AMD Radeon HD6950/6970(Cayman) Reviews

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Originally Posted by SKYMTL

I won't defend Lost Planet 2 since we all know its reception ON THE CONCOLES wasn't that great. Personally, I had a good time playing it on the PC but that's beside the point.

Just because a game isn't well received doesn't mean that driver development should stop. Justifying poor performance by stating a game isn't popular is no way to go about looking at this industry.




If I tested 3/4 of those games, our reviews would be absolutely pointless since not one of them really puts massive strain on the GPU. Many thing Civ 5 does and I beg to differ.

BC2 is used. As was SC2 but that was removed due to the CPU playing a massive roll in the overall results.

I have played Civ 5 religiously since it was released and I can tell you that the CPU is what bottlenecks performance. Granted, there are sites using it for benchmarking purposes that somehow get low framerates on even high-end GPUs. Since they flat out refuse to publish their in-game methodology we have no idea where those numbers come from and I sure as heck can't repeat their results even after months of playing.

I don't choose games based upon popularity but rather on a combination of feature sets, benchmark run repeatability and overall GPU demands.





Paying lip service to a press release shouldn't be taken as fact.

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interesting info ty

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Originally Posted by SKYMTL

I won't defend Lost Planet 2 since we all know its reception ON THE CONCOLES wasn't that great. Personally, I had a good time playing it on the PC but that's beside the point.

Just because a game isn't well received doesn't mean that driver development should stop. Justifying poor performance by stating a game isn't popular is no way to go about looking at this industry.

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Right, personally I'm sure you did. Or not. The game is terrible and there is a 90% chance it was ported terribly with barely functioning KBM support.

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If I tested 3/4 of those games, our reviews would be absolutely pointless since not one of them really puts massive strain on the GPU. Many thing Civ 5 does and I beg to differ.

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Lies. Please reference high IQ tests of those games that bring mid range GPUs to their knees. For some reason no one bothers to test high IQ med. resolution except for techpowerup. Techreport does high IQ high res and GTX 460s drop to 23 fps.

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BC2 is used. As was SC2 but that was removed due to the CPU playing a massive roll in the overall results.

I have played Civ 5 religiously since it was released and I can tell you that the CPU is what bottlenecks performance. Granted, there are sites using it for benchmarking purposes that somehow get low framerates on even high-end GPUs. Since they flat out refuse to publish their in-game methodology we have no idea where those numbers come from and I sure as heck can't repeat their results even after months of playing.

I don't choose games based upon popularity but rather on a combination of feature sets, benchmark run repeatability and overall GPU demands.

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Then you aren't reaching out to the people who actually read your reviews. We want to know how cards will play in games that we play.

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Paying lip service to a press release shouldn't be taken as fact.

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Perhaps you should actually see their testing that they did, and not lip service.

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Originally Posted by cegras

Lies. Please reference high IQ tests of those games that bring mid range GPUs to their knees. For some reason no one bothers to test high IQ med. resolution except for techpowerup. Techreport does high IQ high res and GTX 460s drop to 23 fps.

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23 FPS in what? Civ 5? Sure, because the CPU becomes the bottleneck. I have yet to encounter any repeatable late-game situation where the framerates dip to low digits.

Or maybe that's because sites testing the game are using a completely unrealistic in-game benchmark that doesn't use AI (the one thing that tanks framerates when actually PLAYING the game).... Yes, it spits out frames but what's the use if it doesn't reflect real-world gameplay? :(

We used Civ V and I am continuing to look for an acceptable situation where framerates can be conclusive but once again, I haven't been able to yet.

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Perhaps you should actually see their testing that they did, and not lip service.

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They did no testing other than discussing the points and counter points between NVIDIA's claims and AMD's. And yet they continue to use the benchmark in their reviews.

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for example games like lost planet 2 or hawx2 could tell you that gtx has a superb power/performance ratio compared to radeons which isnt true. This is what i call biased and unprofessional, since adding those 2 titles heavily swings the results in one direction (while 99% of games would tell you otherwise).

Reviewers should avoid such situations imho, since its misleads normal users that don't have proper it know-how.

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Hardware canucks show's highest playable settings for all hardware.:up:

SKYMTL maybe it is best to let the people believe what they want to. You can take someone to water or food, but you can not make them eat or drink. Thanks for the information and sharing your point of view.

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Originally Posted by ripken204

i only look at benchmarks for the games that i have actually played or want to play

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Problem solved!

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Originally Posted by trinibwoy

Problem solved!

