New 6950 ower, upgraded from 4870x2

[melmac]

Hey all,

First post on this forum, so hello to everyone and merry christmas!!

Well, my christmas came early and I was very surprised, I am from Ireland and had not expected it to arrive before xmas, but the delivery guy arrived at 4pm today with my new card!! Happy days

So I have spent the last few hours trying out games and doing a benchmark or two to see what it's like. And I am very happy so far.

Coming from a 4870x2, this card is virtually silent. Smoother in every game I play. I play at 1920*1080 and like to turn up the settings as high as I can. I am sorry I didnt do a few benchmarks on my 4870x2 before taking it out because the 6950 feels and plays so much better and on much higher settings.

Been gaming solid for the last few hours and the temps were pretty good, and the noise level, well, I never heard it over the rest of the system fans. My case is one of the Xclio windtunnels with 2*250mm fans on the side blowing directly onto the card, so that could be part of the reason why the temps are so good and the fan hasn't really had to ramp up.

Here is the unigine heaven benchmark

I am very happy with the performance and delighted I made the purchase.

 

[nicnik]

nice, so how much quicker is it than the 4870x2

 

[RavenXXX2]

6950 is a sweet card, the best weapon AMD have to fight off Nvidia currently.

 

[Skyrocket]

You come across as such a fanboy, even an Nvidia sig!

quiet the opposite. Dont like either company. I like the company that gives me the most performance for least £.
And it aint AMD at the minute thats for sure.

 

[d_brennen]

Single cards always "feel" much better to me rather than show better in benchmarks. Silence is golden too

quiet the opposite. Dont like either company. I like the company that gives me the most performance for least £.
And it aint AMD at the minute thats for sure.

What relevance does that have to OPs post? I'm not surprised you come across as a fanboy tbh

if this were the subject of the thread I'd ask what cards/price bracket you are referring too, but it isn't

 

[Sayso]

quiet the opposite. Dont like either company. I like the company that gives me the most performance for least £.
And it aint AMD at the minute thats for sure.

mmm so for £200 Nvidia have a card that beats the 6950?

 

[griffy]

Very happy with my 6950, new technology at a nice price

 

[Skyrocket]

mmm so for £200 Nvidia have a card that beats the 6950?

I think 6950 for £199 is a cracking price point!

 

[Skyrocket]

IT should really be
6970=249.99 atm 280
6950=199.99 atm 220
6870=149.99 atm 180???
6850=109.99 atm 140???
thats competitive pricing.

 

[arc@css]

£135 for the HIS 6850, though I agree they are too much atm.

 

[Steves1982]

I came from the 4870x2 too and am very happy so far with the 6950.

I can't get Unigine Heaven to run though. I can open the application and select from the drop downs but I can't click on run. It doesn't crash or anything, the button just isn't clickable!

Any ideas?

 

[Skyrocket]

I came from the 4870x2 too and am very happy so far with the 6950.

I can't get Unigine Heaven to run though. I can open the application and select from the drop downs but I can't click on run. It doesn't crash or anything, the button just isn't clickable!

Any ideas?

re-install dx11 or update it.

 

[Steves1982]

re-install dx11 or update it.

Thanks, I tried that but still nothing. I tried the other Unigine benchmarks too and had the same issue. The others came with a launcher that bypassed it and then I benchmarked from there. Heaven doesn't have a seperate launcher though.

 

[d_brennen]

I have a very similar system to the OP but with a reference unbranded 5850

Mine

OP's

Q6600 @ 3.0GHz
4GB DDR2 6400
1920 x 1080

Quite an impressive jump in terms of min/avg/max frames at a similar price to what my 5850 was a year ago. Grey market for the win though

 

[Sayso]

i bought a 6950 at £200, i will only ever run one card for me its the best card at that price...now if i had £150 or £250 to spend it would be a different matter

 

[3vil Tom]

Looking good, cant wait to get my hands on two of these!

 

[Scougar]

Tessellation = off Games don't use as much as that benchmark with one non-notable exception (Haxw 2).

Great card buy btw I also found the 4870x2 excessively noisy. I hadn't realised how good I had it with my other cards till I had one of those lol. Definately be looking for the quieter solution on my next card purchase (Trying to stop myself from getting the MSI 5850 frozr, but I think I may crack lol).

 

[Marine-RX179]

mmm so for £200 Nvidia have a card that beats the 6950?

Higher power consumption aside, Gigabyte GTX470 SOC is pretty much on par with 6950 for around the same price, and have lower temp and noise level because of its 3-fans custom cooler rather than AMD's loud vapor camber cooler. Not saying it beats it, but it doesn't really fall behind. And hopefully GTX560 will be competing with 6950 anyway.

 

[magicroundabout]

I have a very similar system to the OP but with a reference unbranded 5850

Mine

Q6600 @ 3.0GHz
4GB DDR2 6400
1920 x 1080

what have you clocked your 5850 too?

my 5870 @ 900/1300 result below
10.12 drivers

 

[drunkenmaster]

amd are in trouble.
They lost the W-lead.
They lost the single GPU crown with 480gtx.
They lost the quiet GPU solution.
And they "might" even lose the dual gpu battle.

It all looked so good in SEP 2009.

More profit on a 6950 than a 570gtx and if/when the 580gtx ever becomes properly available it will drop in price and face the same situation. AMD will sell several million more 6950's than Nvidia sell 580gtx's, it will be closer on 570gtx's, but again AMD makes more profit per card and WILL sell more £200 cards than Nvidia sell £250-270 cards.

AMD are sitting EXACTLY where they are before.

They haven't lost the performance/W lead, the 6950 beats the 570gtx in some situations, and uses, 80-100W less. If you benchmark Furmark with limits off, its closer, big whoop, in games, its not.

They lost the single gpu crown, they've not realistically had it before. The 4870 spanked the 280gtx in sales and gained mucho market share, and was slower the entire time, the 5870 was NEVER meant to beat a 480gtx.

They will not lose the dual gpu battle.

Number of mentions of a dual gpu card in Nvidia press........ none, number of mentions by Fud, loads, number of mentions of a dual gpu Fermi last year from Nvidia, none, mentions from Fud, loads, did it appear no.

Have AMD mentioned the 6990 in their slides, is it an official card we KNOW is coming, yes, is there a single piece of evidence Nvidia are bringing a dual gpu card that differs from the rumours last year, in source or believability, nope.

Will the 6990 cost less than current £450 580gtx's, probably similar, or close and it will be over 50% ahead. Nvidia, as per ever year for a LONG time won the single gpu card, how much difference has that made to AMD since the 4870.... none, its the strategy.

As for performance/w a single 6850/xfire cards beats any similar card in performance/w and in xfire beats the performance, signficantly, of any Nvidia solution, costs less, and has much higher performance/w.

Are you talking rubbish, as per usual..........


Edit:- uniengine is literally completely irrelevant at the moment, Metro is the/best realistically only even marginally decent game with tesselation, it barely uses it. It was irrelevant last gen, and irrelevant this gen, it might be relevant next gen if more than one "proper" tesselation game comes out.

Lets see, I said that when AMD sucked in uniengine, I'm saying it now they are fantastic in it.

A 389mm2 core should never, ever come as close as it has to beating a 520mm2 core, Nvidia have failed, significantly also, turn off power management in Furmark and you get VERY bad wattage numbers.