Performance Retrospective: AMD’s Radeon HD 7970M
by Jarred Walton on June 21, 2013 5:25 PM ESTMainstream/High 1600x900 Gaming Performance
Moving up to our “Mainstream” gaming tests (high detail, no 4xAA, 1600x900 resolution), there’s a lot more demanded of the GPU this time around, so CPU and platform limitations aren’t likely to be as large of a factor. Integrated graphics solutions (outside of perhaps Intel’s Iris Pro Graphics) are also going to prove insufficient for our test suite in nearly all of these games. Let’s look at round two of the 7970M performance.
Despite the increase in graphics complexity, at least on the Alienware M17x R4 the use of Enduro is still bringing a performance penalty in some titles. On average, switching to discrete mode improves performance by 14%, slightly less than we saw with our Value settings; however, the individual games show varying amounts of separation. Bioshock is now nearly the same, with only a 5% performance increase, and in fact most of the games show less than a 5% increase by using discrete mode (though again it’s worth mentioning the rendering errors on DX9 titles with the 13.6 beta drivers). The two titles that show a significant performance increase by using discrete mode are GRID 2 (42%) and Sleeping Dogs (46%); interestingly, Tomb Raider is actually slightly faster with Enduro at these settings, though the 1% difference is within the margin of error.
The Intel Enduro vs. AMD Enduro results are much closer this round, though Intel still holds a commanding lead. No longer is the Core i7 offering twice the frame rates in most games; at 900p High it’s “only” 62% faster on average—but that’s mostly due to the closer performance in two of the seven games. Skyrim, Sleeping Dogs, and StarCraft II are still the big losers, with more than twice the performance on Intel’s CPU, but GRID 2 and Metro are nearly as bad at 83% and 91% performance improvements, respectively. In fact, of those five titles, Skyrim and Sleeping Dogs flirt with the 30FPS “playable” boundary, and Metro and StarCraft II actually fall below 30FPS. Getting to the last two games, Bioshock isn’t too bad, showing a mere 35% performance increase, and Tomb Raider is the one exception where platform doesn’t make much of a difference. Tomb Raider has proven to be almost wholly dependent on GPU performance, and the advantage for the Intel platform is an insignificant 8%. At our Mainstream presets, the 7970M also proves much faster than the 7660G, as it should; this time, it’s nearly three times as fast.
Finally, the NVIDIA vs. 7970M matchup continues to be quite close on average. The GTX 680M leads by 3% overall, with the only significant lead coming in Skyrim (38%); the 680M also claims smaller (<10%) leads in StarCraft II and Tomb Raider (that last one being an AMD title). Meanwhile, the 7970M holds small leads in Bioshock, GRID 2, Metro: Last Light (an NVIDIA title, so turnabout is fair play), and Sleeping Dogs. The 780M continues to be hamstrung by CPU throttling in the GT70, and we hope to have a new test notebook shortly to see what the 780M can really do when it’s allowed to stretch its legs. For now, the lead over the 7970M is 5% on average, with a smaller lead in Skyrim and only two small losses (GRID 2 and Sleeping Dogs).
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JarredWalton - Friday, June 21, 2013 - link
Actually, there aren't many Llano + dGPU laptops that got sold I don't think, so I imagine people that own SNB + AMD dGPU are a larger audience (think HP Envy 15 owners). I still think it could happen, but it's a question of whether or not AMD even wants to try. Given the continued driver issues with Enduro, I'm guessing not.Bob Todd - Saturday, June 22, 2013 - link
Yeah, unfortunately I'm the Envy 15 owner from the other Enduro articles :). On a side note before I bitch some more, thanks for keeping us updated on the progress of the driver updates. A bit tangential, but I think this issue also highlights one of the many reasons the rebadging done by both AMD and Nvidia is so anti-consumer. I'm a geek and I read sites like Anandtech, and I go look up mobile GPUs on Notebookcheck before purchasing anything to make sure I know what lies beneath some shiny new part number. But only some tiny percentage of consumers will do that. The overwhelming majority will just see "Radeon 7690M" and assume it's a new part, and that it will be supported like a new part (i.e. readily available driver updates). They shouldn't have to scour the web to find out that only 77XX and above parts are actually "new" stuff, and that they are boned for driver updates with anything below that magical line that someone in marketing decided was the right thing to do. It's intentionally deceptive, and I wish they'd both cut that crap out. I'm sure the revenue forecasts from their financial analysts would make them disagree.billus - Friday, June 21, 2013 - link
Am I the only one who is amazed at how ugly these laptops are? I find it difficult to be enthused about a laptop that looks like it was made from Chinese moss. And I'm the target audience, having paid between $4K and $5K for most of my laptops.silenceisgolden - Friday, June 21, 2013 - link
These laptops don't have a target audience, so design really doesn't matter. If these companies wanted their laptops to be bought in any great quantity they would think about design.Wreckage - Friday, June 21, 2013 - link
At the end of the day AMD's drivers are still an anchor dragging them down.transphasic - Saturday, June 22, 2013 - link
This is not surprising to me, as I had expected this to be the case by now- 9 months later. AMD has, for the gazillionth time, dropped the ball on FIXING Enduro, which they have had all the time in world to do so these last 14 months, but haven't.It's a pretty safe guess that they never will, and as for me from now on- it's Nvidia all the way, and I am never looking back.
Good-bye AMD...
DigitalFreak - Friday, June 21, 2013 - link
I guess Dell got sick of dealing with the Enduro issues as well. The new Alienware 17 comes with Nvidia cards. :-)Dustin Sklavos - Friday, June 21, 2013 - link
The 780M results here are *seriously* not reflective of the 780M's performance, just the crippled MSI GT70. I have my old Alienware M17x R3 being retrofitted with a 780M courtesy of NVIDIA as we speak and should be able to post more realistic 780M performance numbers before the month is out.On any benchmark graph where the 680M performs faster than the 780M, you can safely assume the 780M is being limited by the GT70 and will perform at *least* as well as the 680M in a Clevo or Alienware chassis.
Meaker10 - Saturday, June 22, 2013 - link
When I get my msi gt60 3k edition (2880x1620 ips panel) im going to enjoy showing you what it can really do and how much it will tear your m17x into tiny pieces. ;)Dustin Sklavos - Saturday, June 22, 2013 - link
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