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Problem would be solved if you could add the games (as in results) youre interested in to an overall chart from a review and see what card comes out on top.

I wonder why no one has yet implemented such a feature... :cool:

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Originally Posted by Shadov

Problem would be solved if you could add the games (as in results) youre interested in to an overall chart from a review and see what card comes out on top.

I wonder why no one has yet implemented such a feature... :cool:

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I would love it if reviewers could implement dynamic results like that. You could filter out the games you don't play and see exactly how much an upgrade would benefit you. It would makes things easier to choose between the two camps.

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Originally Posted by Elfear

I would love it if reviewers could implement dynamic results like that. You could filter out the games you don't play and see exactly how much an upgrade would benefit you. It would makes things easier to choose between the two camps.

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i am very tempted to code that, to simply have people select their cpu, gpu, what speeds they are running at, what games and settings they played at, FPS, what driver they used.
then be able to graph them in many different ways. pretty simple.

Yeah, except that all those pre-ran results in the database are terribly inaccurate unless you bother re-running old results to update the results which get invalid due to driver/software updates. Anyone claiming that it's bull:banana::banana::banana::banana: can try to explain how every single review happens to have different results even though the hardware and software is seemingly the same. Either it's that results are inaccurate, or that someone is skewing the results. The only proper way to have accurate results is to run the benchmarks with all the compared cards/cpus for every review. Sure, it duplicates results, is tedious and everyone hates that; at least the results are accurate. In b4 SKYMTL comes over to write an essay how "today its hard because there's too much hardware to bench". Oh well, #care.

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Originally Posted by Calmatory

There is nothing positive about Nvidia except G80. Dare to disagree? They're hurting the consumer, yet some people have guts to praise them. But hey, at least we've got TWIMTBP, PHYSX and CUDA!! :ROTF:

Though, I'm somewhat interested in their future advancements in GPGPU; not from graphics point of view at all. Gaming is for the weak after all. Once we get +100 GP(GPU) cores which have open(Yeah right, it's Nvidia after all. :rolleyes:) ISA and this under 1 W power consumption, I'll get genuinely interested about Nvidia again. Until then I really see them more as a joke than anything.

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So it must be Nvidia's fault that transparency AA doesn't work in DX10/11 on AMD cards? Even in DX9 the Nvidia implementation is better. Of all of the IQ arguments between the two this is the only one that I have noticed and I'm surprised that it doesn't get mentioned more.

To say that Nvidia cards have no advantages over AMD is just blind fanboyism.

@Calmatory

Not really hard just get mobo with 6/7 pcie slots w/3 of these that 18/21 gpus.Run 7/10 test a day then change gpu,so 30 days of benching = 500+ gpu's.

You can use 1 amd and 1 Intel platform w/ fastest cpu/mem combo to = 1000+ gpus in 30 days.

Update once a year.:up:

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Originally Posted by SKYMTL

23 FPS in what? Civ 5? Sure, because the CPU becomes the bottleneck. I have yet to encounter any repeatable late-game situation where the framerates dip to low digits.

Or maybe that's because sites testing the game are using a completely unrealistic in-game benchmark that doesn't use AI (the one thing that tanks framerates when actually PLAYING the game).... Yes, it spits out frames but what's the use if it doesn't reflect real-world gameplay? :(

We used Civ V and I am continuing to look for an acceptable situation where framerates can be conclusive but once again, I haven't been able to yet.

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Hang on there though. It's important to still grab FPS numbers from just panning around a crowded map. "Next Turn" is CPU dependent, but if you're just wandering around your civ during your turn and selecting production and whatnot, should be GPU dependent, no?

Also, I still think including a Source timedemo like TF2 in a busy match would be an excellent reference, although outdated.

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Originally Posted by cegras

No, we should be testing a mix of old and new popular games. Techreport has a fantastic testing suite, and it would be better if only they included a source benchmark as well.

Actually, techreport proves that even SCII, Civ 5, and BF2: BC are enough to really mid range GPUs at ultra-high IQ, and so you have an interesting testing ground at medium res, high IQ.

Hawx 2 is fine for testing, but Lost Planet is critically terrible game and not relevant at all to typical gaming performance. It's almost like benching a tech demo.

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I don't push this for test or not test it, i just explain what the problem is on how HawX2 is coded .... that's all.

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Originally Posted by cegras

Hang on there though. It's important to still grab FPS numbers from just panning around a crowded map. "Next Turn" is CPU dependent, but if you're just wandering around your civ during your turn and selecting production and whatnot, should be GPU dependent, no?

