Views on theHD6900 series

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Having looked at the reviews of the HD6950 and HD6970 performance looks all over the place IMHO. The HD6970 sometimes is much faster than a GTX570 and other times around the same speed as an HD5870.

However,it is interesting to see that the cards seem to do quite well in 2560X1920 and in some newer games too. Crossfire performance looks quite good too.

This means that the architecture will probably do better in newer games. It will be interesting to see if future driver updates increase performance a lot.

Supposedly AMD are going to be releasing weekly updates or something along those lines.

The HD6950 does look quite an interesting card if it drops to around £200 or less. I personally think that AMD should have launched a 1GB version under £200 TBH.

[kalniel]

The series badly needed a shrink to 32nm.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The series badly needed a shrink to 32nm.

Yep! I think even Nvidia needs it too.

The GTX570 has a 520MM2 GPU. The HD6900 series has a 389MM2 GPU.

[Domestic_Ginger]

6970 is too expensive. It should be launching at about £260 to compete with the 570. Maybe all that ram and second bios mean the overheads are a little too much.

No voltage control on launch day is a bit pants. Free performance seems to be an important part of buying a new cad these days. I suppose they do not want to highlight the fact the 6950 will OC to slightly worse performance than the OCed 6970 (5850/5870).

As stated in the Hexus review newer games are going to support the architecture. The problem is whether developers are going to be bold enough to neglect the older generations. Or are prepared invest in developing games for both options.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The HD6950 is the more interesting card IMHO. It has better performance than the HD5870 i newer games and consumes less power too.

Once it drops to below £200 it will be decent value for money IMHO.

The GTX560 is unlikely to be much faster than a GTX470 unless Nvidia want to have less sales of the GTX570. The HD6870 already trades blows with the GTX470.

Hence,I can see the HD6870 and HD6950 giving stiff competition to Nvidia.

[afrothunder]

Hey guys,
just wondering if a stock HD 6950 is better than an GTX 470 OC???

for example:
1280MB Gigabyte GTX 470 Super OC

compared to stock

PowerColor HD 6950 2GB

both are roughly same price.

[Terbinator]

Surely the GTX560 is cheaper to make, the GTX570 is still a cut down 580 right?

On the Radeon front, both cards are underwhelming compared to what we were expecting, the 6950 is just the lesser of two evils and luckily its landed in a price point AMD already had. However, a £30 price drop on both cards would put them in very favourable positions.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Surely the GTX560 is cheaper to make, the GTX570 is still a cut down 580 right?

On the Radeon front, both cards are underwhelming compared to what we were expecting, the 6950 is just the lesser of two evils and luckily its landed in a price point AMD already had. However, a £30 price drop on both cards would put them in very favourable positions.

The GTX560 will use a fully enabled version of the GF104 found in the GTX460 IMHO. The GTX570 uses the 520MM2 GF110.

The problem is that the GTX560 cannot be much faster than a GTX470 since it would mean lower GTX570 sales as the latte is around GTX480 performance. The HD6870 trades blows with the GTX470 and the HD6950 is faster. The HD6870 has a 255MM2 GPU and the GTX460 a 320MM2 to 366MM2 GPU. The HD6950 has a 389MM2 GPU.

[Terbinator]

Thats why i would argue they would sacrifice the 570. If you get a 560 (so a full GF104/114) and it performs the same as 480 for arguments sake, surely its more cost effective for Nvidia to sell more 560's at the £200+/- price point than a cut down 580 at £250.

Lets just and wait and see what happens anyway

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The problem is that there are many more GTX570 cards than GTX580 cards available ATM. Nvidia need to sell the GTX570 to make the GTX580 viable.

Anyway, I hope the HD6950 drops under £200. A GTX560 would probably help in this case!

[shaithis]

Pretty much what I expected. It seems neither side is going to be making significant advances over the other any time soon. Trading blows back-and-forth.

I can see myself recommending the 6950 to a few people, although I feel the 460 (and upcoming 560) will win out for a lot of people due to "being enough" @ 1080p and being significantly cheaper.

As usual, horses for courses.

Best thing is, there are so few gaps in the price-line now. AMD or NVIDIA, pick the whatever card you feel suits your build/budget....there are choices galore!

[badass]

I can't help but wonder whether the 6970 is a die harvested part. Everywhere you see AMD's claims that the VLIW4 design allows 10% more performance for the same die area yet for a 15% increase in die area performance seems to only increase performance by 5%.
Where's the rest of the performance?
Secondly, performance/watt is certainly no better than the 5870. Are they having teething problems with this "new" architecture despite being on TSMC's mature 40nm process?

[kalniel]

I can't help but wonder whether the 6970 is a die harvested part. Everywhere you see AMD's claims that the VLIW4 design allows 10% more performance for the same die area yet for a 15% increase in die area performance seems to only increase performance by 5%.
Where's the rest of the performance?

100%+ tesslation performance and only a 15% increase in die area? Not bad.

[scaryjim]

... for a 15% increase in die area performance seems to only increase by 5%. ...

Using Hexus' overall figures @ 1920x1080, the raw increase is 14% and the normalised increase is 15%. I'd suggest that if you did the same calculations at 2560x1600 the performance increase would be significantly more - certainly the Hexus review text hints at this (but unfortunately doesn't provide the figures ).

Why isn't it more than that? Could be pretty much anything. I'd personally like to see the comparison in 6 months time when the 6970 have had some driver tuning

[Blaineoliver]

Considering how new the drivers will be due to the change to 4shaders per core from 5 shaders.

[george1979]

Have to admit I was a little worried that these new release's were gonna make me want to upgrade from my 3 month old gtx460 but I'm honestly a little underwhelmed. I get that they have made advances in tessellation to compete with Nvidia in newer games but I was expecting more from AMD.
Also in the reviews SLI'd 460's (or xfired 6850s) were still generally on a par with the gtx 580, for less money. Think my next big upgrade is still gonna be another 460 until the next step change in graphics technology.