AMD Radeon HD 6970 and 6950 Video Card Review @ [H]

Some copy and paste errors in this article where 6970 was not changed to 6950 (particularly in all of the apples-to-apples sections)

Otherwise, its a great review.

It would be interesting to see what - if anything - the Catalyst 10.12 drivers do to the comparison.

I'm still happy with my GTX580 purchase, but its good to see some competition out there. Maybe this will let me pick up a second 580 early next year some time at a lower price :)
 
Heebs said:
It would be interesting to see [H] do some comparison runs at LOWER resolutions as thats where most gamers play.

I think I'll have to bite my tongue and look at the [H] review again as I plan on picking up a new monitor shortly.
Click to expand...

Keep in mind they are focusing on the highest playable settings. Essentially, if you can get it to be playable at 2560x1600, then you KNOW it will be playable on lower settings :p

There is no need for tests at lower settings.

Besides, I'm not sure I know anyone these days who plays at lower than 1920x1200/1080
 
I'm still waiting for them to fix the drivers for the 6800 series :(

10.10e... Works, ish, but if the DP monitors go to sleep (vga adapter or DVI adapter, I've tried 2 of each, no joy on any of them) they never wake up. 10.12? As soon as you install the driver, the DP ports don't work at ~all~. :( Switch back to the WU driver, boom, up come the screens. Instantly.

I'm waiting for the 10.13s... if those don't fix it, I'll be selling mine and going back to Nvidia.

This is after RMAing both cards, and trying them in 2 systems.
 
Heebs said:
As another reviewer said, "It appears that AMD positioned these cards against the 400 series not fully realizing what the 500 series were going to bring to the table."
Click to expand...

Any tech writer that would say that is simply ignorant or misinformed, or both.
 
Kyle.

You just can't please everyone. Some folks aren't happy UNLESS there is a fly in the ointment.
 
Heebs said:
It would be interesting to see [H] do some comparison runs at LOWER resolutions as thats where most gamers play.

I think I'll have to bite my tongue and look at the [H] review again as I plan on picking up a new monitor shortly.
Click to expand...

This is what confused me about the review. The entire conclusion talks about price/performance and how great it is that you can save $140 bucks... all the while testing only at 2560x1600 which is a resolution you're going to be paying $1000+ for.

I assume the majority of gamers game at 1920x1200 and below, even if it isn't very [H]ard to do so, it is a lot more realistic in terms of budget.

So I guess its just surreal to me to see praise about $140 savings while also assuming all of us have blown $1000+ on monitors.

I would assume the guy who spent $1000 or more on his display isn't going to sneeze at $140 and will want the best performance at that resolution bar none, while those of us who do care about $140 would want to know about performance at lower resolutions, like 1920x1200 and 1920x1080.

Still a great review, I just find the conclusion to be sort of silly.
 
OpStar said:
This is what confused me about the review. The entire conclusion talks about price/performance and how great it is that you can save $140 bucks... all the while testing only at 2560x1600 which is a resolution you're going to be paying $1000+ for.

I assume the majority of gamers game at 1920x1200 and below, even if it isn't very [H]ard to do so, it is a lot more realistic in terms of budget.

So I guess its just surreal to me to see praise about $140 savings while also assuming all of us have blown $1000+ on monitors.

I would assume the guy who spent $1000 or more on his display isn't going to sneeze at $140 and will want the best performance at that resolution bar none, while those of us who do care about $140 would want to know about performance at lower resolutions, like 1920x1200 and 1920x1080.

Still a great review, I just find the conclusion to be sort of silly.
Click to expand...

Deductive reasoning man, deductive reasoning. Is critical thinking dead? If the games they test on are playing at full blown max settings at a higher resolution then what you play at then you can deduce that you can play at your max resolution with similar settings at higher performance. The lower resolutions become bound by your cpu performance and not the GPU, therefore there is no reason to test at the lower resolutions.
 
They fixed cfx scaling!! Yay. Awesome review guys. 6970 slightly slower than the 580 is what I got from the review. Let's see what the 6990 does. It should be faster than a 580 but not faster than two 580s in sli perhaps it might be faster than two 570s tho
 
I wasn't in the market for another video card until two weeks ago when my Sapphire 4870's fan started to run at full speed and my display went black. I'm running on a borrowed 5770 for now.

