AMD Radeon HD 7730 Review: A Harbinger Of The Kaveri APU?
We got our hands on two Radeon HD 7730 cards from Sapphire: one with 2 GB of DDR3 and the other sporting 1 GB of GDDR5. How do they compare to AMD's Radeon HD 6670s, and what might we glean from these boards about the upcoming Kaveri-based APUs?
Results: BioShock Infinite
BioShock Infinite doesn't push graphics hardware much more than its predecessor. However, it's a great example of what can be done with the Unreal Engine 3.
At 1920x1080 and medium quality settings, the Radeon HD 7730 DDR3 and its contemporaries run into trouble trying to achieve playable performance, though the Radeon HD 7730 GDDR5 nearly gets there with a minimum frame rate of 26 FPS and an average over 30. Of course, it's the Radeon HD 7750 that wins by a large margin.
Our frame rate over time chart shows that the Radeon HD 7730 GDDR5 is under 30 FPS less than half of the time, which jives with our guidance that its performance can pass as playable.
All of the cards we tested demonstrate relatively low frame time variance, yielding a consistent experience.
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Current page: Results: BioShock Infinite
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rmpumper Just look at that performance difference between DDR3 and GDDR5. AMD sure needs to implement GDDR5 in Kaveri in order not to waist all that GPU potential.Reply -
designasaurus 11292234 said:Just look at that performance difference between DDR3 and GDDR5. AMD sure needs to implement GDDR5 in Kaveri in order not to waist all that GPU potential.
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). -
Onus At the right price, this looks like a real winner, especially the GDDR5 version. If a $90 HD7750 is too rich, an HD7730 for $65 looks like it is still capable of playing most games, especially at 720p resolutions where a lot of HTPC cards operate.Reply
The "secret sauce" that could really catapult this one would be if some of its disabled pieces might be able to be switched on.
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ET3D Regarding Kaveri, it looks from this that CGN means better performance with DDR3, but also higher power consumption. If AMD wants to keep to the same power envelope it might have to reduce GPU clock speeds, which will eat into the performance advantage. In the end, it feels from this that Kaveri will offer only a minor performance boost.Reply
Hopefully AMD has done more power optimisations and that won't be the case. -
shikamaru31789 I'm a little dissapointed if this is what we can expect from Kaveri. I was hoping for something that would come closer to matching the APU in the Xbox One. I want to build a small HTPC for gaming in my living room, and an APU would have been ideal for that since the smaller HTPC cases don't have room for large discrete graphics cards. I don't know, maybe Kaveri could still be useful if they actually get Hybrid Crossfire working properly, a Kaveri APU paired with a discrete 7730 and DDR3 2133 might just work out for my purposes.Reply -
slomo4sho I don't see why manufacturers continue to utilize this ram in newer products... Just get rid of DDR3 already...Reply
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? -
army_ant7 On page 10, does the reference HD 7750 really have a load temp of 97C?Reply
(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 -
sarinaide 11292661 said:I'm a little dissapointed if this is what we can expect from Kaveri. I was hoping for something that would come closer to matching the APU in the Xbox One. I want to build a small HTPC for gaming in my living room, and an APU would have been ideal for that since the smaller HTPC cases don't have room for large discrete graphics cards. I don't know, maybe Kaveri could still be useful if they actually get Hybrid Crossfire working properly, a Kaveri APU paired with a discrete 7730 and DDR3 2133 might just work out for my purposes.
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.