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Thread: Reviews - PowerColor Radeon HD 6950 2GB PCS++ graphics card review

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    Reviews - PowerColor Radeon HD 6950 2GB PCS++ graphics card review

    Is it a Radeon HD 6950 or a Radeon HD 6970? PowerColor gives you the best of both worlds.
    Read more.

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    Re: Reviews - PowerColor Radeon HD 6950 2GB PCS++ graphics card review

    BIOS switch should realise full HD 6970 specs
    the amount of cards failing the `upgrade` is increasing alot - i do think suggesting it , with the possible fallout from a failed `upgrade` isnt the best idea.

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    Re: Reviews - PowerColor Radeon HD 6950 2GB PCS++ graphics card review

    Increasing a lot? Where? Show me please. In fact you will find that the failure rates are very low and if you only mod the shadders then they are nil or nearly nil. You then can overclock your card to the maximum it can sustain.

    By the way the reason the overclock didn't give you any increased results is because the memory was overclocked far too much and started throttling. In order to avoid that, just downclock your memory back to stock levels.

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    Re: Reviews - PowerColor Radeon HD 6950 2GB PCS++ graphics card review

    bang4buck page says it all, Gigabyte 560 SOC is better value (and that's even at Scan's over priced £230 instead of the £219.99 you can get it at DABS)

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    Re: Reviews - PowerColor Radeon HD 6950 2GB PCS++ graphics card review

    It would be nice if Hexus added Metro2033 and/or S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat to the games they test.

    Edit!!

    The 1GHZ GTX560 at £220 looks good value for money if you are using a 1920X1080 or 1920X1200 screen.

    However,the HD6950 2GB PCS++ looks better suited for gaming at 2560X1600 or when using two or three monitors due to the extra video RAM.

    The HD6950 1GB needs to drop under £200 at more retailers IMHO if the HD6950 is to become more cost effective when compared to the GTX560 at lower screen resolutions.

    It seems that the GTX560 SOC 1GHZ won't be in stock for nearly another month at Dabs and Ebuyer though:

    http://www.dabs.com/products/gigabyt...cked-7B28.html

    http://www.ebuyer.com/product/253955

    It seems there will be 35 cards available between Dabs and Ebuyer who are among the largest computer parts retailers in the UK.

    There seems to be none in stock at Scan,OcUK,Aria and Novatech:

    http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1gb-g...0mhz-384-cores

    http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...14&subcat=1341

    http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/p...560so-1gi.html

    http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/p...560so-1gi.html

    It does not seem to be shipping in large quantities especially considering that other GTX560 cards are available in much large numbers.
    Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 09-02-2011 at 06:26 PM.

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    Re: Reviews - PowerColor Radeon HD 6950 2GB PCS++ graphics card review

    luckily I ordered mine a week or so ago and will have mine next week

    I think chances are if you're dropping £800 on a monitor or 2 or 3 then you're going to be not worrying about the extra an running £300+ GPU's

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    Re: Reviews - PowerColor Radeon HD 6950 2GB PCS++ graphics card review

    A pair of 22" 1920x1080 LCD monitors can be had for around £200 to £220 and a pair of 24" monitors with the same resolution can be had for around £260 to £300 too.

    It seems that 2GB GTX560 cards are also being released so it would be interesting to see how they will perform when compared to a GTX580.
    Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 09-02-2011 at 11:21 PM.

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    Re: Reviews - PowerColor Radeon HD 6950 2GB PCS++ graphics card review

    New games? Sure. We're revamping the suite - new one to be launched soon - and we'd like your input.

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    Re: Reviews - PowerColor Radeon HD 6950 2GB PCS++ graphics card review

    but who would do a pair of monitors for gaming? it would need to be 3 otherwise your cross hairs are in the black bezel

    I would really like to see GTX 560 SOC SLI results though

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    Re: Reviews - PowerColor Radeon HD 6950 2GB PCS++ graphics card review

    How about adding lower end cards (by lower end I mean like my GTX260) not everyone has a 460 as a minimum & the site can only benefit from people with lower powered cards looking to upgrade coming over to HEXUS to check out some benchies

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    Re: Reviews - PowerColor Radeon HD 6950 2GB PCS++ graphics card review

    Quote Originally Posted by Tarinder View Post
    New games? Sure. We're revamping the suite - new one to be launched soon - and we'd like your input.
    BF3 will mostlikely be big for PC gamers and I'd like to see how that benches, possibly to replace BC2.
    Society's to blame,
    Or possibly Atari.