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Panning still uses a massive amount of CPU cycles. Open up the Win 7 Performance Monitor and watch the usage jump like mad when panning and zooming on a late-game map.

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Originally Posted by BababooeyHTJ

So it must be Nvidia's fault that transparency AA doesn't work in DX10/11 on AMD cards? Even in DX9 the Nvidia implementation is better. Of all of the IQ arguments between the two this is the only one that I have noticed and I'm surprised that it doesn't get mentioned more.

To say that Nvidia cards have no advantages over AMD is just blind fanboyism.

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Have you heard of AMD Radeons Morphological AA, works in every game that I have tried so far... :shrug:

Now you should go back to reading reviews!

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Originally Posted by Shadov

Have you heard of AMD Radeons Morphological AA, works in every game that I have tried so far... :shrug:

Now you should go back to reading reviews!

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Yep, I own a 6870. It works well and is great for certain games but doesn't look as good as 4xMSAA with MSTSAA and comes at a massive performance hit which makes it unusable for GTA4 as well as some other games sadly.

There really is no excuse for the lack of TSAA support and I wouldn't call MLAA a replacement. It's a nice feature and all but I'm pretty sure that much like physix it won't factor into my next purchase.


While were on testing games it would be great to see games like Darkplaces and Serious Sam HD that are probably more popular than Lost Planet 2 and happen to stress my hardware.

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Originally Posted by trinibwoy

Problem solved!

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Not totally, though. You buy graphics cards to play not only the current games, but also games that will come out in the future. The only way to estimate how a graphics card will do in the future is to look at current, more straining titles. It won't be the most accurate estimation, but that's the only thing you'd have.

So, surely you should care more about games you'll actually play, but for more future-proofness you should at least the consider the performance in current, GPU-straining games whether you have the intention to play them or not.

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Originally Posted by Calmatory

I loathe AMD just as much as Nvidia; with the exception that thus far they've been less restrictive and more open with their technologies which means that everyone benefits. Oh, and their µArch has been superior to Nvidia's, kudos for that. Every single company is there to screw it's customers, yet some people seem to think that "Nvidia/AMD/Intel are the GOOD guys". Wtf? :rolleyes:

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Good post. I couldn't agree more.

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Originally Posted by omega1alpha

Good post. I couldn't agree more.

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I too can agree with this short statement.

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Originally Posted by Calmatory

I loathe AMD just as much as Nvidia; with the exception that thus far they've been less restrictive and more open with their technologies which means that everyone benefits. Oh, and their µArch has been superior to Nvidia's, kudos for that. Every single company is there to screw it's customers, yet some people seem to think that "Nvidia/AMD/Intel are the GOOD guys". Wtf? :rolleyes:

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I don't think anyone are the good guys. I completely ignore the politics when making my purchase, as whoever has the best hardware for the cash I feel like spending at that point in time gets my money. I've owned AMD/ATi hardware, and I've owned NVidia hardware. I've owned AMD processors, and I've owned intel processors. I let my wallet do the talking for my end, and I let the product's performance do the talking for the companies; between the two they generally can come up to an agreement that suits my needs.

At the same time, I also tend to prefer to make sure that information on this site is correct when possible. The most annoying thing you can have happen is to have lots of people give you bad information(I've had it happen myself, got an ATi card back when they pretty much COULDN'T run openGL, not fun), which sways your decision in a way that it may not have gone had it not of been for that bad bit of info. As staff on this site, it's partially my responsibility to correct that information so that others who read this site looking for said information can find what it is they're looking for. Make sense?

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There is nothing positive about Nvidia except G80. Dare to disagree? They're hurting the consumer, yet some people have guts to praise them. But hey, at least we've got TWIMTBP, PHYSX and CUDA!! :ROTF:

Though, I'm somewhat interested in their future advancements in GPGPU; not from graphics point of view at all. Gaming is for the weak after all. Once we get +100 GP(GPU) cores which have open(Yeah right, it's Nvidia after all. :rolleyes:) ISA and this under 1 W power consumption, I'll get genuinely interested about Nvidia again. Until then I really see them more as a joke than anything.

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Nothing positive, eh? I guess you thought the GTX 460 wasn't a GREAT card for the money? I guess you think the GTX570 is over-priced for it's performance level?

