Introducing AMD’s HD 6790
Metro 2033
Metro 2033 is the “Crysis” of 2010. It is a very demanding game on any PC with the very latest DX11 visuals. Metro 2033 is an action-oriented video game with a combination of survival horror, and first-person shooter elements. The game is based on the novel “Metro 2033” by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. It was developed by 4A Games in Ukraine and released in March 2010.
The game utilizes multi-platform 4A Engine and there is some doubt if the games engine is related to the original XRay engine used in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.. The Metro 2033 story takes place mostly in post-apocalyptic Moscow’s metro system but occasionally the player has to go above ground on some missions and to search for valuables. Metro 2033‘s locations reflect the dark atmosphere of real metro tunnels but in a much more dangerous and lethal manner. Strange phenomena and noises are frequent, and mostly the player has to rely only on their flashlight to find their way around in otherwise total darkness. Even more deadly is the surface as it is severely irradiated and a gas mask must be worn at all times due to the toxic air.
THQ has released an official benchmark for Metro 2033 which provides minimum/maximum/average framerates, and you can adjust many graphics settings including PhysX, AA, DOF and tessellation, and the number of runs. Our presets are set to maximum (very high) with 1xAA and no PhysX nor DOF enabled. Here is our first chart at 1920×1200.
We are noticing severe lag. We continue to test at Very High settings with AA and DOF off except as noted and now at 1680×1050:
All of our single cards struggle with Metro 2033 with the aggressive settings that we used. Metro 2033 is an interesting benchmark and we see the HD 5770 is barely ahead of the GTX 550 Ti while the HD 6790 is faster than either of them.
I still think that 6790 is the 5830 of its generation. Too many cuts leads to a crippled chip that exists only because AMD marketing wanted to sell you a chip that would otherwise be thrown in the trash bin because it had too many defects to pass as a 68xx/69xx. That might be good marketing but it’s not a good deal for the buyer.
Beating the GTX 550 is an accomplishment, sure, but not much of one, since the 550 is such a garbage card to begin with.
If you’ve got $150 to spend on a video card, just save up and buy a 6950 for $250. That extra $100 has a great deal of marginal value. As opposed to, say the $150 delta between a GTX 570 and 580, which is just like throwing money away.
This generation of GPUs at 40 nm has been rather underwhelming on the whole. No true spiritual successor to the 8800 GT from either the red or green team. And with DX 11 adoption at a virtual trickle, thanks to the negative effects of consolization, it would appear that progress will be slow until the next-generation of consoles appears.
Bring on 28 nm.
On the bright side, another great review by ABT.
100% agreed with above comment!
Well, I’d say that GTX 460 1GB is almost like the 8800GT of its time, but only if you could find one for $150 with rebates.
Both companies are desperately trying to keep the prices up. Now, a $500 GTX 580 is starting to look a bit “mediocre” with some recent games like Metro 2033, Mafia 2, etc.. The price to pay for eye candy on the PC is rather high, and many games are console ports from consoles that are “several” years old, or a few PC generations behind.
I find it to be really misleading when AMD claims that the 6790 has 256-bit memory when the sawed-off ROPs limit access to only half of the available bandwidth, as the card behaves exactly like as if it has 128-bit bus. For more on this, if you want to discuss on the forums here, I started a thread: http://alienbabeltech.com/abt/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=22733
I also believe that all Barts GPU’s are VLIW4-based like the rest of Northern Islands. It’s something else that appears to be in a dimly-lit area.. when one shines a candle in that area, something just doesn’t look right.