I've been waiting for these Radeon cards to some out.

I don't game, YET. But I use a 52" HDTV as my monitor. More or less complete specs below.

Question, will a 2GB card like these new Radeon's be of benefit to me using this HDTV for gaming, even if the resolution is only going to be 1920x180P? I assume the 2GB of memory won't provide any benefit when playing Blu Ray's.

Any advantage using Radeon's over Invidia's regarding DTS etc. sound for the home theatre?

Quiet operation and low power consumption is important to me. My Subaru's block heater alone is probably costing me $5 a day right now.

"Today... Mostly sunny. Local areas of blowing and drifting snow. Highs 5 to 20 above...coldest in east anchorage. North wind 10 to 25 mph except 20 to 35 mph along the inlet. Local gusts along the inlet to 45 mph in the morning. Wind chills zero to 10 below in the morning.

Tonight... Clear. Lows around zero except 5 below to 10 below east anchorage. North wind 15 to 30 mph...diminishing to 10 to 20 mph after midnight. Strongest winds along the inlet."

Several people have suggested Alaska's climate might have certain advantages if I wanted to get into overclocking...

I'm torn between getting a GTX 570 or a 6950. And I want to buy a new card within the week.

Your suggestions are welcomed and thanks in advance!

Wolf

Cooler Master 840 ATCS, Asus P6T6 WS REVOLUTION Intel X58, Intel Core I7 920, Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme CPU Cooler, Corsair TX-850 PSU, 6GB Corsair TR3X6G1600C8D DDR3, Sapphire 4870 1GB(MIA AND PRESUMED DEAD), WDWD3000GLFS Velociraptor 300 GB System HDD (AN INTEL X25 80 GB SSD ready to take it's place), 1TB WD1001FALS Storage HDD, 4 Western Digital Elements 2TB Desktop External Hard Drives WDBAAU0020HBK-NESN For Audio files, DVD's and Blu Rays, Samsung SH-S223Q DVDRW, LG GBC-H20LI -Internal Blu-ray Disc ROM DVDRW, Logitech MX 3200 Laser Mouse, Logitech Illuminated Keyboard, Samsung 52" LN52B750 @ 1920x1080P,Pioneer VSX-1020-K AV Receiver, Klipsch RC-10 Center Channel Speaker, Klipsch RB-35 Front Surround Speakers, Klipsch RW-12 Subwoofer, Bose 201 Rear Surround Speakers, LazyBoy Comfy chair/Command Center
 
Last edited:
Climber said:
Deductive reasoning man, deductive reasoning.
Click to expand...

Why praise $140 (not to mention a mere $50) as amazing when you're gaming on a $1,000+ monitor though?

Besides when contrasting the review here with other sites the 6900 series is even less appealing under 2560x1600.
 
Uh kyle?

"If you are spending $140 more on a video card to game at 1080P or lower, you are likely wasting your money."

Would that apply to me? I have another comment posted above.
 
OpStar said:
Why praise $140 (not to mention a mere $50) as amazing when you're gaming on a $1,000+ monitor though?

Besides when contrasting the review here with other sites the 6900 series is even less appealing under 2560x1600.
Click to expand...

If money has no value then obviously you don't care about our reviews anyway. We focus on what is the best value, and have done this for a LONG TIME. If your $140 has no value, please go read canned benchmarks elsewhere that took 12 hours to run and let them tell you how to best spend your money on what is fastest in a synthetic test. :rolleyes:
 
Alaska Wolf said:
Uh kyle?

"If you are spending $140 more on a video card to game at 1080P or lower, you are likely wasting your money."

Would that apply to me? I have another comment posted above.
Click to expand...


No, you are special and your pixels are different from all others in the world. ;)
 
Alaska Wolf said:
I wasn't in the market for another video card until two weeks ago when my Sapphire 4870's fan started to run at full speed and my display went black. I'm running on a borrowed 5770 for now.

I've been waiting for these Radeon cards to some out.

