The noise component that arises from less bit depth, quantization noise, ideally has a standard deviation of 0.5 ADU / sqrt(2)
Say the black frame noise for the 7D at ISO 100 has a Std.Dev of 5.0 ADU.
The quantization noise is 0.35 ADU, and subtracted as RMS, we get noise level from other sources than quantization to be 4.99 ADU
If we replaced the A/D converter in the 7D with a 12-bit one, the quantization noise would be 1.4 (in 14-bit scale)
Adding that quantization noise to 4.99 as RMS, we get 5.19.
The difference between 5.0 and 5.19 is 0,05 stops, meaning that if the 7D had a (perfect) 12-bit converter, the DR would only be 0,05 stops worse.
A/D converters working at high speed often introduce more noise than the quantization itself, so the real-world difference is bigger.
If the A/D noise is say 1,5 ADU (a realistic value at these conversion speeds), a 12-bit converter would give a total noise level of 7.8, and we lost about 2/3 stops DR.
As long as we don't know exactly how good the converters are (we can't separate conversion noise from amp noise), we don't know the exact benefit of using 14 bits. What we do know, is that the (12-bit) 450D has about 0,5 stops less DR than the (14 bit) 40D.
All this affects DR and not so much SNR.