BS claims of "too little too late". I can assure you that even stock compared to my old OCd HD 6970 DCU II the 7970 simply murders it in most games. When I OC the 7970 the performance delta becomes far higher.

Eg: FSX gives a 70% boost in minimum FPS (stock 7970), 90% OCd 7970
DCS Black Shark 2: 50% boost in average FPS (stock), 70% OCd
Rise of Flight: 40% boost in average FPS (stock), 60% OCd
Witcher 2: 40% boost in FPS (stock), 70% OCd

This is at 2560x1600 on a i7 2600K clocked to 4.5GHz. Even the OP stated "Just to sum up personally over the 480 i would jump at it if your using 2560x1440". But hey, feel free to tell us that our actual 1st hand gaming experience counts for nothing and is totally wrong compared to nothing more than your opinion. :rolleyes:
 
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Thanks for that, i was trying to decide last week (having the same monitor) whether to go for a second 6950 or a 7950/7970, i decided to go the cheap option first, ill do a similar bench for my dual 6950's and stick them in here.

What do you use for benching battlefield? As you say with my old 1920x1200 monitor everything ran pretty much on max with a single card but some struggled going onto the hazro.
 
I used a timed run using fraps which measured the min, average and max on 64 man conquest on Sharqi Peninsula..

If all my parts arrive today, I will get my main rig built back up which can do 4.2ghz with hyper threading and ill bench the 7970 again to see if that yeilds any better results at the CC limit.

Also ill try and get the maximum oc and see what this thing is really capable of.
 
Metalface Mark said:
Thanks for that, i was trying to decide last week (having the same monitor) whether to go for a second 6950 or a 7950/7970, i decided to go the cheap option first, ill do a similar bench for my dual 6950's and stick them in here.

What do you use for benching battlefield? As you say with my old 1920x1200 monitor everything ran pretty much on max with a single card but some struggled going onto the hazro.
Click to expand...

If you email me them on excel iam make a full big sheet of them and i would also be intrested at some gtx480 sli benches if any one is willing cheers.
 
Thanks for this Op. I have done a similar review myself although I compared a Single HD6970 to my HD7970 at Eyefnity (3560x1920). I won't post the results unless anyone specifically wants me to as I don't want to clutter your thread.

I have seen similar gains to what you are seeing at the higher of the two tested resolutions (2560x1440).

With the latest HD7970 drivers from AMD's support site I am hitting nigh on 75% improvement in Avg framerate over the HD6970. The Minimums are nigh on a 90% improvement (45 vs 24 fps).

A quick summary of my results with my HD7970 @ 1175/6600:

High Settings:

Min: 45
Avg: 62

Ultra Settings:

Min: ~35
Avg: ~50

Ultra Settings w 2xAA:

Min: ~ 25
Avg ~ 35

At Very high resolutions the HD7970 really starts to shine. At 1080p it is relatively meh TBH. Yes it is faster but most cards it is being compared to are also fast at this resolution so it isn't so much of a boost.
 
oweneades said:
Thanks for this Op. I have done a similar review myself although I compared a Single HD6970 to my HD7970 at Eyefnity (3560x1920). I won't post the results unless anyone specifically wants me to as I don't want to clutter your thread.

I have seen similar gains to what you are seeing at the higher of the two tested resolutions (2560x1440).

With the latest HD7970 drivers from AMD's support site I am hitting nigh on 75% improvement in Avg framerate over the HD6970. The Minimums are nigh on a 90% improvement (45 vs 24 fps).

A quick summary of my results with my HD7970 @ 1175/6600:

High Settings:

Min: 45
Avg: 62

Ultra Settings:

Min: ~35
Avg: ~50

Ultra Settings w 2xAA:

Min: ~ 25
Avg ~ 35

At Very high resolutions the HD7970 really starts to shine. At 1080p it is relatively meh TBH. Yes it is faster but most cards it is being compared to are also fast at this resolution so it isn't so much of a boost.
Click to expand...

Post the results as i might be going this route.
 
Looks like i need to wait for Kepler to see if it offers a single card that can supply ~120FPS average in BF3 Ultra @ 1080p. :(
 
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