I mean, I guess you might think they're hurting customers by having closed standards, but NVidia did pay the costs to create/obtain those things. Ask developers what they think about TWIMTBP; which helps bring the cost of developing a title down and seriously helps out with the burden of testing a title(try buying all those configurations of systems and see how much just that part costs you). You may see it as them "buying out" games, but the fact is they do assist the developer in doing what WE want them to do, and that is continue to make games for the PC. Considering it's a much higher development cost to do that, it's likely we'd see less titles than we already do without programs like this in place.

Physx, well, I still don't know how I feel about that one. At the same time, there's NOTHING stopping AMD from attempting to make their own standard. We could then see if all their "we don't believe in closed standards" hype is true or not.

As for the final part... So you're pretty much saying ONLY when a 100% impossible non-realistic goal is met that you'll be interested in NVidia's products; yet you have the audacity to call anyone else biased in any way, shape, or form? That pretty much sums up your intentions in a nut-shell, you'll ONLY like a brand if they can do something that is not physically possible, yet you'll buy the other brand regardless... :shakes: That's an open and shut case right there. :ROTF:

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Originally Posted by DilTech

As for the final part... So you're pretty much saying ONLY when a 100% impossible non-realistic goal is met that you'll be interested in NVidia's products; yet you have the audacity to call anyone else biased in any way, shape, or form? That pretty much sums up your intentions in a nut-shell, you'll ONLY like a brand if they can do something that is not physically possible, yet you'll buy the other brand regardless... :shakes: That's an open and shut case right there. :ROTF:

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You sir have no clue what you're talking about; I haven't bought a single discrete GPU since late 2008, and I don't realistically see myself buying any ever again. Ever. I couldn't care less how AMD or Nvidia twist their products and marketing; it doesn't touch me in any way. However, I'm curious about the show. It is just entertainment for me to follow this circus. Thus said; I'm not buying AMD either.

Oh, and it WILL be possible for Nvidia to build multi-dozen general purpose processing cores which will consume less than 1 W. Not yet. Possibly not with silicon. What I was after was that I'm genuinely interested in their products once they can really produce something I'm interested about; general purpose(as in, I can compile Linux kernel on them), low power hugely parallel processors. Current GPUs are ALMOST there. They only need to make the ISA open; improve the general purpose logic and features, improve the memory subsystem and then shrink it down. I'm not sure if Nvidia will be around by the time all this becomes reality; maybe not. But as of right now, it seems that Nvidia will be the company to produce fun stuff like this; AMD and Intel push performance, ARM doesn't produce parallel processors and VIA can't deliver. Only Nvidia can do this. Maybe their products could be based on ARM ISA, I don't know. But right now GPUs are more or less worthless for me; I don't need graphics processing power. Heck, Intel's GMA 950 is fast enough for my needs and it even supports OpenGL 1.3; I can plot tons of texture mapped polygons at high framerates. Thats enough for now. ;)

No doubt has Nvidia done some good product launches with Fermi; e.g. GTX 460. However, Fermi as a microarchitecture.. It sucks. It tried to be a GPGPU and gaming focused. It didn't do well(compared to the potential if it was focused on only one at a time) at either of them. Tons of transistors and heat for the performance provided. Not efficient. And given that efficiency is the #1 thing to focus these days(thin clients; battery powered portable devices; low costs; being "eco-friendly") it just makes it worse. I have no problem to have Nvidia GPU in my future notebook; if it can provide good performance for low power consumption then I'm all for it. But really, Fermi can't quite deliver that. And even if it could I wouldn't care, as I have no plans to get a new one for a while. Maybe when we're at 28 nm, or even 22 nm.

Oh well, there's ONE thing good about Nvidia; their developer support. They're actively supporting and encouraging developers with their Developer Zone. Heck, they even support demoscene with nVision. It's damn valuable for us devs who are interested to work with the hardware. Nvidia just has no interest in pushing open standards which would push the technology forward. Kind of like Microsoft, "it's just business".

In the end, no matter if it is Nvidia, AMD, Intel, VIA or ARM having the crown, consumers will get screwed. Just look at Apple or Microsoft. Are they pushing the technology or making money?

I play at the resolution of 2048*1152.

Is that gonna make a noticable FPS drop against 1920*1080?

On a 6970, btw.

OK, so i built a computer for a customer this weekend, it was a XFX 6950, the corner of the power connector was filled down, then i boot into windows, install the newest drivers from amd's website and the drivers wont recognize the card, so i research online and find the hotfix and finally got it to work. AMD's drivers are still lacking, and the corner filled down just did it for me. :down: Absolutely no reason to pick up the 6900 over the gtx 570/580, im not a fanboy, but i do prefer nvidia from my 15 yeras in the computer business.

