VCE & The Test
Although it’s not unheard of for a video card to launch without all of its features enabled in its drivers, it’s rare to see a video card go for more than a couple of weeks without support for a major feature. AMD’s Video Codec Engine (VCE) – their fixed function H.264 encoder – is still not enabled as of the 7700 series launch. For the 7900 series this wasn’t such a big deal as high-end cards are typically paired with high-end CPUs, but the fact that it’s not enabled for the 7700 series launch is a bit more unsettling. These are cards that are going to be paired with slower CPUs, where having a high speed H.264 encoder is going to be all the more important. This is particularly so for the 7750, given its obvious aspirations for HTPC usage.
AMD was supposed to provide an official statement on the matter for the 7700 launch, however as of press time they have yet to do so. At this point we can only speculate what the holdup is, but regardless it’s unfortunate for AMD.
Moving on, for the launch of the 7700 series AMD provided us with a new driver, which identifies itself as 8.932.2. This driver only works with Cape Verde, and while we’re unable to test it with other cards we’re told there are no performance differences between it and the 7900 series drivers AMD released last month.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-3960X @ 4.3GHz |
| Motherboard: | EVGA X79 SLI |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.2.3.1022 |
| Power Supply: | Antec True Power Quattro 1200 |
| Hard Disk: | Samsung 470 (256GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3-1867 4 x 4GB (8-10-9-26) |
| Case: | Thermaltake Spedo Advance |
| Video Cards: | AMD Radeon HD 7970 AMD Radeon HD 7950 AMD Radeon HD 7770 AMD Radeon HD 7750 AMD Radeon HD 6870 AMD Radeon HD 6850 AMD Radeon HD 5770 AMD Radeon HD 5750 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA ForceWare 295.51 Beta AMD Catalyst Beta 8.921.2-120119a AMD Catalyst Beta 8.932.2 |
| OS: | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7orrAp5utnZOde6S7zGiqoaenZIJ2gJBomKacXaeupbHOp2ShnF1shHZ8jKuYnZ2fo3qpsIxwbnBoXZy1u3nEnaCtoZ%2BjerOx1aKcsGdhZQ%3D%3D