| PowerColor Radeon HD 6970 Video Card |
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Reviews -
Featured Reviews: Video Cards
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| Written by Olin Coles |
| Wednesday, 15 December 2010 |
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Page 3 of 16
Radeon Features
- Microsoft DirectX 11 Support
- AMD Eyefinity Technology
- AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) Technology Designed for DirectCompute 5.0 and OpenCL
- Accelerate Video Transcoding
- 40 nm Process Technology
- Advanced GDDR5 Memory Technology
- 3rd Generation TeraScale Engine
- Microsoft Windows 7 Support
- AMD CrossFireX Technology
- Enhanced Anisotropic Filtering
- Accelerated Video Transcoding
- Display Flexibility, Supports DL-DVI, DP, HDMI and D-Sub
- HDMI 1.4a support with Deep Color and 7.1 High Bitrate Audio
- On chip HDCP Support
- AMD CrossFireX multi-GPU support for highly scalable performance. (Use up to four discrete cards with an AMD 790FX based motherboard)
- AMD Avivo HD Support
- ATI Unified Video Decoder 3 (UVD3) for 3D Blu-ray and HD Video.
- Accelerated Video Transcoding (AVT)
- DVD Upscaling
- Dynamic Contrast
- Built-in HDMI with 7.1 surround sound support
- Dynamic power management with ATI PowerPlay technology including memory clocks
- Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio Support
AMD Cayman GPU Details
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AMD Radeon HD 6970
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AMD Radeon HD 6950
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Process
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40 nm
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40 nm
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Die Size
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389 mm2
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389 mm2
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Transistors
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2.64 Billion
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2.64 Billion
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Engine Clock
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880 MHz
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800 MHz
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Stream Processors
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1536
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1408
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Compute Performance
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2.7 TFLOPs
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2.25 TFLOPs
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Texture Units
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96
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88
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Texture Fillrate
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84.5 Gtex/s
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70.4 Gtex/s
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Color ROPs
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32
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32
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Pixel Fillrate
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28.2 Gtex/s
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25.6 Gtex/s
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Z/Stencil ROPs
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128
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128
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Memory Type
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GDDR5
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GDDR5
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Memory Clock
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1375 MHz
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1250 MHz
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Memory Data Rate
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5.5 Gbps
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5.0 Gbps
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Memory Bandwidth
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176 Gbps
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160 Gbps
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PowerTune Maximum Power
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250 W
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200 W
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Typical Gaming Power
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190 W
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140 W
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Typical Idle Power
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20 W
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20 W
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BmR Reviews: 
Comments
I guess AMD will launch all new products when 32nm becomes available. Any insider clue on when that may occur?
sometimes i'm pissed of by Coles style: involved, passionate, stubborn.
BUT: the alternative are all kind of high priests, gurus (no, it's not an arrow to g3D) who made definitive verdicts, and then, never come down in the crowd, or patronise everyone.
so, i've made my choise.
I respect Olin Coles and bmr, with goods, bads and uglies. I admit there is room for better, but i agree with the path.
Don't bother answer, just think about. and this is not a sugestion for calm and harmony. i like creative flames. but assumed by everyone.
It seems that in some games, this GPU outperforms the GTX 470 and in other games, well, this card has really bad performance. I appreciate the work that you've done, but I suspect that a second review may be needed once the public release version comes out.
Otherwise, it seems that little has changed. Nvidia has the very expensive, very high performance single card GPU, and ATI/AMD has a slower card that is less expensive and comparable to Nvidia's second most potent card - kind of like the GTX 275 vs the 4890 situation, where Nvidia had the 285 that was untouchable for any single-card solution.
Although the HD6970 is a truly capable card, the GTX570 is too, and it also has a few capabilities that the ATI/AMD card does not. (CUDA & Phys-X)
So now I can just go ahead and buy my parts.
Thanks for the comprehensive review.
If you need CUDA, use apps. that take advantage of it, then get an nVidia card and stop thread crapping in AMD reviews.
If you want to play games and you are a fan of the tech then AMD might be your choice. Smaller more efficient designs that take advantage of newer faster RAM and aim to push performance/$, multi-monitor gaming, etc.
benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=582&Itemid=64&limit=1&limitstart=4
As for your last statement, I've got to wonder where you've been. Smaller and more efficient - what product are you talking about here? Newer and faster RAM - both vendors have been using the same GDDR5 for almost a year.
Ik have this setup and al benchmark results of the 6870 in crosfire are better than the 6970 results. So my advice: buy 2 6870 and put them in crossfire mode!!