as the title say which one well run better and smother.

do anyone no any benchmark where they compare ATI 6990 Vs 2x ATI 6950 Flash too 6970

2x ATI 6950 Flash too 6970 are a heck of a ot cheaper for better performance !

Well, compare a 6990 to 6970 CF surely? That's the whole point of flashing the card?

And you'll see the 6970 CF gets marginally higher FPS due to the higher standard clockspeeds, and neither will be smoother than the other - all a 6990 is a 6970 CF setup downclocked on one card.

Check here

It has been evidenced that 6970XF will have the following over a 6990:
- Cheaper
- Higher FPS
- Cooler
- Quieter
- Less Power

At the detriment to:
- Uses up 2 PCI-E slots
- Uses up 2 x 8pin and 2 x 6pin power connections
- Space within Chassis

Assuming you are running both options at the same clocks, the theoretical maximum output is better using two crossfired 6950/70 than it is using a single 6990.. Of course the 6990 probably scales better compared to crossfire (I mean the standard two chips on the board as opposed to two 6950/70 in crossfire) but I would say if you have a crossfire ready motherboard and are looking to spend money, then go with the dual 6950/70, or wait until the 6990's come down a bit in price to make them more worthwile price wise.

Great in theory, apart from the CF scales no better on the 6990 vs 6970 CF. As well as the advantages listed by f00f1ght0r, the 6970 CF can be overclocked much further, for even more performance.

Edit: In fact, using Anandtech's 6990 review, the 6970 CF setup beats the 6990 in all but 3 benchmarks (and those three are either at resolutions that you really shouldn't be using either on, or so close it's a hollow victory), while the 6970CF set up wins out by a fair margin quite regularly. Even the 6950 CF set up beats the 6990 OC set up a fair number of times, and beats the stock card even more.

And then the power consumption figures. As I expected the 6970 CF set up uses the same power at idle as the 6990 (6950 CF uses marginally less), but slightly more in game (20W more than the 6990 OC, but is faster), though in Furmark the 6990 OC uses 83W more than the 6970 CF set up. The temps are the same in game, but less for the 6970 set up at idle, but under Furmark, the 6990 OC is worse at 94°C vs 92°C. It's also much louder than the 6970 CF set up.

So basically, the 6990 is worse than two 6950 cards with unlocked shaders (which is a little safer than full 6970 flash, as that changes the memory voltage to higher than specced, though memory speeds aren't that big a performance factor), yet costs around £120-140 more. I know what I'd do.

Its disproportionate though, remember , not that Anandtech has got a single powertune thing right yet, the 6990 non OC setting uses less power than a 6970xf setup, the OC setting more than anything else vastly increases the POWERTUNE SETTING, which in Furmark looks awful, but you still have a fairly large amount of overclocking headroom before an actual game uses that same level of power.

The 6990OC even in anandtechs benchmarks, at the overclocked bios setting uses 20W less than the 6970xf setup in Crysis. Again its like the 6970xf has +20% powertune setting in furmark and the 6990oc has a +40% setting, in games, this power isn't being used, theres a LOT of room for overclocking there, and frankly a lot of sites other than Anandtech seem to suggest that while loud people got much lower temps than they did at not ear splitting noise.

Also remember the 6990 OC setting has the same stock memory clock speed and [H] has very clearly shown that several games show a significant lack of bandwidth with the OC setting, I'd also suggest that whacking the memory up 150Mhz, or 200Mhz maybe(to be inline with the 6970's) would both unlock quite a bit of performance, and only increase memory power usage 15-20W, thats where performance differentiation will be interesting.


Powertune is the key here, and people aren't thinking about it, 6990 OC powertune setting pushes it WAY higher than 6970's in furmark, but in a real game it still uses less power. You're getting a minor overclock, and essentially an unlimited powertune overclock, you still need to actually overclock yourself to "fill up" that powertune allowance in real games.

Personally, unless you're going quadfire(with for the love of god a mobo that wouldn't put them right next to each other) theres entirely no reason to get the 6990.

2x6950's unlocked will perform similarly, much more quietly, allow for third party cooling, or buy versions with diff stock cooling, and overclock well. Performance may/may not be different, at those performance levels you frankly will not feel the difference in any games.

Also if one goes wrong you still have a very capable system with one of the card left while the other is rma

To make the choice even easier, this weekend only OCuk have 40 of the MSI 6950 at £189.98 inc vat...

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-119-MS

That is tempting, if I could sell my GTX 460, I would get that 6950. But the price is slowly decreasing anyway so hopefully that deal comes along in a few weeks!

Marvin said:

and neither will be smoother than the other

Click to expand...

i disagree... with the 6990 the fps doesn't jump around as much as 2 separate 6950 or 6970.

the 6990 is certainly a monster card.....my point of view is like all new cards it will come down a lot in price once all of the impatient people have paid top dollar for it......i for one would like it once alittle cheaper and i would have it under water from day one so hissing fugly fans wouldnt be an issue...its exactly the same as the 5970 was in the 5 series cards so i dont see why people are surprised at what it is or does.....lets see what nvidia have to offer and judge it then......if they were to drop £100 of it then it would be 6990 all day long over 6950cf and i dont think any one would be having this discussion....ati dropped the ball on the pricing thats for sure but within weeks once they have sold only a few they will drop it to were it should be

ps...please dont think im a fanboy...i will buy whatever card green or red that suites my wallet and performance needs

[timko];18653933 said:

To make the choice even easier, this weekend only OCuk have 40 of the MSI 6950 at £189.98 inc vat...

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-119-MS

Click to expand...

wow i sold my used xfx for 205 inc

thanks for all the inf i may get 2 6950 when i get my money

gareth170 said:

i disagree... with the 6990 the fps doesn't jump around as much as 2 separate 6950 or 6970.

Click to expand...

I would expect that to be down to more recent drivers.

One quite major problem with the 6990 is the reference cooler. It is fart-into-a-hurricane crap, and as a result the card runs hot and would limit the efforts when overclocking (Overclock3d review). Unless you're limited by the number of PCIe slots in your computer, I would certainly go down the 6950 route, not to mention the money you would save!

Mojo said:

One quite major problem with the 6990 is the reference cooler. It is fart-into-a-hurricane crap, and as a result the card runs hot and would limit the efforts when overclocking (Overclock3d review). Unless you're limited by the number of PCIe slots in your computer, I would certainly go down the 6950 route, not to mention the money you would save!

Click to expand...

with a cooling block it will be a beast though and they will come down in price.....people are only ****ed because of the initial price of the thing...me included

You really can't go wrong with two 6950 flashed to 6970's, I'm kinda ****** off i paid £275 for my 6970 then two weeks later we found out 6950 was a 6970 without the bio's /RAGE, I could have just bought two 6950's and flashed them.

Mojo said:

One quite major problem with the 6990 is the reference cooler. It is fart-into-a-hurricane crap, and as a result the card runs hot and would limit the efforts when overclocking (Overclock3d review). Unless you're limited by the number of PCIe slots in your computer, I would certainly go down the 6950 route, not to mention the money you would save!

Click to expand...

i get 950/1375 on stock voltage, 78c~ temp...

http://3dmark.com/3dm11/820972

3DMark Score
P9080

Graphics score
10536

Physics Score
6778

Combined Score
5948

GraphicsTest1
46.07 FPS

GraphicsTest2
56.19 FPS

GraphicsTest3
67.05 FPS

GraphicsTest4
30.4 FPS

PhysicsTest
21.52 FPS

CombinedTest
27.67 FPS