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*** The Official ATI Radeon HD 6970 & 6950 Reviews, Discussion and Overclocking Thread ***

GJ02

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ATI Radeon HD 6970 & 6950 Reviews:













  • Vortez - HIS AMD Radeon HD 6950 2GB Review
    Helios1234 (Vortez) said:
    Right I've been working all night and I'm still not finished with the actual article but I have an analysis of all the game results so have fun:

    (Writing a Master's dissertation at the same time as a review is never fun... :( )
    Click to expand...
 

Fire Wizard

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Here we are then everyone. A couple of websites have already published their reviews which have been added to the main post above. I'll continue to update the post as and when the other websites publishes their reviews as well. :)

(I thought it would be best to start afresh so I have moved the other thread to one side so no one has to trail through posts upon posts of rather uninteresting information and / or information we couldn't of been completely sure was entirely accurate, to get too the discussion that everyone has been waiting for.)

(GJ02, I hope you don't mind me doing this but I thought as I am here, I could get things moving and sort everything out so it is nice and organised and easy for everyone to read.)
 

Skyrocket

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Techpowerup says it all really.
570GTX is the better buy for your cash at £250
6970 turned into a bit of a lemon at £280
6950 is a peach at £210 quid.

8.0

AMD's new Radeon HD 6900 series is a disappointment to users who expected HD 5970 or GTX 580 performance levels from the new series. The new VLIW4 shader design can not make a huge performance impact as some have guessed, but it opens up a lot of room for die size and transistor optimization which effectively makes the GPU cheaper to produce, the cards cheaper to buy - more performance for your hard earned Dollar. Unfortunately AMD's Radeon HD 6970 can not meet that price target. With performance comparable to GeForce GTX 570, but a price that is $50 higher it is difficult to justify the investment. While I applaud AMD for making the bold move to 2 GB video memory, I have my doubts if the price/performance gain is worth it. Some people may see benefits from this when using Eyefinity, but the majority of users will game at 1920x1200, even 2560x1600 is just a niche resolution. I do have my hopes high for the future though, when AIBs will take a good look at the card and strip it down to achieve more competitive price levels - competitive being $329 in my opinion.
It seems that GPU manufacturers are now shifting to using advanced power containment systems to optimize their cards more toward intended applications. Whether this is a good move and the community will accept it is up to the end users. It is nice to see control options in Catalyst Control Center for AMD's PowerTune Technology - something NVIDIA should add in the future too. While AMD has been leading in power consumption for quite a while, that seems to have shifted slightly with the use of the new faster GDDR5 memory chips. The added power draw is quite significant, especially in Blu-ray playback we see an enormous 73 W power draw for the graphics card alone, hopefully AMD can address this shortcoming.
Overall the Radeon HD 6970 shows some evolutionary progress in AMD's GPU technology but is missing out on the price point mostly. Once the affordability improves, the card will definitely be more interesting.
 
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Helios1234

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Just to be clear, the one I wrote is still being written but all the results and analysis are there.

(Writing a Master's dissertation at the same time as a review is never much fun :( )

Edit: HAHA cheers for adding that
 
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seena

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perfrel.gif


Really Disappointed only hope left is 10.12
 

Marine-RX179

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The 6970 is slower than the GTX480 in Just Cause 2 and BFBC2 (and DIRT2 goes without saying)....this is quite disappointing. The 6970 only shine over GTX480 and GTX570 in high res like 2560...

6950 seem more like competiting against Gigabyte GTX470 SOC's level of card...

This is like Phenom II vs i5/i7 all over again...AMD can't compete on performance, so they offer cheaper price instead...

Looks like GTX570 is the winner of the new release cards...in terms of price to performance
 
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Skyrocket

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straxusii

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I got up at this time for this!! :D

Really disappointed with 6970, still saves me some cash.

It's not that it's a bad card, just nothing exciting in actual games we play for a 5870 owner

I see in anands review it's slower than 5870 in civ 5!

Until we see heavy tesselation in games there seems to be no point going from 5870 to 6970
 

straxusii

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Seena, all resolutions is pretty irrelevant as it includes res like 1024x768, this I think is a more realistic picture:

Still poor for the 6970 though. Well done Nvidia, seems like they blindsided ATI with the 570 580

perfrel_1920.gif
 

straxusii

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I guess there should be some gains to be had by optimising the new VLIW4 architecture in future drivers but no one is going to buy a card based on the promise of future performance.
 

Marine-RX179

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cainer said:
think theres gonna be quite a few orders cancelled for these now the reviews are out, the first 2 conclutions i read basically said buy a 570 instead
Click to expand...
Yea...the 6970 bascially compete against the GTX570. At 1920 res and below with 4xAA, GTX570 tends to perform better, but for 2560 res with or without AA, 6970 beats the GTX570...so which card to get is simply depending on what res people gaming at really.

Pricing wise the 6970 is actually more expensive than the GTX570 on average, and also it doesn't offer lower power consumption as the lower 6000 range cards do- it only consume 24W lower than the GTX570 under load...
 

buttkinz

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Hardocp review is up, usig the correct supplied driver, cards are massivly impressive. Only place I trust nowadays for a real unbiased review. 6970 trades blows with 580 for 100quid less and 6950 beats 570 in every test.
Awesome, a lot of the other reviews are crap tbh, check it out :)
 
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