[TPU]HD 7970: Bulldozer vs. Sandy Bridge vs. Nehalem

[GaiaHunter]

HD 7970: Bulldozer vs. Sandy Bridge vs. Nehalem

Outside SC2 that loves SB architecture over everything, at the target resolutions for this card whatever modern processor will be fast enough to feed this card or if you prefer all are bottlenecking it. (Disclaimer: atm the i5-2500k is imo the vastly superior CPU choice for gamers, but if you are on nehalem or phenom II you can safely buy a single 7970, multi gpu is generally a different story).

Sure at the lower resolutions (smack on your face for contemplating buying a 7970 to play at those resolutions) SB>Nehalem>BD.

 

[yours truly]

Are there any benchmarks that compare SB-E to Gulftown?

I'm curious to know if PCI-E 3 brings anything to the table at the moment.

 

[toyota]

Are there any benchmarks that compare SB-E to Gulftown?

I'm curious to know if PCI-E 3 brings anything to the table at the moment.

pci-e 3.0 does nothing for gaming at the 7970 level of card. that was pretty much common sense but some of the 7970 reviews did test it just to show that.

 

[Grooveriding]

Are there any benchmarks that compare SB-E to Gulftown?

I'm curious to know if PCI-E 3 brings anything to the table at the moment.

PCIE 3 shows gains in compute tasks on the 7970, but I haven't seen anything showing gains for gaming.

Sandy Bridge E & X79 PCIe 3.0: It Works

 

[Arg Clin]

Interesting. Besides the rather predictable outcome of SB vs BD, it's interesting that the i920 still holds it own.

Our aging Core i7-920 is still doing respectably well. So if you still have a first-generation Core i7, there's no need for you to upgrade.

Seems like Nahelem or PhII is good for another GPU generation (at least in single gpu configs) which is good news. Will be interesting though to see if that's still true for 7970 crossfire.

 

[Lonbjerg]

Interesting. Besides the rather predictable outcome of SB vs BD, it's interesting that the i920 still holds it own.



Seems like Nahelem or PhII is good for another GPU generation (at least in single gpu configs) which is good news. Will be interesting though to see if that's still true for 7970 crossfire.

My i7 920 will be "retired" when Ivy Brigde E hits the market...it's been a even better CPU than the Q6600 for me

 

[ArchAngel777]

It might interest people to know that that this comparison is 'stock' on the CPUs. So of course SB is going to be faster. It has a higher base clock and a higher turbo multiplier. You are comparing a potential 2.8Ghz (Turbo i7 920) to a 3.7Ghz (Turbo i5 2500K). Clock that 920 @ 3.6Ghz and watch the difference dwindle to nothing.

 

[Grooveriding]

Nehalem was a nice chip. I had my 920 running at 4.2 and it was nice and fast.

My SB-E @ 4.7 is noticeably quicker, not a home run out of the park, but there is no missing the improved performance. There were also noticeable FPS improvements using multi-gpu in some titles that needed it; BF3 +20% and others that didn't it; WoW +30%, F1 2010 etc.

I think for anyone running a single GPU though, they are still good on X58.

 

[GaiaHunter]

Seems like Nahelem or PhII is good for another GPU generation (at least in single gpu configs) which is good news. Will be interesting though to see if that's still true for 7970 crossfire.

I bet Nehalem will do fine. Phenom II not so much, I bet it will be able to drive a single GPU with similar performance to 7970CF but not when the performance is split by 2 gpus.

Note sure about BD. Anyone knows that if with more recent bios CF/SLI results are still disappointing?

 

[Arg Clin]

I bet Nehalem will do fine. Phenom II not so much, I bet it will be able to drive a single GPU with similar performance to 7970CF but not when the performance is split by 2 gpus.

Note sure about BD. Anyone knows that if with more recent bios CF/SLI results are still disappointing?

The difference between i920 and Ph II isn't really very significant in real world gaming situations, save for a few titles that strongly favors Intel cpus. (eg. Crysis or Civ5)

http://alienbabeltech.com/main/amd’s-fx-8150-and-crossfire-scaling-–-bulldozer-part-2-the-conclusion/3

So basically I suppose it comes down to whether a 7970CF will be able to take titles like Metro2033 beyond 60 fps and how CPU dependent they become at those levels. Seeing how BD is able to drive a 6970 tri-fire to 56 fps I remain optimistic, as the Ph II isn't generally slower than BD.

 

[Gikaseixas]

would be really useful to see how Phenom II compares to Bulldozer

 

[Arzachel]

would be really useful to see how Phenom II compares to Bulldozer

More like depressing.