I don't game, YET. But I use a 52" HDTV as my monitor. More or less complete specs below.

Question, will a 2GB card like these new Radeon's be of benefit to me using this HDTV for gaming, even if the resolution is only going to be 1920x180P? I assume the 2GB of memory won't provide any benefit when playing Blu Ray's.

Quiet operation and low power consumption is important to me. My Subaru's block heater alone is probably costing me $5 a day right now.

"Today... Mostly sunny. Local areas of blowing and drifting snow. Highs 5 to 20 above...coldest in east anchorage. North wind 10 to 25 mph except 20 to 35 mph along the inlet. Local gusts along the inlet to 45 mph in the morning. Wind chills zero to 10 below in the morning.

Tonight... Clear. Lows around zero except 5 below to 10 below east anchorage. North wind 15 to 30 mph...diminishing to 10 to 20 mph after midnight. Strongest winds along the inlet."

Several people have suggested Alaska's climate might have certain advantages if I wanted to get into overclocking...

I'm torn between getting a GTX 570 or a 6950. And I want to buy a new card within the week.

Your suggestions are welcomed and thanks in advance!

Wolf
Click to expand...

If you don't play any games than a high end 3d accelerated video card will not really benefit you much at all. Sure it will accelerate things like flash video and DVD/bluray decoding, but a lower end card will still be sufficient for this purpose.

The size of your monitor has no bearing at all on your choice of video card. Its really completely up to the resolution, and there isn't a single video card out there right now I wouldn't feel comfortable saying would play movies/videos and general desktop use on a 1920x1080 perfectly well.

For your purposes, even a $30 low end video card would do the job...

Now, if you do decide to get into gaming, the 2GB is pretty much overkill for one monitor at 1920x1080. Even for one monitor at 2560x1600 you are unlikely to see any real benefit.

The only people who will really benefit from the larger amount of video ram are those who want to run significant antialiasing in eyefinity setups with 3 or more monitors.

As long as the video card you are buying has 1gb or more of ram, I would focus more on raw performance than on RAM size.
 
-Sn1PeR- said:
I think you would be better off adding another 5870 for crossfire from a raw fps standpoint. The 2GB frame buffer might be nice if you are trying to crank up the AA, but with modern titles that really takes a backseat to attaining playable framerates in eyefinity resolutions.
Click to expand...

Well I'm sitting in a mATX box with a LGA 775 bored with 1x PCI-E lane so I'm sort of restricted to either a single-GPU or a dual-GPU card like the 5970, 6990 or GTX 595. The Q9550 is still kicking so I'm not ready to upgrade it just yet and I probably won't until LGA 2011 comes out late next year.

The 6970 2GB looks like a good single-GPU solution for Eyefinity, especially at $370. I think that the best solution for me would be the 6990 4GB...hopefully by the time that releases it won't be more than $599.
 
Thank you for that reply Zarathustra[H] !

I've heard ATI or AMD delivers better sound options via HDMI than an invidia card does. Any truth to that?

I AM starting to get interested in gaming. Annoying after 20 years of building computers the consoles rule the roost when I get the bug. Or so I've been told.
 
The only thing keeping me away from pulling the trigger on this series is the driver support. Fortunately, I won't be building until mid-January, so we'll see how things shake out.

Also worth noting that these cards are overkill for my current resolution (1920x1200), but I'll need something that can hold up to my 3-4 year upgrade cycle. ;)

.. or just serve as justification for a new monitor. ;)

Great review, guys. As always.
 
trxjw said:
Also worth noting that these cards are overkill for my current resolution (1920x1200), but I'll need something that can hold up to my 3-4 year upgrade cycle. ;)

.. or just serve as justification for a new monitor. ;)
Click to expand...

Heh, we are of the same mind on this issue.
 
Zarathustra[H];1036569195 said:
As long as the video card you are buying has 1gb or more of ram, I would focus more on raw performance than on RAM size.
Click to expand...

So for around $350 now that would be a GTX 570 or the 6950? From this review and others I've read it's almost a coin toss. The past three systems I've built had ATI cards. And only the 4870 ever went tits up.
 
