10 Years of AMD Video Cards BENCHMARKED!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,502 words · ~7 min read
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look at how far we've come from the radon HD 3870 launched back in 2007 to
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the rx480 a ton has changed AMD is using a
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manufacturing process four nodes smaller
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the current King has double the PCI E bandwidth up to 16 times the video frame
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buffer size support for directx12 and Vulcan versus DX 10.1 and it actually
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costs less so let's take a look at AMD
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video card Innovation over the last 10 years and see how it is that we got
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here the master keys Pro keyboard lineup from Cooler Master is available in three
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sizes each in white or RGB flavors check
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them out at the link below we already had quite a few of the
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representatives we needed of AMD's top single GPU graphics card for each
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generation but there were a few code name XT cards missing from our Pokedex
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so this project began as so many seem to
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have lately with ebay.ca because Canadians don't get the
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good eBay for our test we went with a high-end modern test bench to avoid
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bottlenecks and we ran a mix of synthetic benchmarks and games both
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modern and kills me to think of things I played as a teenager as classic or retro
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but we've got some of that too first up is the radon HD
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3870 this was truly a dark time for the
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AMD Rebellion their previous generation Flagship 2900 XT with its groundbreaking
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but very expensive 512-bit memory bus
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had just gotten its butt soundly kicked by NVIDIA's G80 so it was time for
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strategy shift instead of building a
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huge complex GPU AMD built a smaller
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more efficient one relying on CrossFire technology to reach the high-end
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Enthusiast Market thanks to being built on a 55 versus 80 NM process the 3870
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managed to perform similarly while being
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much cheaper than its predecessor AMD looked to build on the
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success of that lower performance but lower risk strategy with the
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4870 code name rv770 XT was a
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substantially larger chip than the 3870
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at 256 mm squared but that extra
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performance and frame buffer sizes up to 2 gigs allowed AMD to command a higher
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price and that's still just over half
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the size of their last attempt at a big GPU the radon hd50 870 marked a return
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to confidence for AMD with over two
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billion transistors a move from their terascale to terascale 2 architecture
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bringing with it direct X11 support implementation of PCIe gen 2.1 and a
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process shrink from 55 nanomer to 40
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nanomer it was an ambitious project not
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to mention that this was the beginning of AMD's push for multi-display gaming
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techn technology that they called ifinity 5870 performed very well against
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NVIDIA's furnace of a gtx480 and still
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holds up well enough today that it might be worth modding your cooler if your fan
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dies the hd6970 built on this success
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again AMD officially dubbed its architecture ter scale 3 but due to
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tsmc's cancelled 32 NM node it was
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actually built on the same 40 NMM man manufacturing process so performance
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wasn't dramatically better with die size transistor count and notably power
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consumption all Rising substantially
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that last in particular was a trend that just couldn't continue indefinitely the
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hd7970 was another huge undertaking AMD
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went from 2.64 to over 4 billion transistors with a wide 384-bit memory
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interface they moved to the 28 nanometer manufacturing process they added support
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for PCI Express gen 3 to the amusement
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of enthusiasts who noted that AMD motherboard chipsets didn't and up until
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very recently still didn't have official support for it and introduced the world
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to the directx12 and Vulcan compatible
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gcn architecture that has been the Beating Heart of every AMD card and Apu
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since not to mention the current game
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consoles from all three of the big
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players its compelling performance and
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forward-looking feature set ended up saving AMD a lot of R&D money in
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subsequent years the 7970 was introduced
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as a top of the line card but would end up being recycled twice as the 7970 GHz
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Edition and 280X in lie of developing new gpus to
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compete with NVIDIA's stepdown 700 series cards the Radeon HD 290x that
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came next was a formal return in many
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ways to the uh home run swing strategy
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that had ultimately LED AMD down over half a decade prior it was huge slightly
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larger than the 2900 XT it rocked over 6
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billion transistors it had a 512-bit
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memory bus again and ran an upgraded
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version of gcn dubbed gcn second gen
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which all sounds great on paper but it was damn near impossible to manufacture
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at a reasonable cost it ran hotter than summer on the tropical island where they
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hosted the launch event and sounded like the jet that I flew there on its killer
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features mantle and true audio were
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absorbed or ignored and it took over a
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year of driver development to reach its full potential at which time AMD
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promptly relaunched it as 390x they called it Granada XT instead
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of Hawaii XT and claimed to have tweaked
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it but evidence for actual changes to the hardware beyond the availability of
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higher density memory chips that enabled it to ship with 8 gigs of vram and small
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process improvements at the chip Fab level to achieve slightly higher rated
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clock speeds has never materialized R9
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Fury X on the other hand was not a rebadge for sure this thing made Hawaii
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and Granada look like toys it introduced
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a new generation of gcn with a highquality video scaler and lossless
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Delta color compression it was the first GPU to use hbm or high bandwidth memory
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which is high performance 3D stacked Dam right next to the GPU for a marketed
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4,096-bit memory interface and boasted a completely ludicrous
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596 mm squ die with just shy of 9
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billion transistors I mean I don't blame
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them you got to do what you got to do to appease pcmr insatiable Lust For frame
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rates and the GPU industry had been stuck with 28 nanometer manufacturing
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for well over 3 years but when your Flagship graphics card needs a
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prepackaged water cooler it might be
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time to take your foot off the gas pedal
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which is exactly what they did just over
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4 years later AMD came full circle
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abandoning the Revolutionary new features of their previous Flagship in
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favor of something a little more practical if Fury X was a Ferrari then
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rx480 is an EcoBoost Mustang I mean sure
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it's not as fast but it consumes just over half as much power is available
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with to double the vram since unlike hbm
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gddr5 is available on the cheap doeses
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this with a die size that's less than half partially thanks to a shiny new 14
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nmet manufacturing process and oh did I
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mention it's less than a third of the
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price though with all that said I wouldn't count out AMD as a high-end
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competitor just yet they played it safe
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this generation by launching The Sweet Spot GPU you first but we've seen
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working high-end hardware and Vega is
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coming thanks for watching AMD gpus Through the Ages you can check out our
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previous episodes on Intel CPUs and water blocks which we'll have hopefully
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