The AMD Radeon HD 7950 is an extremely popular video card this year due to its price per performance ratio. I wanted to show current owners and future owners what their cards may be capable of in Crysis 3,Tomb Raider and Metro LL. I did a series of benchmarks with my 7950 at different core and memory frequencies to show how much overclocking can improve your experience.
Test system:
Intel 3570K @ 4.8GHz
Gigabyte Z77X-UD4H
MSI TF3 7950 (8+6 pin)
with Arctic Accelero Xtreme 7970 VGA Cooler
16GB Samsung DDR3 @ 1600Mhz
Corsair Force 3 240GB SSD
PC Power & Cooling MKIII 600 watt PSU
Acer H243H 1080P Monitor
AMD 13.6 Beta drivers
CRYSIS 3
I have posted these results in an older thread, but wanted to have a nice bar chart to make it easier to read. I benchmarked Crysis 3 using the settings below.


I find these setting to be a nice combination of performance and IQ. Going from High to Very high barely increases image quality, but notably decreases performance. Adding SMAA @ 2X helps reduce jaggies, and it doesn't affect performance too much. Benchmarking was done using FRAPS. You can see my benchmark run through HERE. I start the benchmark as soon as Psycho hands you his handgun. It's a 80 second FRAPS run and will stop right after he enters the first door.

Going from AMD reference frequencies of 800/1250 to 1300/1850 we are seeing a performance increase of 51%. Thats an increase of 63% for the core frequency and a 48% increase in memory frequency.
For an average 7950 OC of 1150/1650 we are seeing a performance increase of 33%. Thats a 44% increase in clock frequency and 32% increase in memory frequency. This is a very impressive showing in performance.
After seeing how much performance memory bandwidth is adding per the last benchmark, I decided to do a test only increasing the memory frequency with a core frequency of 1200 Mhz.

1250 Mhz to 1850 Mhz yielded an 19% increase in performance, while increasing the memory frequency 48%. Not as good as I would have hoped, but still impressive since most games will not see this much of a performance gain from memory frequencies alone. As you can see anything past 1850 Mhz is not seeing a performance improvement at all.
TOMB RAIDER
Next up is Tomb Raider. This game brought TressFX to the table and it's plenty demanding in it's own right. This game has a built-in benchmark that makes testing a little easier and potentially more consistent. I did however, run each test three times at the individual frequencies. I used the middle FPS for the graph below even though FPS didn't vary much. I benchmarked this game at it's Ultimate Preset - See the Graphic options below.


Ultimate Preset 1080P

We are looking at a 55% increase in performance going from AMD reference speeds of 800/1250 to 1300/1850. A 38% increase going from AMD Boost 7950 925/1250 to 1300/1850. Even a moderate 7950 OC of 1050/1500 is seeing a 27% over AMD reference 800/1250 and 13% over the 7950 Boost.
METRO LAST LIGHT
Here are some benchmarks for Metro Last light. This game also has a built in Benchmark like Tomb Raider. Below you will see the settings I use to play this game. Pretty much everything maxed with the exception of SSAA and PhysX.


49% increase going from 800/1250 to 1250/1750. Even going with an overclock all 7950's should hit (1150/1250) we are seeing a 30% increase in performance over the AMD reference core frequency.
Special thanks to John Tauwhare for his help.
Test system:
Intel 3570K @ 4.8GHz
Gigabyte Z77X-UD4H
MSI TF3 7950 (8+6 pin)
with Arctic Accelero Xtreme 7970 VGA Cooler
16GB Samsung DDR3 @ 1600Mhz
Corsair Force 3 240GB SSD
PC Power & Cooling MKIII 600 watt PSU
Acer H243H 1080P Monitor
AMD 13.6 Beta drivers
CRYSIS 3
I have posted these results in an older thread, but wanted to have a nice bar chart to make it easier to read. I benchmarked Crysis 3 using the settings below.


I find these setting to be a nice combination of performance and IQ. Going from High to Very high barely increases image quality, but notably decreases performance. Adding SMAA @ 2X helps reduce jaggies, and it doesn't affect performance too much. Benchmarking was done using FRAPS. You can see my benchmark run through HERE. I start the benchmark as soon as Psycho hands you his handgun. It's a 80 second FRAPS run and will stop right after he enters the first door.

Going from AMD reference frequencies of 800/1250 to 1300/1850 we are seeing a performance increase of 51%. Thats an increase of 63% for the core frequency and a 48% increase in memory frequency.
For an average 7950 OC of 1150/1650 we are seeing a performance increase of 33%. Thats a 44% increase in clock frequency and 32% increase in memory frequency. This is a very impressive showing in performance.
After seeing how much performance memory bandwidth is adding per the last benchmark, I decided to do a test only increasing the memory frequency with a core frequency of 1200 Mhz.

1250 Mhz to 1850 Mhz yielded an 19% increase in performance, while increasing the memory frequency 48%. Not as good as I would have hoped, but still impressive since most games will not see this much of a performance gain from memory frequencies alone. As you can see anything past 1850 Mhz is not seeing a performance improvement at all.
TOMB RAIDER
Next up is Tomb Raider. This game brought TressFX to the table and it's plenty demanding in it's own right. This game has a built-in benchmark that makes testing a little easier and potentially more consistent. I did however, run each test three times at the individual frequencies. I used the middle FPS for the graph below even though FPS didn't vary much. I benchmarked this game at it's Ultimate Preset - See the Graphic options below.


Ultimate Preset 1080P

We are looking at a 55% increase in performance going from AMD reference speeds of 800/1250 to 1300/1850. A 38% increase going from AMD Boost 7950 925/1250 to 1300/1850. Even a moderate 7950 OC of 1050/1500 is seeing a 27% over AMD reference 800/1250 and 13% over the 7950 Boost.
METRO LAST LIGHT
Here are some benchmarks for Metro Last light. This game also has a built in Benchmark like Tomb Raider. Below you will see the settings I use to play this game. Pretty much everything maxed with the exception of SSAA and PhysX.


49% increase going from 800/1250 to 1250/1750. Even going with an overclock all 7950's should hit (1150/1250) we are seeing a 30% increase in performance over the AMD reference core frequency.
Special thanks to John Tauwhare for his help.
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