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Originally Posted by HelixPC

OK, so i built a computer for a customer this weekend, it was a XFX 6950, the corner of the power connector was filled down, then i boot into windows, install the newest drivers from amd's website and the drivers wont recognize the card, so i research online and find the hotfix and finally got it to work. AMD's drivers are still lacking, and the corner filled down just did it for me. :down: Absolutely no reason to pick up the 6900 over the gtx 570/580, im not a fanboy, but i do prefer nvidia from my 15 yeras in the computer business.

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That being said, nvidia drivers are crap also.. seems like there drivers are getting good to worse also..:shrug:

This days you need to do a quick search of what drivers to install. Remember the nvidia driver killing gpu's in stacraft 2?

Abosuletely no? reason? You don't want to see the reasons(or ignore them), that's a different thing. So what're you going to do when you found a problem with an nvidia card? buy S3 Chrome?

*if you custom-build a decent quantity of pc's you already suffered some problems

In case you aren't the shop owner HelixPC, I would suspect the card has been used before ( review gear, quick test, etc...) why didn't you take a picture of it and send it to either the distributor or straight to AMD... drivers is user error :p

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Originally Posted by HelixPC

OK, so i built a computer for a customer this weekend, it was a XFX 6950, the corner of the power connector was filled down, then i boot into windows, install the newest drivers from amd's website and the drivers wont recognize the card, so i research online and find the hotfix and finally got it to work. AMD's drivers are still lacking, and the corner filled down just did it for me. :down: Absolutely no reason to pick up the 6900 over the gtx 570/580, im not a fanboy, but i do prefer nvidia from my 15 yeras in the computer business.

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The 10.12 are 5xxx optimized drivers which & are not meant for the 6xxx.
The 10.12a are the 6xxx which use a different driver branch for the 10.12a, so the error was yours in this case.

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Originally Posted by HelixPC

OK, so i built a computer for a customer this weekend, it was a XFX 6950, the corner of the power connector was filled down, then i boot into windows, install the newest drivers from amd's website and the drivers wont recognize the card, so i research online and find the hotfix and finally got it to work. AMD's drivers are still lacking, and the corner filled down just did it for me. :down: Absolutely no reason to pick up the 6900 over the gtx 570/580, im not a fanboy, but i do prefer nvidia from my 15 yeras in the computer business.

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:rofl::rofl::rofl: sry couldn' resist. :ROTF::ROTF:

15 years of computer business always selling Intel Pentium and nvidia brand... yeah i have seen many of those so called computer business people...

add 1 reason why you need to post that into the review/news section....

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Originally Posted by duploxxx

:rofl::rofl::rofl: sry couldn' resist. :ROTF::ROTF:

15 years of computer business always selling Intel Pentium and nvidia brand... yeah i have seen many of those so called computer business people...

add 1 reason why you need to post that into the review/news section....

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I dont find it funny, it isnt the driver its the people doing marketing and the guy who put the driver up, if I buy a new card, then isnt it obvious that I should also be able to go to amd.com check for a driver, find it in 10 seconds doing the search instead of, WTFFFF is amd doing?????

The presentation when a new card is out is done horrible and been like that for a long time, they dont do things the proper way, its horrific and no wonder amd is running RED in their books and soon be sold off.

I dont find that funny at all.

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Originally Posted by flopper

they dont do things the proper way, its horrific and no wonder amd is running RED in their books and soon be sold off.
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^^ I find that funny :p:

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Originally Posted by flopper

The presentation when a new card is out is done horrible and been like that for a long time, they dont do things the proper way, its horrific and no wonder amd is running RED in their books and soon be sold off.

I dont find that funny at all.

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this is funny

just take a look at the 2009 and Q1-Q3 2010 numbers...

so 69xx launch was slightly botched due to a screwed zup execution (if launched 3 weeks earlier reviews would've been better for amd and worse for NV), but every other launch in the past 2 years was a huge success and AMD overtook nVidia in overall discrete marketshare (nv had more than a 20% lead there just 2 years ago) so i don't see how AMD fails in heir strategy and presentation

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Originally Posted by generics_user

this is funny

just take a look at the 2009 and Q1-Q3 2010 numbers...

so 69xx launch was slightly botched due to a screwed zup execution (if launched 3 weeks earlier reviews would've been better for amd and worse for NV), but every other launch in the past 2 years was a huge success and AMD overtook nVidia in overall discrete marketshare (nv had more than a 20% lead there just 2 years ago) so i don't see how AMD fails in heir strategy and presentation

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true, but their cpu business which is run within the same company is being red a lot the last years, in spite of the success of the grapichs.
if that goes down so does the videocards.
Unless they pull a rabbit out of the hat, and get some marketshare with their upcoming series, since intel currently will pound them hard with the SB serie in price/performance.

