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AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB vs. Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB vs. Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 2GB (Part 1)

11/22/2012 3:24:43 PM

AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Like the HD 7970 3GB, the HD 7950 3GB has recently benefitted from healthy price cuts, driver updates and a legitimate overclocked SK in the form of the HD 7950 3GB With Boost since its release. It now has a far more tempting price of $353.9 for stock models, and goes toe to toe with Nvidia’s TX 660 Ti 2GB.

A step down from the HD 7970 3GB, the 7950 3GB’s Tahiti Pro GPU benefits from the modular nature of the Southern Islands architecture by sporting the same dual front-end engine with a pair of tessellator-equipped geometry engines, and the same render back-end of 32 ROPs and a 384-bit memory interface.

The only physical reduction has come from the loss of four compute unit, reducing the SIMD-count by 16 and the overall stream processor count by the 256, for a total of 1,792 of the latter. This also reduces the texture unit count from 128 to 112.

AMD has scaled back the HD 7950 3GB’s clock speed too. A standard card ships with a core frequency of 800MHz, while the HD 7950 3GB With Boost runs at the same base frequency, but is capable of boosting to 925Hz as long as the card remains within its 180W maximum TDP. Meanwhile, a memory frequency of 1,250MHz (5GHz effective) for both versions of the card results in a peak memory bandwidth of 240GB/sec; far higher than that of even the GTX 680 2GB thanks to Nvidia’s use of a 256-bit memory interface.

A Unigine score of 1,390 for a stock HD 7950 3GB is a little behind the similarly priced GTX 660 Ti 2GB, while a ‘With Boost’ version manages a much more reasonable 1,513. Such cards are hard to find, though, and the higher clock speeds typically demand a $48-$64 higher price tag too. At 1,920 x 1,080, the HD 7950 3GB proved significantly slower than the GTX 660 Ti 2GB across our benchmarks, with only its Crysis 2 minimum frame rate of 48fps superior to the Nvidia card, although all its frame rates are still playable. Even when the HD 7950 3GB is boosted to 925Mz, the stock GeForce proves to be the quicker card in both Skyrim and BF3. At both 2,560 x 1,600 and 1,760 x 1,080, the HD 7950 3GB is marginally quicker, though, and it also offers playable frame rates at the former resolution in all our test games.

Conclusion

Description: AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Similarly to the GTX 660 Ti 2GB, the HD 7950 3GB is stuck in the middle of two more competitive cards – the GTX 670 2GB and the GTX 660 2GB. While we’d opt for the GTX 660 Ti 2GB over the 7950 3GB thanks to its significant advantage at 1,920 x 1,080, and therefore greater future-proofing at this resolution, you’ll get more bangs for your buck from the more expensive GTX 670 or the cheaper GTX 660.

Information

Decent highres performance, but not great value for money

Boost: Playable frame rates at 2,560 x 1,600

Twix: GTX 660 Ti 2GB quicker at 1,920 x 1,080; versions ‘With Boost’ are hard to find

Typical street price: $353.9

Manufacturer: www.amd.com

Scores

1920 speed: 13/20

2560 speed: 14/20

5760 speed: 2/5

Value: 41/55

 

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