Archive Home arrow Reviews: arrow Video Cards arrow XFX Radeon R7950 Black Edition Video Card

XFX Radeon R7950 Black Edition Video Card E-mail
Reviews - Featured Reviews: Video Cards
Written by David Ramsey   
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
Table of Contents: Page Index
XFX Radeon R7950 Black Edition Video Card
AMD "Southern Islands" GPU
Closer Look: XFX Radeon HD 7950
FX-795A-TDBC Detailed Features
FX-795A-TDBC Features and Specifications
Video Card Testing Methodology
DX11: 3DMark11
DX11: Crysis 2
DX11: Batman: Arkham City
DX11: Aliens vs Predator
DX11: Lost Planet 2
DX11: Metro 2033
DX11: Unigine Heaven 2.5
XFX 7950 DD Temperatures
VGA Power Consumption
XFX R7950 DD Overclocking
XFX Radeon 7950 Final Thoughts
XFX R7950 Black Edition Conclusion

DX11: Metro 2033

Metro 2033 is an action-oriented video game with a combination of survival horror, and first-person shooter elements. The game is based on the novel Metro 2033 by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. It was developed by 4A Games in Ukraine and released in March 2010 for Microsoft Windows. Metro 2033 uses the 4A game engine, developed by 4A Games. The 4A Engine supports DirectX-9, 10, and 11, along with NVIDIA PhysX and GeForce 3D Vision.

The 4A engine is multi-threaded in such that only PhysX had a dedicated thread (although PhysX is disabled for this test), and uses a task-model without any pre-conditioning or pre/post-synchronizing, allowing tasks to be done in parallel. The 4A game engine can utilize a deferred shading pipeline, and uses tessellation for greater performance, and also has HDR (complete with blue shift), real-time reflections, color correction, film grain and noise, and the engine also supports multi-core rendering.

Metro 2033 features superior volumetric fog, double PhysX precision, object blur, sub-surface scattering for skin shaders, parallax mapping on all surfaces and greater geometric detail with a less aggressive LODs. Using PhysX, the engine uses many features such as destructible environments, and cloth and water simulations, and particles that can be fully affected by environmental factors.

  • Metro 2033
    • DirectX 11, Very High quality, 4xAA, 16xAF, tessellation, DOF, "Frontline" scene, no PhysX

Metro_2033.png

NVIDIA has been diligently working to promote Metro 2033, and for good reason: it is the most demanding PC video game we've ever tested. When their flagship GeForce GTX 580 struggles to produce 26 FPS at 1920x1200 with DirectX-11 anti-aliasing turned two to its lowest setting, you know that only the strongest graphics processors will generate playable frame rates. All our tests disable advanced PhysX options.

Cost Analysis: Metro 2033 (1920x1200)

  • $330.00 GeForce GTX 570 costs $15.21 per FPS
  • $480.00 GeForce GTX 580 costs $18.46 per FPS
  • $749.00 GeForce GTX 590 costs $19.21 per FPS
  • $320.00 Radeon HD 6970 costs $14.10 per FPS
  • $700.00 Radeon HD 6990 costs $17.50 per FPS
  • $499.00 Radeon HD 7950 costs $15.74 per FPS
  • $499.00 Radeon HD 7950 overclocked costs $14.26 per FPS
  • $600.00 Radeon HD 7970 costs $22.22 per FPS
  • Test Summary: There's no doubt that this is a very demanding game. What Crysis was to top-end video cards a few years ago, Metro 2033 is now, with even the strongest single-GPU cards struggling to break 30 frames per second at 1920x1200. And note that this is with PhysX features turned off! Still, both Tahiti-based cards managed to post average frame rates about 30FPS, even at 1920x1200 with the game's most demanding settings.

    Graphics Card GeForce GTX570 GeForce GTX580 GeForce GTX590 Radeon HD6970 Radeon HD6990 Radeon HD7950 Radeon HD7970
    GPU Cores 480 512 1024 1536 3072 1792 2048
    Core Clock (MHz) 732 772 607 880 800 900 1000
    Shader Clock (MHz) 1464 1544 1215 N/A N/A N/A N/A
    Memory Clock (MHz) 1900 2004 1707 900 1250 1375 1425
    Memory Amount 1280 MB GDDR5 1536MB GDDR5 3072MB GDDR5 2048MB GDDR5 4096MB GDDR5 3072MB GDDR5 3072MB GDDR5
    Memory Interface 320-bit 384-bit 384-bit 256-bit 256-bit 384-bit 384-bit



     

    Add comment


    Security code
    Refresh

    Search Benchmark Reviews
    QNAP Network Attached Storage Servers

    Follow Benchmark Reviews on FacebookReceive Tweets from Benchmark Reviews on Twitter