AMD Radeon HD 7950 Review: Up Against GeForce GTX 580

By Chris Angelini
published

Benchmark Results: Sandra 2012

Our first Sandra 2012 chart measures 32-bit floating-point and 64-bit double performance. More ALUs and higher clock rates earn the Radeon HD 7970 a first-place finish here, followed by the dual-GPU Radeon HD 6990. It’s quite impressive, then, that the less expensive, cooler, and more power-friendly Radeon HD 7950 does as well as we observe. The 7950’s double-precision performance is roughly three times higher than Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 580.

The bandwidth chart measures two things: throughput between the GPU and memory (blue bars) and transfer rate between the GPU and host over PCI Express.

Presumably, Sandra is counting the bandwidth of both GPUs in aggregate as it reports the numbers for AMD’s Radeon HD 6990 and Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 590. Both Radeon HD 7900-series cards follow closely in third and fourth place, though.

The data transfer bandwidth results are a little harder to discern next to the big memory bars. However, it’s quite clear that the cards with second-gen interfaces are stuck around 6 GB/s or thereabout, while both Radeon HD 7900-series boards are able to exceed 9 GB/s by virtue of PCI Express 3.0.

Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini is an Editor Emeritus at Tom's Hardware US. He edits hardware reviews and covers high-profile CPU and GPU launches.
150 Comments Comment from the forums
  • bak0n
    More good GPU news. Keep em coming!
    Reply
  • Im not Paying $450 for barely better then GTX 580 performance a year after its released. They will have to knock that down to like $300, $250 for a 2gb version when Nvidia releases their next gen cards. Wait those money grubers out imo.
    Reply
  • thesnappyfingers
    stm I was thinking the same thing. But then agian it is still cheaper, more efficient compared to the gtx 580. Still, I am waiting it out till kepler.
    Reply
  • rmpumper
    7950/7970 should be priced ~$50+ of 6950/6970 prices. So as it is now, if nvidia's gtx680 will be better than 7970 they will price it at >$600? That's a load of crock.
    Reply
  • Derbixrace
    great value compared to the 7970 because you can OC it to be faster than it on stock voltage and even further with voltage tweaking ;)
    Reply
  • esrever
    I'd love to have one once kepler comes and these drop in price. Im gonna start saving.
    Reply
  • It beats the GTX580 one on one in most benchies and that's not taking into account the overclocking headroom these things have, they're also power friendlier and with XFX, cooler, quieter and expected to be cheaper so what's the problem? Me thinks me smell's NV fanboys!!
    Reply
  • hardcore_gamer
    According to W1zzard's review, this card tops the Performance / Watt chart.
    Reply
  • primonatron
    Are the Skyrim benchmarks on the v1.4 beta patch?

    Reply
  • dragonsqrrl
    rmpumper7950/7970 should be priced ~$50+ of 6950/6970 prices. So as it is now, if nvidia's gtx680 will be better than 7970 they will price it at >$600? That's a load of crock.Every rumor and leak I've seen so far on gk104 pricing seems to indicate otherwise...

    http://www.guru3d.com/news/nvidia-gk104-kepler-gpu-priced-at-299-230-/
    According to Nvidia's AIB partners the initial price set for the first gk104 based graphics card is $300. Of course this can go up or down based on the competition. Unfortunately, I have the feeling it'll be going up.
    Reply