Reviews - AMD Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6950 2GB graphics card review

[Tarinder]

Interesting release by AMD... Unfortunate that most places are out of stock. Looks like the HD6950 is a winner, particularly for my setup.

There is a mistake in the article I thought I should bring to your attention;

"This clearly means that its bang4buck is sweeter, though not quite as good as the GTX 570's." This is referring to the HD6950 on page 20, under Analysis, second paragraph.

Looked at the results table and found the HD6950 to have a bang4buck of 1.72 and the GTX570 had one of 1.67...

Yup, AMD did some last-minute (again!) price-dropping and I have yet to update that bit. Ta.

[Jimbo75]

People need to keep in mind, which they clearly aren't as I don't see anyone mentioning it here, that it's a brand new architecture. Even if it is based on previous efforts, do you all think the current drivers are offering best optimisation? The figures look roughly even right now, but if AMD are working hard to improve the drivers for this new and potentially untapped architecture, then the situation may very well change.

For now, I'm still deciding whether I should wait for a passive 67xx or just plump for Gigabyte's 5750...

You're right, the drivers are in a total mess still. I wouldn't be buying one of these cards on the hope that AMD fixes things fast though.

[Terbinator]

http://forums.hexus.net/2003565-post33.html

That was barely a month ago, can you see more or less consistency after today?

Well when you outline what your trying to get at, I'll give you an answer.

*Still curious how you made the jump*

[Jimbo75]

Well when you outline what your trying to get at, I'll give you an answer.

*Still curious how you made the jump*

Should be obvious that if a month ago you agreed about the lack of consistency, you'd think there was even more after today.

Or did you change your mind since then?

As for the jump, I have no idea what you are on about terb.

[Terbinator]

Should be obvious that if a month ago you agreed about the lack of consistency, you'd think there was even more after today.

Or did you change your mind since then?

As for the jump, I have no idea what you are on about terb.

But the whole image quality issue wasn't around a month ago was it? They've run the tests, so to speak, and now it will be put to bed because they don't really reflect anything objectively, FPS wise, and Tarinder didn't notice any difference to back up the negligible difference in FPS.

As far as i can tell and expect 'its over' as far as Hexus (and myself) are concerned on the IQ front.

[Jimbo75]

But the whole image quality issue wasn't around a month ago was it?

http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/Feature/...ys-nvidia.aspx

Started before then actually, but that was the first proper review of it. Nice article btw, you should read it.

They've run the tests, so to speak, and now it will be put to bed because they don't really reflect anything objectively, FPS wise, and Tarinder didn't notice any difference to back up the negligible difference in FPS.

As far as i can tell and expect 'its over' as far as Hexus (and myself) are concerned on the IQ front.

We'll see. Chris Angelini at toms hardware said "I'm inclined to test with High Quality on AMD cards from now on". I get the feeling this one is far from being over.

My concern is, if nVidia gets away with this, they'll use it as another weapon in the benchmark scoring. We know that nVidia can make devs like Ubisoft do their will, look at HAWX 2 for a prime example. If review sites start running AMD cards at HQ, and nVidia at default, who's to say what they will dream up next to hurt AMD's performance?

[Terbinator]

Keyword being Tom'sHardware. notorious hardware site and most importantly, not Hexus.

[Jimbo75]

Keyword being Tom'sHardware. notorious hardware site and most importantly, not Hexus.

And why do you think I went off on a rant at the start?

[crossy]

Good review Hexus - very informative.

From a personal point of view it's interesting to see how well a dualed GF460 1GB setup works - I wasn't expecting it to figure so high up the ranks for the games I've got.

That said, I can't see the Energy Saving Trust recommending it anytime soon - 431W under load - ouch!

[Terbinator]

Watch out for what NVIDIA does it its next big driver release. The I.Q. debate may well sort itself out.

Is there definitely a big driver release or is it speculation? If it is, i hope its more than just a lick of paint

[Jimbo75]

Is there definitely a big driver release or is it speculation? If it is, i hope its more than just a lick of paint

Call me paranoid, but this is my best shot at it.

They will remove all quality settings, stating that "we don't alter IQ in executables so no need for it".

Then something like this http://www.kitguru.net/components/gr...tection-cheat/ will happen.

Then they'll say it was a "bug" and no cheat was intended. Meanwhile AMD has probably been browbeaten into switching to High Quality in drivers as nVidia gets away with "not altering IQ in executables, honest guv".

[dom99]

I really want to get my hands on a 6950, drivers will make these cards even better!

[dom99]

plus I think the inclusion of "powertune" is brilliant, it has definitly swung my decision between this and Nvidia because power consumption is one of biggest factors for me

[Nobull]

Another point worth making is that the 6950 and 6970 with their 2GB frame buffers compared to the ~1.5GB of Nvidias 570 & 580 should be more future proof shouldn't they? As games become more complex playing them at higher resolutions will presumably need bigger frame buffers?

I could be wrong, I'm not an expert on the matter

[crossy]

Another point worth making is that the 6950 and 6970 with their 2GB frame buffers compared to the ~1.5GB of Nvidias 570 & 580 should be more future proof shouldn't they? As games become more complex playing them at higher resolutions will presumably need bigger frame buffers?

That would seem like a common-sense conclusion - more texture information being stored in the gfx-mem, so presumably less need to page stuff in and out of main memory (I read a tech article some time ago that said this is how things were done)

Down side is that the rest of the tech also seems to be changing rapidly - from what I've seen 3 years seems to be a typical life for a mid to high-range card (unless there's some major breakthrough). Remember that - as an example - we had GDDR3-based cards just over six years ago, now GDDR5 seems to be the standard.

Personally speaking (and I'm quite happy for someone more informed than I to dive in here) I think we'll see even more parallellism coming in - effectively we'll have smaller processing units but more of them - think Cray T3D etc. I can't see much scope for more performance jumps by increasing clock rate (too much power drain), so it's got to be another way.

[mercyground]

And why do you think I went off on a rant at the start?

Tom has sadly.. urm. been rather lacking for a while now. Its why i no longer bother using him.

Hexus (Consistantly good articles), Anandtech (The man is a god. Followed his site since the early days and rely on it for SSD tracking), HardOcp (Steve's **** you we're doing it our way is ace.)

Everyone has their own way of writing. Its sticking with those you trust. I will say thou that Nvidia's "bending" of the truth is just pathetic and really demenaing for what once a seriously good set of engineers. Its a shame their PR has sunk to this sort of level. Fire the lot of the PR ppl and get the engineers doing what they do best.