| AMD Radeon HD 6970 Video Card |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Video Cards | |
| Written by Olin Coles | |
| Wednesday, 15 December 2010 | |
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AMD Radeon HD 6970 Video Card ReviewFeaturing a 1536-Core Cayman GPU, AMD's Radeon HD 6970 competes against NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 470.With the introduction of AMD's Cayman GPU, the Radeon HD 6870 video card becomes their flagship DirectX-11 desktop graphics product. Aside from the dual-GPU Radeon HD 5970, gamers can expect the new Radeon HD 6970 to quench their thirst for demanding graphics power. The Cayman GPU features dual graphics engines with an asynchronous dispatch and off-chip geometry buffering to 96 tessellation units using a new VLIW4 shader core architecture. Equipped with a 2GB GDDR5 256-bit video buffer, the Cayman GPU can offer up to 24 SIMD engines and 96 Texture Units. Additionally, the AMD Radeon HD 6970 introduces several new MSAA modes including Enhanced Quality Anti-Aliasing (EQAA). The AMD Radeon HD 6970 takes advantage of improved anti-aliasing features to enhance the DirectX 11 gaming experience. PC gamers are looking for their best value for the money, while producing top-end frame rates to help them build a killstreak. AMD didn't set out to build the fastest graphics card imaginable, likely producing a product so expensive that only the most affluent enthusiasts could afford. Instead, the AMD Radeon HD 6970 was designed for the large majority of consumers, who want top-shelf performance at a fair price. While accomplishing this, they managed to also add accelerated multimedia playback and transcoding, AMD HD3D stereoscopic technology, and the 3D Blu-ray multi-view CODEC (MVC). Benchmark Reviews tests the Radeon HD 6970 graphical frame rate performance using the most demanding PC video game titles and benchmark software available. DirectX-10 favorites such as Crysis Warhead and PCMark Vantage are all included, in addition to DX11 titles such as Aliens vs Predator, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, BattleForge, Lost Planet 2, Mafia II, Metro 2033, and the Unigine Heaven 2.1 benchmark. Built to deliver improved performance to the value-hungry mainstream gaming market, the AMD Radeon HD 6970 video card delivers top-end performance at a value-added price point.
According to information presented at the AMD Editor's Day event back on 14 October 2010, approximately 33% of all AMD graphics solutions are sold for the desktop platform with over 25-million Radeon DirectX-11 compatible products shipped to date. In many ways this data reinforces my position in the recent Desktop Platform article series, but it could also mean that manufacturers are listening ever more intently to the changing needs of their remaining consumer base. This doesn't always leave room for innovation, but AMD manages to introduce emerging technologies nevertheless. For those who have been patiently waiting for news on ATI Stream technology, it's been re-tasked as AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing, or APP technology. AMD Eye-Definition represents their commitment to PC gamers, PC game developers, and the PC gaming industry. Through Eye-Definition AMD delivers their "Gamers Manifesto", which they assert will enable the best experience possible regardless of hardware manufacturer.
Manufacturer: Advanced Micro Devices Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article was obtained from an outside source.
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Comments
Nevertheless, competition in this industry is great for everyone as it always results in aggressive pricing so a big welcome thanks goes out to both AMD and Nvidia in this round for giving all of us such powerful cards at more affordable prices...... In the end, isn't that what we all want?
Put it on enthusiast and watch nvidia burn.
Cayman is faster with actual decent settings in games.
Catalyst 10.11 seems to be an unoptimized driver for HD 6970. Would you agree, or do you believe that it is working at "full capacity"? If it is working at "full capacity", then why does the HD 6970 lose so badly to HD 5870 in Battleforge? It doesn't seem to make sense. Perhaps when AMD releases Catalyst 10.13 (fully supporting HD 6900 series) we'll see an appreciable improvement? Let's hope!
"We are aware that there are some abnormal performance results in BattleForge with our new AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series graphics card. Keep in mind this is a new VLIW4 shader architecture and we are still fine tuning the shader compilation. We will be able to post a hotfix for Battleforge shortly that will provide a noticeable increase in performance."
Besides, I think you're a little glossy-eyed to think the 6970 is "marginally faster" than the GTX 570 simply because of "driver issues". Even more so when you consider how Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and BattleForge are both AMD-sponsored game titles. Even 3dMark Vantage was co-developed with AMD/ATI.
Once drivers are more mature, you can expect to get some performance back. But will it be 20-30%? That might be asking a bit much.
-Performs slightly better than the GTX570 (save for obvious beta driver-related performance problems, such as in Battleforge)
-Draws less power than its competitor, the GTX570
-Is as quiet as the GTX580 (according to TPU)
-Is priced slightly (~$20) higher than the GTX570 (Going by egg prices)
I'm not sure what there is to be disappointed about. The card does what it's supposed to.
#hothardware.com/Reviews/AMD-Radeon-HD-6970--6950-GPU-Reviews-Enter-Cayman/?page=7
3dmk 11 results are close and for once look at that dam xfire scaling awesome
I thought 6970 was gonna be only 5% behind GTX 580 - turns out to be 20% behind, with even GTX 570 beating it. No wonder AMD has been FORCED (by their own FAILURE) to slash prices at launch.
Add to that the fact 6970 is hotter than 5870, much hotter than GTX 580 and only slightly cooler than GTX 480; then add much higher power consumption and higher noise level than 5870 -
All of this adds up to one thing - if you own AMD shares, sell now as Nvidia is set stomp on AMD at least until we see 28nm. AMD's fortunes are headed south for the rest of 40nm, especially given that Nvidia has dual card GTX 595 waiting in the wings to hand 6990 its hat in January.
Great review as always, but I think there's a typo on the Closer Look page, fourth paragraph: "This video card measures slightly shorter than the 11" long Radeon HD 5870, but longer than the 9.75" Radeon HD 6970."
Slightly shorter than itself, eh? Haha. I'm glad I'm not the only one typo'ing AMD's new model numbers every now and then.
1080p also
So, yes. A wider data path is sometimes a cheaper and more reliable way to get bandwidth. particularly when you are on the hairy edge...