The marketplace is changing, lets hope they are able to do value and have a segment and then later on catch up on Intel since shrinking transistors gets slower and slower as size goes down.

do amd have a profit as a company is the question.

Seems you didn't read analysts reports about AMD gaining marketshare in all fronts for 2011 due to Fusion.

http://www.google.com.pe/#hl=es-419&...934d1866e71fba

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Originally Posted by Nintendork

Seems you didn't read analysts reports about AMD gaining marketshare in all fronts for 2011 due to Fusion.

http://www.google.com.pe/#hl=es-419&...934d1866e71fba

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does it answer, do amd run with profit question?

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Originally Posted by flopper

does it answer, do amd run with profit question?

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actually if you do some research you'll find some numbers from 2009 stating that both cpu and gpu parts turn in a prophet since amd got rid of its foundries ;)

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Originally Posted by Leeghoofd

In case you aren't the shop owner HelixPC, I would suspect the card has been used before ( review gear, quick test, etc...) why didn't you take a picture of it and send it to either the distributor or straight to AMD... drivers is user error :p

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Drivers are not a user error when you go to AMD's website and navigate to 6900 series drivers. And the card was a brand new retail XFX card.

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Originally Posted by duploxxx

:rofl::rofl::rofl: sry couldn' resist. :ROTF::ROTF:

15 years of computer business always selling Intel Pentium and nvidia brand... yeah i have seen many of those so called computer business people...

add 1 reason why you need to post that into the review/news section....

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This is the only time i will respond to fanboy comments like this. I was just stating my experience with the new cards and my own preference. You sound like you are very immature. You buy whatever card you like with your own money, its your hard earned money. I sell most of my pc's to video production companies, and guess what, they ask for nvidia graphics cards, why? because they all have had issues with ati in the past. So please get your info right before making comments that make you look like you are 12. People do more with their machines than play games.

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Originally Posted by generics_user

actually if you do some research you'll find some numbers from 2009 stating that both cpu and gpu parts turn in a prophet since amd got rid of its foundries ;)

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If so, good.
:yepp:

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Originally Posted by Final8ty

The 10.12 are 5xxx optimized drivers which & are not meant for the 6xxx.
The 10.12a are the 6xxx which use a different driver branch for the 10.12a, so the error was yours in this case.

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Actually like i stated in the comments above, if you go to AMDs website and navigate to the 6900 series drivers, those are the ones it tells me to download, not the updated ones. In this case the obvious error is the one who's listing the drivers, AMD.

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Originally Posted by HelixPC

Actually like i stated in the comments above, if you go to AMDs website and navigate to the 6900 series drivers, those are the ones it tells me to download, not the updated ones. In this case the obvious error is the one who's listing the drivers, AMD.

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correct, its unbeliveable they dont have that option due to a new relased card......I mean my sister would cry if she searched for drivers.

It seems that HD 6950 can be unlocked to HD6970, the guy has used Asus 6970 bios on Asus HD6950 :

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=335318

Good newz :yepp:

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Originally Posted by Olivon

It seems that HD 6950 can be unlocked to HD6970, the guy has used Asus 6970 bios on Asus HD6950 :

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=335318

Good newz :yepp:

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LOL, thought so.

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Originally Posted by Olivon

It seems that HD 6950 can be unlocked to HD6970, the guy has used Asus 6970 bios on Asus HD6950 :

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=335318

Good newz :yepp:

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http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=264107

(from post #15)

thread bookmarked. i hope it works as good as it looks it does ;) i'll wait for a few more reports.

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Originally Posted by RaZz!

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=264107

(from post #15)

thread bookmarked. i hope it works as good as it looks it does ;) i'll wait for a few more reports.

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Sorry RaZz! I didn't see this thread :(

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Originally Posted by HelixPC

Actually like i stated in the comments above, if you go to AMDs website and navigate to the 6900 series drivers, those are the ones it tells me to download, not the updated ones. In this case the obvious error is the one who's listing the drivers, AMD.

