AMD Radeon HD 7730 Review: A Harbinger Of The Kaveri APU?
-
Page 1:AMD's Radeon HD 7730: GCN Goes Entry-Level
-
Page 2:Test Setup And Benchmarks
-
Page 3:Results: Compute Performance
-
Page 4:Results: Metro: Last Light
-
Page 5:Results: BioShock Infinite
-
Page 6:Results: F1 2012
-
Page 7:Results: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
-
Page 8:Results: Tomb Raider
-
Page 9:Results: Company Of Heroes 2
-
Page 10:Power And Temperature
-
Page 11:Radeon HD 7730 Is Good, If The Price Is Right
Power And Temperature
Power consumption is measured at the system level, and we're using Metro: Last Light as our workload to gauge peak draw.
I zeroed this chart out at 45 W, which is roughly where the system idles when we don't have a graphics card installed. This gives us a more visual representation of each card's power consumption relative to the rest of the field.
There's a 29 W difference between the top and bottom boards under load. As we expected, the Radeon HD 7750 is the most power-hungry entry. We're also a little surprised to see the GeForce GT 630 GDDR5 following just 5 W behind. The DDR3-equipped Radeons use the least amount of power, and the new 7730s pull more from the wall than their predecessors, despite a lower TDP specification.
When it comes to thermal performance, cooling solutions have a big impact. So, I've included manufacturer names in the above chart to indicate cards with non-reference heat sinks and fans.
I zeroed out the chart at our lab's ambient temperature of 24 degrees Celsius. Although Gigabyte's Radeon HD 6670 with DDR3 posts the lowest GPU temperature under load, Sapphire's Radeon HD 7730 cards perform well in this comparison, too.
- AMD's Radeon HD 7730: GCN Goes Entry-Level
- Test Setup And Benchmarks
- Results: Compute Performance
- Results: Metro: Last Light
- Results: BioShock Infinite
- Results: F1 2012
- Results: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- Results: Tomb Raider
- Results: Company Of Heroes 2
- Power And Temperature
- Radeon HD 7730 Is Good, If The Price Is Right
Your comment, while being perfectly accurate, actually made me notice something interesting. Take a look at the charts, and you'll see that the GCN 7730s are less affected by the switch from DDR3 to GDDR5 than the VLIW 6670s! That means GCN is leaving less performance on the table if it's paired with slower memory, which is ideal for the situation an APU is usually in (PS4 aside).
Your comment, while being perfectly accurate, actually made me notice something interesting. Take a look at the charts, and you'll see that the GCN 7730s are less affected by the switch from DDR3 to GDDR5 than the VLIW 6670s! That means GCN is leaving less performance on the table if it's paired with slower memory, which is ideal for the situation an APU is usually in (PS4 aside).
The "secret sauce" that could really catapult this one would be if some of its disabled pieces might be able to be switched on.
Hopefully AMD has done more power optimisations and that won't be the case.
Also, how is this Cape Verde GPU a "Harbinger Of The Kaveri APU"? It is a trimmed down 7750 and since a 7750 can provide no real insight into the performance of upcoming Kaveri APUs then how does this entry level card provide any better insight?
(73C + 24C ambient = 93C)
Anyway, the GDDR5 HD 7750 looks like a viable game-enabler for PC gamers on a budget. Also, it's a nice refresh for that price point's options. I do hope it sells for around $60 or less. :-D
I have found a Trinity based APU more than enough for a HTPC. I would not have banked on Kaveri matching the XB1 and PS4's custom build silicon as in the name the APU designed for MS and Sony was of custom design and the hardware was always going to scale beyond that for desktop parts. If you offered me HD7730-7750 performance on a Kaveri I would be very pleased with that. What hasn't been brought to light is that the Spectre IGPU on Kaveri features around 512 Stream Processors and increased ROP's and compute units so it may very well be a potent iGPU.
Dual Graphics has improved with Catalyst 13.8 to the point it is now playable, if a Richland can DG with the HD7730's that would be tremendous fo gaming under $200 for chip and card.
All in all, not a bad budget card!
Trinity's HD7660D and HD7650D are already faster than Intels desktop Graphics in HD4600 ilk and not just on Frame rates but latencies as well, They have done a review of HD5100 and 5200 Pro's with the HD5100 still slower than Richlands HD8670D by a margin and Iris is faster but costs around $600 for the all in one BGA setups which prevent expansion.
Kaveri will be based on the smaller Steamroller cores which will improve performance/watt clock for clock with Vishera based cores and the IGPU will be on a more efficient GCN opposed to the Turks based VLIW4 architecture. If Trinity and Richland are already impressive I think Kaveri is going to top it by at least doubling iGPU over Trinity/Richland and x86 anywhere from 20-40% depending on the nature of the application, then there is HUMA and the HSA environment it think its going to be a very exciting release if you accept it for what it is, it will not be a champion chip in traditional computing sense but in a HSA environment it will blow away everything before it, cue the adobe premier pro benches 6800K vs 3770K is already around 500% faster in that environment AMD is king in integrated graphics AMD will be head and shoulders above its competition.
But for me, I care more about the Kaveri APU. I've heard rumors that the flagship Kaveri APU, probably A10s, would sport iGPU like HD 7750/7770 which has 512 or 768 shaders (but the 768 may blow the sale of HD 7790 so making it 512 shaders is more possible), so we would see better performance. This review has a better picture for us and even if the flagship has equipped only 384 shaders the performance could be still impressive esp. using 2133 or 2400 mhz memory. We're looking forward to the launch of the new APUs and hope it would be a great leap forward compared w/ Richland and Trinity APUs