AMD Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6950 Review Comment Thread

[chickmagnet19]

I have been waiting for so long for this review!
just today I was browsing for any hint of release date or real benchmarks.
Come January I'll be sure to order 2 6970's for crossfire :)
any opinion which board partner to buy from? msi? asus?
I went with sapphire last for my 5870 and it crapped out 2 weeks after warranty was up :(
Thanks again for the review!

[vohiep84]

Thanks for another great review

[artistpavel]

So that means GTX 580 will continue be insanely priced with no end.

[CMetaphor]

Originally Posted by artistpavel

So that means GTX 580 will continue be insanely priced with no end.

Till the 6990 comes out and spanks it? lol.... The 580 still barely beats a 5970, and looses to it often enough too

[FiXT]

Powertune sounds (and from my currently limited observation) like a HUGE pain in the ass for any enthusiast, and in fact your average consumer who simply wants to run his graphics and card to the max for the best performance possible

AMD simply seems to be saying "You only technically NEED XXX FPS in your games or what ever scenario you happen to be in, so we've downgraded the performance of this $400 card you bought in order to satisfy the power requirements we promised".

I don't like the way its going with mfgs mucking around with throttling at the hardware level.


Let's face it, I'm going to dare to throw a little back in AMD/ATI's face, the same group that lambasted nVIDIA for producing such an "outrageous" power hungry, space heater - and it appears, if it weren't for performance throttling, the 6900 series would be facing the same issue.

No fanboy speaking here, I do applaud AMD's solution, I think it was the right way to go in order to be able to deliver the cards that pack a serious performance punch and I do hope in the grand scheme of things it will be used more of simply a precautionary tool; but I do find it amusing that the shoe is on the other foot so to speak.

[mikellini]

Originally Posted by CMetaphor

Till the 6990 comes out and spanks it? lol.... The 580 still barely beats a 5970, and looses to it often enough too

I don't see a price drop on the gtx 580 until NVIDIA releases the 560 and their dual fermi (595?). However, if they were smart, they'd drop the price on the 570 by $20-30 and nobody would buy a 6970. Hell, nobody would buy a 6950 either, at that price.

The real disappointment to me is the power consumption, I expected a big improvement... Also not sure about this power tune garbage. It's not 'helpful' to overclockers, because they're not getting any benefits out of it they didn't have before. On top of that, I really have to wonder about its efficacy; SKY states in the review that it never really kicked in to reduce performance, but if that's the case, isn't it kind of pointless? Maybe I just don't get it. Either way, it certainly isn't designed to benefit consumers, it's just another control implemented for the benefit of the manufacturer

Edit: FiXT said it better

[artistpavel]

Originally Posted by mikellini

The real disappointment to me is the power consumption, I expected a big improvement...

We are at the pinnacle of 40nm power efficiency, until 28nm, I'd give it Q12012 to be safe.

[Luay79]

1) Playing @ 1080, no point in 2GB DDR5 RAM. GTX570, HD68xx CF or GTX 460 SLI performs better or same as the HD69xx, which can't show off its strength @ low resolutions.
2) Playing @ 1440~1600, 2GB RAM makes the HD 69XX in close second behind a much more expensive GTX 580.
3) Playing @ 3x1080, 4GB HD69xx CF performs equal or better than 3GB GTX580 SLI.*
4) Playing 3D @1440~1600 is the only reason I would pay for the GTX 580. Too bad AMD didn't give a mainstream solution to 3D
5) Playing 3D @ 3x1080 will justify GTX580 SLI, which would make anyone of us wet our pants. If only AMD had solved its 3D issue, 580 SLI would not be a good option here.

Only game companies that are not interested in profit will skip consoles and develop games that will test options #3&5.

*Guru3d's GTX 580 SLI vs. Tomshardware's 6970 CF in Bad Company 2 benchmarks)
http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforc...0-sli-review/6
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...n,2818-18.html
Added Hardware Heaven 3x1080 for F1 2010, edited some errors and simplified.
XFX Radeon 6970 and Radeon 6950 Graphics Card Review - CrossFire / Eyefinity vs SLI

[Delavan]

Great review SKY!
Quite in depth too...

Alright, there is a comparison chart (% of difference) of the HD6970 against the 580 and 570. I would've liked to see the HD5870 in there. Instead, it's being put against the HD6950...which is really close in perf.
It would've been nice to see exactly the % of improvement between HD5870 and HD6970...

It seems that at 1680 X 1050, I have no reasons to swap my HD5870 reference yet, UNTIL I see HD6950 Crossfire scaling benchies..THEN, I might go crazy and grab 2 X 6950 and upgrade my monitor....

Too bad my P45 mobo doesn't support SLI....cause those 570s are REALLY interesting too...

I guess I possibly could bottleneck 2 HD6950 with my oldie Q9550 @ 3.8?

[Greg]

Excellent review. Just a question; why no 1920 x 1200 or 1680 x 1050 in 8x tests?