GPU Computing Benchmarks

HD7950 varies from HD7970 by its clock speeds and core count.  Other aspects are unchanged including ROPs. 1792 cores for 7950 and 2048 cores for 7970.

In terms of raw graphics throughput this results in little theoretical difference 28.8Gpixel/s for Sapphire 7950 OC edition versus 29.6 for Reference 7970 in Pixel fill rate and 100.8 Gtexel/s versus  118.4 Gtxel/s for Texture fill rate.

Where the added cores come into play is compute functions such as graphics shaders or GPU computing.

No surprises with our synthetic GPU computing testing however CPU.

Unlike our launch review for HD7970 where software support was non-existent, we now have GPU computing applications working on the Graphics Core Next Architecture.  To bench-test Bitcoin Mining (And the GPUs compute capability) we ran the latest version of cgminer overnight using the default settings, mining as part of a pool. 7950OC is capable of 400Mhash/s is in this configuration. Future software updates, driver tweaks and overclocking can improve this. The temperate of the GPU did not ever rise over 67 degrees and no errors were present.

Bitcoin enthusiasts have told us that the 7970 currently can achieve 550Mhash/s

Two 7950OC cards further overclocked in crossfire should be able to obtain 1000Mhash/s with reasonable power consumption

We emphasis the cited performance was achieved at HD7950 launch time (March) and performance should l have increased since.