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There is a difference to navigation errors & bad drivers.
For whatever reason the wrong drivers were installed thus gets bad results so your comment of AMD needing to work on there quality of drivers is in valid as the problem was the wrong drivers being installed.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Final8ty

There is a difference to navigation errors & bad drivers.
For whatever reason the wrong drivers were installed thus gets bad results so your comment of AMD needing to work on there quality of drivers is in valid as the problem was the wrong drivers being installed.

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Due to AMD's error, not his... thus the same end person being at fault (AMD, not the user).

Haha it works!

http://paulyd.co.uk/oz/6970flash.jpg


3DMark11 run: http://3dmark.com/3dm11/288128;jsess...wfrHNaxawqambQ

I'm a little worried about only 2x6pins though :( should i be?

Each 6 pin is 75W, PCI-E 2.0 16x is up to 150W. Which makes it 300W, maybe slightly more, should be fine on air using semi-sane clocks. ;)

Awesome :)

did a clock for clock run:

6950

http://paulyd.co.uk/oz/6950%20avp%20920_1450.jpg


6970 flash

http://paulyd.co.uk/oz/6970avp.jpg


Not huge difference but at least it means it's working! Seems the best thing i get from this is higher CCC clocks and higher voltage hah

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Oztopher

Awesome :)

did a clock for clock run:

6950

[*IMG]http://paulyd.co.uk/oz/6950%20avp%20920_1450.jpg[/IMG]


6970 flash

[*IMG]http://paulyd.co.uk/oz/6970avp.jpg[/IMG]


Not huge difference but at least it means it's working! Seems the best thing i get from this is higher CCC clocks and higher voltage hah

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Looks like it's within the margin of error to me :(.

If most cards can unlock I suspect the silicon is yielding beautifully.I was also wondering why both 6950/6970 had same VRM.


Also use 3dmark11 for testing,games scale poorly with more shaders,unless it's a very high resolution.

Actually, AvP i found to be quite consistent. I even did a run at 930/1475 before flashing and still didn't beat 50.6fps:

http://paulyd.co.uk/oz/6950%20avp%20930_1475.jpg

Can you run a few more benches? If it works, its great news ^^

Seems to be working for me too, apart from the 8 pin power, what are the other differences on the 6970 PCB?

So this is why AMD decided to add the bios switch? So that people won't brick their cards when most of them won't be unlocking or working properly after it. :D

Yet it sounds great, kinda like the 550BE cpus. :up: Too bad I have to wait a week for my card.

I ordered a Gigabyte 6950 last week, which should arrive tomorrow or the day after that, I can't wait to try it out!

6970 flash at 6950 clocks vantage:

http://paulyd.co.uk/oz/6970%20clock%20for%20clock.jpg


6970 clocks:

http://paulyd.co.uk/oz/6970%20vantage.jpg


I clearly remember scoring 18,500 with 6950 at stock clocks... and i also needed 930/1475 on 6950 to match the 6970 stock clocks benchmark:

http://paulyd.co.uk/oz/6950%20vantag...20930_1475.jpg

:up: Nice looks like it works then!

May the unlocking frenzy begin! :)

Shocked this has happened! Wonder what AMD is playing at!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by informal

May the unlocking frenzy begin! :)

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bodkin

Shocked this has happened! Wonder what AMD is playing at!

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This is AMD style ! :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ZoLKoRn

This is AMD style ! :D

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Yes, and more is to come in 2011 :D
Too bad they keep a tight lid on their unreleased products though. BUT,it's super entrainment reading threads on their upcoming GPUs and CPUs. 2011 is going to be a huge year in performance market :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GoldenTiger

Due to AMD's error, not his... thus the same end person being at fault (AMD, not the user).

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Yes its AMD's error but his error is judging the quality of the wrong drivers.

The first thing you do is google your problem & then would of found the hotfix.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ZoLKoRn

This is AMD style ! :D

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Definitely, I love my PII X2 550 @ X4 working awesomely (50 quid!)

I do wonder though, if Cayman has 1920 shaders yet to be unlocked by bios.

kinda shocked about the performance. Was hoping for near 580 performance with the 6970. maybe the 6990?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HelixPC

This is the only time i will respond to fanboy comments like this. I was just stating my experience with the new cards and my own preference. You sound like you are very immature. You buy whatever card you like with your own money, its your hard earned money. I sell most of my pc's to video production companies, and guess what, they ask for nvidia graphics cards, why? because they all have had issues with ati in the past. So please get your info right before making comments that make you look like you are 12. People do more with their machines than play games.

