| AMD Radeon HD 6970 Video Card |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Video Cards | |
| Written by Olin Coles | |
| Wednesday, 15 December 2010 | |
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Page 2 of 16
AMD Radeon 6970 Closer LookAside from a few decals, the AMD Radeon HD 6970 video card is identical to the reference design by AMD. While some consumers may want more flash for their cash, the conservative appearance helps maintain an affordable sales price.
AMD's Radeon HD 6900-series video cards already look very similar to the previous generation of 6800 and 5800-series products. In fact, of the few discernable differences only the connection header panel, which can add an additional DisplayPort monitor output (if the vendor implements this feature), and the closed rear section. AMD implements dual mini-DisplayPort 1.2 outputs on their 6970, unlike the Sapphire version we recently tested which used a single DP connection.
While there are still two digital DVI ports available on the AMD Radeon HD 6970, only one of them is dual-link to support AMD HD3D while the other is reduced to single-link. AMD's HD3D technology currently supports only one 3D display, with plans for multi-monitor 3D available in the future.
Identical to AMD's reference design, the AMD Radeon HD 6970 measures 10.5" inches long, by 1.25" tall and 3.75" wide. This video card measures slightly shorter than the 11" long Radeon HD 5870, but longer than the 9.75" Radeon HD 6870. Ironically, it measures exactly the same dimensions as its closest competitor: NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 570.
One particular item I've been hoping for is a focused blower fan orientation. This design angles the blower fan slightly downward to improve the forward force of air and creates a small separation between adjacent video cards. CrossFire configurations could benefit by such a design, as the competition has done to tame their much warmer products for several generations now.
The AMD Radeon HD 6970 requires an 8-pin and 6-pin PCI-Express power connection for normal operation. AMD suggests the TDP power demands are 190 watts normal use or 250W using PowerTune for the Cayman GPU, although we confirm this with our own power testing discussed later near the end of this article.
With the Radeon HD 6970 cool air is drawn from directly above the blower fan, while exhaust is expelled through the bracket vent and a small side outlet (shown above, far right) that allows a portion of the heated air back inside the computer case. AMD's Radeon HD 6870 lacks any cool air intake vents at the tail end of the video card, behind the blower fan. As a result, gamers with CrossFireX sets must ensure proper cooling inside their computer case for these video cards to receive fresh air.
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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...