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Review: AMD Radeon HD 7950 graphics processor

by Tarinder Sandhu on 31 January 2012, 05:00 4.0

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qabbwb

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HEXUS.bang4buck and bang4watt

Putting all the numbers into perspective, let's take a closer look at overall performance and value for money.

In a rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' bang for buck, we've aggregated the frame-rates for all our gaming benchmarks, normalised them1 and taken account of today's pricing.

But there are more provisos than we'd care to shake a stick at. We could have chosen different games, the cards' prices could have been derived from other sources, and pricing tends to fluctuate daily, especially for new-release GPUs such as the Radeon HD 7950.

Consequently, the tables below highlight a metric that should only be used as a yardstick for evaluating comparative performance with price factored in.

Value analysis at 1,920x1,080

Graphics card Aggregate FPS Normalised FPS1 Current price Bang4buck Power consumption Bang4watt2
  AMD Radeon HD 6990 (4,096MB) 446.10 387.95 £530 0.73 362 1.07
  AMD Radeon HD 7970 (3,072MB) 360.20 325.20 £450 0.72 254 1.28
  AMD Radeon HD 7950 (3,072MB) 311.20 267.50 £350 0.76 207 1.29
  AMD Radeon HD 6970 (2,048MB) 254.70 200.75 £255 0.79 237 0.85
  AMD Radeon HD 6950 (2,048MB) 226.80 160.20 £185 0.87 194 0.83
  AMD Radeon HD 6870 (1,024MB) 203.90 125.85 £140 0.90 187 0.67
  NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 (3,072MB) 446.10 403.05 £620 0.65 407 0.99
  NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 (1,536MB) 304.90 257.55 £349 0.74 285 0.90
  NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 (1,280MB) 261.40 204.10 £240 0.85 245 0.70
  NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 (1,280MB) 248.80 187.90 £220 0.85 271 0.69
  NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti (1,024MB) 215.40 143.10 £170 0.84 225 0.64

Value analysis at 2,560x1,600

Graphics card Aggregate FPS Normalised FPS1 Current price Bang4buck Power consumption Bang4watt2
  AMD Radeon HD 6990 (4,096MB) 270.30 213.35 £530 0.40 362 0.59
  AMD Radeon HD 7970 (3,072MB) 218.50 147.75 £450 0.33 254 0.58
  AMD Radeon HD 7950 (3,072MB) 187.30 100.95 £350 0.29 207 0.49
  AMD Radeon HD 6970 (2,048MB) 150.50 50.25 £255 0.20 237 0.21
  AMD Radeon HD 6950 (2,048MB) 133.70 32.40 £185 0.18 194 0.17
  AMD Radeon HD 6870 (1,024MB) 83.00 15.75 £140 0.11 187 0.08
  NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 (3,072MB) 266.90 211.65 £620 0.34 407 0.52
  NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 (1,536MB) 175.30 82.95 £349 0.24 285 0.29
  NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 (1,280MB) 139.50 39.15 £240 0.16 245 0.15
  NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 (1,280MB) 133.60 32.55 £220 0.15 271 0.12
  NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti (1,024MB) 96.40 18.00 £170 0.11 225 0.08

1 the normalisation refers to taking playable frame rate into account. Should a card benchmark at over 60 frames per second in any one game, the extra fps count as half. Similarly, should a card benchmark lower, say at 40fps, we deduct half the difference from its average frame rate and the desired 60fps, giving it a HEXUS.bang4buck score of 30 marks. The minimum allowable frame rate is 20fps but that scores zero.

2 the HEXUS.bang4watt score is a crude measurement of how much normalised performance the GPU provides when evaluated against system-wide power-draw that's shown in the table: the former is divided by the latter. We're using the peak power-draw numbers obtained by running real-world Crysis 2.

Summary

The £350 street price plays out reasonably well in the bang4buck reckoning, especially at the common 1,920x1,080 resolution. Sure, £350 is still a heck of a lot of cash to lay down on one card, but the high-ish B4B rating shows that performance scales nicely as we move up the pricing ladder.