PontiacGTX
Gawd
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2013
- Messages
- 808
SourceTest system and test results
For all benchmarks the graphics card test system with an updated Windows 10 was used. Since AMD supports the graphics card from the architecture GCN (Radeon HD 77xx) with the current driver, the Crimson ReLive 16.12.2 comes only from the Radeon HD 7970 onwards. The Radeon HD 5870 as well as the Radeon HD 6970 based on the VLIW5 or VLIW4 architecture have to deal with the legacy driver Crimson 16.2.1, which is not quite a year old.
Old and new games as a benchmark
14 different games are used for the article, which like the graphics cards are different old. So the oldest games come from the year 2011, while with Battlefield 1 there are also very current titles in the test parcours.
Settings optimized for graphics cards with 2 GB of memory
In all benchmarks, the highest graphic details are used in the resolution of 2.560 × 1.440, while in the mid-range models, the games ran in Full HD. This is a tribute to the performance class of the graphics cards. Only in the current games were partly the details reduced, since otherwise also the current generation does not reach sufficient Frameraten. In addition, the texture details have been reduced in some games, so graphics cards with at least 2,048 MB of memory have to contend with only minor losses. Supports a game DirectX 12, decides the highest Framerate, which result is used.
Benchmarks from Skyrim to Battlefield 1
In addition to the Radeon HD 7970, the Radeon R9 290X also makes a clear difference. On average, the speed increases by 50 percent compared to the predecessor. This is due to the higher raw material output and the fine art of architecture. The Radeon R9 290X can also increase the performance quite consistently through all games. Slips are few.
The Radeon R9 Fury X has problems with the utilization
The Radeon R9 Fury X and thus the last high-end graphics card from AMD, on the other hand, has some misfires. Therefore, the average performance is just 24 percent. The reason is in some games where the Radeon R9 Fury X can not use their raw power. An example of this is Call of Duty: Black Ops III, which is only eight percent faster than on the Radeon R9 290X. Others are Alan Wake and Company of Heroes 2, also they scale with Fiji badly. But there is also a brake in other titles: considering the naked specifications, the card should be a maximum of 50 percent faster, while in most games it is only about 30 percent. The problem is that AMD, despite the double number of units, uses only the front end of the half-sized Tonga GPU. This can not overload the over 4,000 shader units.
Looking back, the high-end graphics cards from AMD have "only" grown by a factor of 5 since 2009, and they are six times as fast in mid-range. The next big leap could be with Vega but imminent.