Call me silly, but I game @ 1080p and I'm one of the 60fps freaks whose standards are nothing less than 4x AA and 16x AF. I'm currently thinking of upgrading to 2560 x 1600 in due time. However, I want my titles to shine with good min. fps and thinking of getting (2) 6970's xfire or just waiting for the 6990. My graphics setup in long in the tooth and needs some replenishing.
 
570 vs 6950 is definitely a toss up. It would be worthwhile to explore their overclocked and SLI/crossfire performance in depth, as well as image quality.

Also, I don't appreciate being called a freak because I prefer to keep my FPS above 60!
 
The difference in opinion on whether these cards are good or not (among reviewers) seems to stem out of the resolutions they are testing these cards at.

At the max supported resolution the 6970 is a much better prospect as it reaches close to 580 performance. At lower resolutions it doesnt perform as well.
 
Heebs said:
The difference in opinion on whether these cards are good or not (among reviewers) seems to stem out of the resolutions they are testing these cards at.

At the max supported resolution the 6970 is a much better prospect as it reaches close to 580 performance. At lower resolutions it doesnt perform as well.
Click to expand...

That doesn't seem to make sense to me. Wouldn't it be more taxing on the cards ability to run at higher resolutions?
 
WorldExclusive said:
When I read the box on video cards it says resolutions supported up to 2560x1600. Kyle is simply running the maximum resolution supported/advertised.
Why should he scale back the features of the cards with a bunch of 1080p tests. If the game isn't playable at 2560x16000, Kyle will run the 1080p test.
This seems like standard procedure in the [H] reviews over the time I've been here.

I'm more impressed over the last two years of mid-range cards producing playable frames @ 2560x1600 and high-end cards running three monitors.
Click to expand...


Exactly. Video card tech is so far ahead of the games that we have mid-range cards running 2560x1600 with high settings. That's mind blowing when you consider all of the previous generations of underwhelming and underperforming mid range cards.

But it also underscores the idea that these 69xx cards are not meant for the under 2560 market. The performance gains are there at 1920 or lower--especially in minimum frame rate--but they might be entirely superfluous. That whole "it can run Quake 3 at 176FPS!" ideology of rating video cards went out of style on [H] years ago.

So if the 6870 is already running game X at max details with 8xAA at 1920, what can the 69xx even offer? The same settings but a higher FPS? Another level of AA? Is that really worth the extra $100? No, not really.

I want to upgrade to the newest, shiny tech. I do. But there just isn't a reason for me because I'm still at 1080 and this 5850 is doing just fine here. That being said, if I were up at 2560x1600, I'd be upgrading because I'd have a reason to.
 
Alaska Wolf said:
That doesn't seem to make sense to me. Wouldn't it be more taxing on the cards ability to run at higher resolutions?
Click to expand...

A separate review backs up the H review in terms of how close the 6970 gets to the 580 when you are gaming at the max supported res, especially when you enable AA.

It might be the 2GB of memory coming into play? That would be my guess.
 
How about if your 4870 suddenly started to emulate an F-22 taking off and your display was black. Good reason?
 
Dear AMD, please continue aggressive nice pricing like this in the 7K generation too <3

He's right about sub-1080p gaming and cards. 5770 and a healthy processor does the job well at the moment for me, but then again, I am the freak. If I had not spent a grand on a new instrument I would have upgraded to maintain a steady 125 FPS in Black Ops to go with a maxpackets of 63, the right measures of this and that break the engine to your advantage big-time. And if I had not grown bored of the game in under a month..


(And is this really what the benchable games look like today, 99% Nvidia sponsored blap? It's like they're Microsoft in the console market, except Nvidia cannot buy exclusive rights for games to run only on their graphics cards. Yet.)
 
Heebs said:
The difference in opinion on whether these cards are good or not (among reviewers) seems to stem out of the resolutions they are testing these cards at.

