HD7970 Quadfire Eyefinity Review
Conclusion
Published: 9th January 2012 | Source: AMD | Price: £1600 |
Conclusion
Obviously when testing a set up this extreme the conclusion is pretty academic.
No-one in their right mind would run Quadfire. It takes too much power, we needed two Corsair AX1200 PSUs for this test. It produces too much heat. It's stupidly expensive, any board that supports Quad-GPU fun is automatically an enthusiast board with a price-tag to match. Even with our Core i7-3960X we were CPU limited in lower resolutions, as indicated by how close the 3D Mark X results are to the P-Score.
Finally, and most damningly, hardly any games take advantage of four cards. Sure some of this is drivers, and some of this is the games themselves. Both are equally guilty. Only two games took advantage of all four cards and one of them, The Witcher 2, doesn't support Eyefinity. Now call us crazy but spending £1600 on graphics cards just for Resident Evil 5 seems a bit pointless.
So for gaming the Quadfire is no use to man nor beast.
For benchmarking though. That's where this really does kick into gear. In both Unigine Heaven and 3D Mark the cards were a chainsaw through butter. Easily demolishing both our P-Score and X-Score records in both 3D Mark Vantage and 3D Mark 11. As well as giving us the highest score we've seen in Unigine, both with and without Anti-Aliasing.
So it's an extremely niche sector of the market that it's aiming for, but only a select few have the funds anyway. To treat it as a potential system is missing the point entirely. It's just a tool for benchmarks and high scores. It's as much a compensation for other areas as a Porsche wink wink.
Unlimited cosmic power, and for that alone it has to win our OC3D performance award. Now if only the developers and driver guys could get together and make the gaming results match the benchmarks...
Thanks to AMD for providing the HD7970s for our Quadfire review. Discuss in our forums.
Most Recent Comments
you probably be able to heat up your whole home with the ammount of heat they will pump out to..
and the performance ! 
Would be interesting to see this done again when the drivers have matured a bit to see how much of a difference there is. Even if some of it is to do with the game there should still be an increase in performance with better drivers, it's always the same with new cards especially AMD ones 2-3 drivers time and things should improve a bit.
just when i start to loose faith and think your starting to play favorites....(ie that aria giveaway vid)
you do something like this and TOTALLY restore my faith.....
thank you.....honestly
bTx
Personally i think that such a set up is a complete waste of money as you can get a single card that yes maybe not as fast how ever gives close the the same results under game play.
What you need to think is, does all that horse power give any real extra benefit and the answer is no it does not. So why throw away good money. If you what a Powerful card then switch to professional card which has more grunt at doing video editing and such tasks.
Put this card up against the top pro cards and i bet it shows lacking in many departments. Lets see a review were you put this card up against say a Quadro and see what happens.
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Originally Posted by mayhem
tbh i think Tom hit the nail on the head with the review. The problems of hard ware manufacturer and game devs not talking is a massive problem. There is no single set standard and this is what causes issues and this is why the xbox , ps3, wii all work. You simply put in a game and it works. Personally i think that such a set up is a complete waste of money as you can get a single card that yes maybe not as fast how ever gives close the the same results under game play. What you need to think is, does all that horse power give any real extra benefit and the answer is no it does not. So why throw away good money. If you what a Powerful card then switch to professional card which has more grunt at doing video editing and such tasks. Put this card up against the top pro cards and i bet it shows lacking in many departments. Lets see a review were you put this card up against say a Quadro and see what happens. |
This is just your typical OC3D madness and Tom doing it because he can and hey, why not, it's fun to see stuff like this and i'm sure Tom loves doing it too
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Originally Posted by integratable
What do you mean top pro cards. Do you think that these old gpu's made for video editing will beat any high end gaming card in games or 3d benchmarks? No they wont. And god damn stop stating the obvious that this is a waste of money. So annoying when you people repeat what tom already said a hundred times. |
One more reason OC3D "ROCKS"
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Originally Posted by Ya93sin
Workstation cards? nVidia Quadro and AMD FirePro? |
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Originally Posted by tinytomlogan
 So what if money was no object? What if you want to break world records? Perhaps Quadfire HD7970s would be the ticket... Continue Reading |
Crysis 2 being the exception. Why isn't battlefield 3 there? On multiplayer Ultra settings it's a GPU killer.
Next week: Tom's testing FIVE cards for extreme ePeen, four in the rig and the fifth to stuff down his pants
lolScoob.
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So what if money was no object? What if you want to break world records? Perhaps Quadfire HD7970s would be the ticket...
Continue Reading