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    Re: Reviews - PowerColor Radeon HD 6950 2GB PCS++ graphics card review

    Quote Originally Posted by Rob_B View Post
    How about adding lower end cards (by lower end I mean like my GTX260) not everyone has a 460 as a minimum & the site can only benefit from people with lower powered cards looking to upgrade coming over to HEXUS to check out some benchies
    the way reviews work is that the review sites have a "bank" of standard games they use, they then keep in the database all the cards they use from that point on, as new games are added, to add the data for those older cards they have to re-benchmark all the cards with that new game

    I don't think it's fair to expect them to go back 2 generations when re-testing old cards against a new game, surely you can extrapolate that your card is near the bottom of the pile from 2 years ago and that anything released in the last 6 months is faster?

    then you just need to decide how much you're willing to spend and get the best card you can at that price (which is easy to do on the current reviews - particularly with the bang4buck

    your 260 struggles to get double digits in some of the games and settings being used now (e.g. Crysis on 260 @ 1920x1200 on MEDIUM settings = 12 FPS), if it was added to the current list it would be off the bottom of the chart

    plus, if you include the 260 then you have to include the 270, 280, 285 and all the ATI cards from that era too... the tables would be a mile long
    Last edited by andyb123; 10-02-2011 at 11:42 AM.

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    Re: Reviews - PowerColor Radeon HD 6950 2GB PCS++ graphics card review

    Metro2033,S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat,StarCraft 2 and Civilization V are my suggestions for newer games.

    Metro2033 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat are games which push DX11 features so they are good tests to see how modern cards run DX11 games. Metro2033 was even used by Nvidia as a showcase for DX11 features and it really pushes modern graphics cards.

    StarCraft 2 and Civilization V are very popular games with millions of sales so I think it is relevant that they are tested too.
    Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 10-02-2011 at 02:13 PM.

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    Re: Reviews - PowerColor Radeon HD 6950 2GB PCS++ graphics card review

    Quote Originally Posted by andyb123 View Post
    the way reviews work is that the review sites have a "bank" of standard games they use, they then keep in the database all the cards they use from that point on, as new games are added, to add the data for those older cards they have to re-benchmark all the cards with that new game

    I don't think it's fair to expect them to go back 2 generations when re-testing old cards against a new game, surely you can extrapolate that your card is near the bottom of the pile from 2 years ago and that anything released in the last 6 months is faster?

    then you just need to decide how much you're willing to spend and get the best card you can at that price (which is easy to do on the current reviews - particularly with the bang4buck

    your 260 struggles to get double digits in some of the games and settings being used now (e.g. Crysis on 260 @ 1920x1200 on MEDIUM settings = 12 FPS), if it was added to the current list it would be off the bottom of the chart

    plus, if you include the 260 then you have to include the 270, 280, 285 and all the ATI cards from that era too... the tables would be a mile long
    I'm aware how they work.

    Benching an older card (260 was as an example only) means that once done HEXUS have a 'low end' card to include in their benches & never have to run them again. I'm not exactly out of the loop with HW but to read these results I have to think "my 260 is x% slower than a 460" and work from there, not helpful.

    Obviously not EVERYONE has a low end card & HEXUS regulars are probably every less likely to however HEXUS doesn't (and shouldn't) only cater for that type of user.

    To expand the readership that may come from including low end cards is surely worth the few hours it'd take to run the benches.
    The Steam survey (arguably known for people probably having higher than average hardware) shows the below results in order of % of that type of card being used.

    NVIDIA GeForce 8800 5.73%
    NVIDIA GeForce 9800 5.52%
    NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 4.00%
    NVIDIA GeForce 9600 3.68%
    ATI Radeon HD 5770 3.60%
    NVIDIA GeForce GTS 150 3.15%
    ATI Radeon HD 4850 3.01%
    NVIDIA GeForce 8600 2.96%
    ATI Radeon HD 4870 2.92%
    NVIDIA GeForce 9500 2.35%
    ATI Radeon HD 5850 2.01%
    NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1.98%
    ATI Radeon HD 5870 1.87%

    The lowest card they use is the 12th most used card. Are you saying that HEXUS shouldn't spend a little time to provide results that would be useful for a potentially HUGE amount of users?

    Are these results available on other hardware sites? If yes then HEXUS should match it to keep up, if not then HEXUS should do so to differentiate itself.

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    Re: Reviews - PowerColor Radeon HD 6950 2GB PCS++ graphics card review

    by your argument they should include cards back as far as the 8xxx nv and 4xxx ATI, but that's rediculous because everyone knows they are obsolete

    it doesn't take 2 seconds to google, for example "gtx 460 reviews" (or find the ones that are right here on hexus) and these will usually include the last gen comparable cards (e.g. your 260)

    another website used to have a database of all the GPU results they'd ever recorded, however they took it down because obviously not enough people used it to make it worth keeping up to date

    surely you can just start from the premise that "new game x won't run on my PC - what do I need to make that happen" and then look at current gen cards - why do you need to know how badly your old card runs when you already have the choppy glory right in front of your eyes



    +1 for Battlefield 3 added to the benchies when it comes out, along with Crysis 2
    -1 for Stalker or Metro2033

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    Re: Reviews - PowerColor Radeon HD 6950 2GB PCS++ graphics card review

    It's a good job you're not the one making decisions then isn't it....

    It's Anandtech with the GPU charts, they are still alive & kicking & are the only one I know of.
    A gap in the tech review market perhaps?...
    I wonder what site could spend a couple of hours benching one or two 'older' cards and possibly be of value to nearly 10% of the gaming market?

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