At the max supported resolution the 6970 is a much better prospect as it reaches close to 580 performance. At lower resolutions it doesnt perform as well.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the lower the resolution the worse it performs! ;) That is funny. Your comparison gap may widen but that becomes less and less important as rez decreases and overall frames ramp heavily. I would suggest guys running older monitors are going to be more sensitive to price and then the 6970 and 6850 start to shine. So you would rather pay $140 more for a card that will do 180 FPS in Game X rather than save $140 for a card that will do 120 FPS in game at the given rez? Some of the logic you guys apply is simply beyond me.
 
Alaska Wolf said:
That doesn't seem to make sense to me. Wouldn't it be more taxing on the cards ability to run at higher resolutions?
Click to expand...

It is. The card performs better in an absolute sense at lower resolutions. But in a relative sense, it trails behind the nVidia offerings by more (or beats the nVidia offerings by less) at lower resolutions.
 
trxjw said:
The only thing keeping me away from pulling the trigger on this series is the driver support. Fortunately, I won't be building until mid-January, so we'll see how things shake out.

Also worth noting that these cards are overkill for my current resolution (1920x1200), but I'll need something that can hold up to my 3-4 year upgrade cycle. ;)

.. or just serve as justification for a new monitor. ;)

Great review, guys. As always.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the drivers from ATI is the only thing that sways me from buying their cards without hesitation.
I'm currently in the market for a card and the AMD 6950 feels right.

I may just hold out until we get more information on the NVIDIA 560 before making a decision.
 
Great review and I love that you show gaming at 2560 x 1600 since that is what I game at. I really love the price they put on this 6970 card, Call me naive but I thought it would of cost more. Be interested in the CF review to see how it matches up to my crossfire setup. Thanks for the hard work.
 
TooEasy! said:
Call me silly, but I game @ 1080p and I'm one of the 60fps freaks whose standards are nothing less than 4x AA and 16x AF. I'm currently thinking of upgrading to 2560 x 1600 in due time. However, I want my titles to shine with good min. fps and thinking of getting (2) 6970's xfire or just waiting for the 6990. My graphics setup in long in the tooth and needs some replenishing.
Click to expand...

I'm in the same boat as you, but with a strong preference for Nvidia products.

I just don't buy all the assertions that the latest titles don't take advantage of the latest PC hardware.

I insist that any game I play be at the natural resolution of my single monitor. That is 2560x1600. I also would like to be able to run with 8xMSAA 16XAF and all the DX11 eye candy on I can get.

Right now, even my single GTX580 can not do this in most modern titles.

Sure, there are no titles that challenge modern video cards at 1024x768 anymore, but thats because noone plays at these low resolutions anymore, unless they are on a console in which case the resolutions are usually even lower and more pathetic, but this is because noone plays at these low resolutions anymore.

We want games that challenge our hardware at 2560x1600, with AA on and thats approximately what we have.
 
Michaelius said:
That's some impressive attitude to have after testing cards in whole 5 games at whopping single resolution and then extrapolating minor part of the picture into 100% sure conclusion.
Click to expand...

Because its true? If you think ATi doesn't know more than you about what their competition is doing or where the market lies, I'd say that is an impressive attitude.
 
Heebs said:
A separate review backs up the H review in terms of how close the 6970 gets to the 580 when you are gaming at the max supported res, especially when you enable AA.

It might be the 2GB of memory coming into play? That would be my guess.
Click to expand...


What I meant to say was it seemed to me the card should perform BETTER at lower resolutions, because it would be running as hard as it would at higher res's. But the comment implied the 6950 and 6970 had poorer performance at lower resolutions.

Seems backwards to me.
 
Alaska Wolf said:
What I meant to say was it seemed to me the card should perform BETTER at lower resolutions, because it would be running as hard as it would at higher res's. But the comment implied the 6950 and 6970 had poorer performance at lower resolutions.

Seems backwards to me.
Click to expand...

Yeah it probably wasnt the best worded comment.

RELATIVE to the 580 its worse at lower resolutions. The performance GAP between the two cards decreases as you get into the higher resolutions which is exactly what the H review is stating, the two cards are close at 2560. At lower resolutions the 580 will perform better RELATIVE to the 6970. The 6970 is total over kill for the lower resolutions. So I see kyles point that there is zero point to do a gaming performance review at anything less than max because the card is designed for high resolutions in the first place.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top