AMD Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6950 Review Comment Thread

[Chilly]

Originally Posted by Shozzking

Would you mind taking off the HSF to see if it was shaved off or not? As far fetched as it sounds there are pictures floating around the internet showing the back corner of the 8pin on the 6970 cut off.

Lokking at a Retail XFX 6970 right now, yes the connector is shaved.

[draemn]

Originally Posted by SKYMTL

We will likely be adding HawX 2 to the benchmarking suite but this "made to run slower on AMD hardware" was simply a PR campaign that AMD waged after the game was released to explain their utter lack of optimizations for it. I am giving them another ~month or so to roll out some properly functioning support structures for that game. If not, it is still likely going to be included in the benchmarking suite.

That's a great way to look at it and I've never thought of it like that before. Thanks for the insight.

[GT7R]

Originally Posted by 10e

I have a new 480 and I don't have any faith in it

Sorry I meant fate lol :)

[heflys20]

Originally Posted by beck2448

I'm amazed how much faster the 580 is in many games. For me its worth the extra bucks.

Well, it's $200 bucks for a 8-15% increase at the 1920-2560 resolutions. IMHO, it's not worth it. I think most folks would do fine with a 6950, 6970 or 570.

[GT7R]

Originally Posted by martin_metal_88

Seriously, your comment just look like product bashing. If you don;t love them just don't post.

If you would read my original comment you would not have been that childish about it (i suppose)
As I said, I don't try to sound nice or something, but just say how things look to me. I NEVER am a 'fanboy' for any company, and if something looks better to me, then I say it. So is the other way around.
In this case it wasn't even 'good' or 'bad', just a thought about something (the delay).

[mikellini]

Has anyone seen this? I'd post it as news but I can't get the damn Wordpress to work :(

AMD Radeon HD 6950 can be unlocked to HD 6970 | techPowerUp

I guess this makes it a really good deal. At least until AMD fixes things.

[burebista]

Yeah, a friend of mine already modded a Sapphire.

[Chilly]

Result

Dual 6970 CF

[coldpower27]

Wow, if you can unlock cards, that makes em an even better deal!!!

[kuddles]

So I splurged on a 6970 yesterday and I'm pretty much enjoying it other than the annoying task of needing to uninstall/reinstall several of my games to get them to work again. (I realized afterwards that every game that had this issue either uses the software version of PhysX or had some kind of activation-based DRM so I probably just needed to reinstall the PhysX software to solve my issues with the former.)

This thing is way quieter and cooler running than my previous card so I'm already happy about that. That MLAA option is a freaking godsend in games like GTA IV and Dead Space that won't allow any other AA option to work, too.

However, I've been using Nvidia cards for the last decade so I have a few questions about the ATI drivers that I'm unclear on:

1) Based on the description, I'm assuming that "Adaptive AA" is similar to the "Transparency AA" setting in the Nvidia panel. Is this correct? Also, will it automatically implement Adaptive AA if I have that selected in the control panel, even if I also have it set to use the AA option in the application or do I have to force it?

2) The only thing I miss about Nvidia is the gimmicky crap. Has anyone had an experience using the Hybrid PhysX mod? Going with a 6970 instead of a 580 leaves me with enough to get a GTS 250 or something off ebay, but I'm worried that it's an unreliable mess or an extraordinary hassle to get working.