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for the fact that you should be able to download the right drivers from the site your are absolutaly correct, very bad mistake from AMD, but very sure the green goblin has made the same mistake in the past.......

people asking certain brands by default have 9/10 no clue what the competition might have to offer? happens all the time, as I mentioned they will just ask pentium, intel and nvidia graphics. I call that old school retared IT people. Have to deal with those all the time. 12y old playing games... sure :rolleyes:

http://tpucdn.com/articles/159/images/perf.gif

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/...ng/vidcard/159

I can't wait to get to my house and try this. Sounds more fun than playing the lottery because you win either way :).

I'm usually nervous flashing the bios from a past bricking, but i felt ok to try with the switch. Friends Sapphire 6950 from newegg (100312SR) unlocks successfully to 1536 processors and near 6970 clocks.

Now I'm going to go buy one, but with my luck it won't work for me.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MirageSys

I'm usually nervous flashing the bios from a past bricking, but i felt ok to try with the switch. Friends Sapphire 6950 from newegg (100312SR) unlocks successfully to 1536 processors and near 6970 clocks.

Now I'm going to go buy one, but with my luck it won't work for me.

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idd - i'm tempted to buy a 6950 just because it's unlockable.

but i had such a bad luck in the past - my 7800gt and hd4850 were/are lousy oc'ers :(

just ordered the gigabyte 6950 off of newegg i hope it can unlock >< i hate gambling with that much money! Owell i get a good card either way

Tempting, but I'll pass since it's $300.

Mine unlocked, testing it in futuremark benches next.....

http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/10/12/26/g5a.png

I've been pretty happy with my 6870 but I'm pretty tempted to pick up a 6950 now.

Stock 6950
http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/9650/stockclocks.png

Overclocked 6950 840/1325
http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/9550/8401325.png


Unlocked Stock 6950(Well 6970 now :) )
http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/2...tockclocks.png

I picked up two 6970s for $339 (boxing day special) ... so I'm pretty happy. But seeing this (the unlocking) does kind of sting; but I guess those chips were made into 6950's for a reason ... so I'll just stick with the real thing for now :)

Anyone tried two unlocked 6950s in crossfire ?

deleted

3DMark Vantage test: HD6950 default, HD6950@880/1375 MHz, 1408 shaders and HD6950 with bios HD6970 :clap:.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Silver Bullet

I picked up two 6970s for $339 (boxing day special) ... so I'm pretty happy. But seeing this (the unlocking) does kind of sting; but I guess those chips were made into 6950's for a reason ... so I'll just stick with the real thing for now :)

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The clocks won't go as high, the 6950 only has 6+6 pin power and the memory chips are specced slower, so even if you can unlock the shaders, it won't be quite as good as a purebred 6970. Still pretty damn good value for money. :up:

still hardware mods to do, memory could react better to voltage and/or added caps ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by STEvil

still hardware mods to do, memory could react better to voltage and/or added caps ;)

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already have my accelero xtreme 5970 up for sale so that I may play with these:D

TechGage AMD Radeon HD 6950 & HD 6970 CrossFireX, December 27, 2010

Another review confirming the great CrossFireX scaling.

Few selected points from the "Final Thoughts"

Quote:

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AMD's Radeon HD 6900 cards might just have been released, but it's clear that the CrossFireX component is working just fine. Sometimes, it takes a little while for drivers to be refined to the point that CrossFireX is a real option, but that's not the case here. The performance we saw throughout the article is incredible, and hard to beat.

One thing I regret not having is more comparisons to NVIDIA's cards in the same dual-GPU configuration, but that's something I'm working on remedying in the near-future. It's only fair, as it's rather difficult to compare dual-GPUs from one company to single-GPUs from another.

There are a couple of ways we can look at this, though. Both AMD and NVIDIA will offer a near 100% theoretical performance boost when combining two identical cards, and as the GeForce GTX 580 is faster than AMD's HD 5970 by about 7~10%, putting two together in SLI mode would no doubt beat two HD 6970s in CrossFireX mode. At the same time, though, two GTX 580s retail for around $1,000, compared to $740 for dual HD 5970s.

For those seeking out killer performance, but don't want to "break the bank", picking up two Radeon HD 6950s seems like a no-brainer. Simply put, the performance is incredible. It's not a great example, but compared to NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580, dual HD 6950s cost a mere 20% more, but can deliver 40~80% more performance - depending on the game title or benchmark.

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Anyone know if the 2GB on the 6950 will help with MMO's like World of Warcraft where you might be in situations with 100s of characters? Would the capability of drawing all the textures on many characters put performance past the 570?


I don't want this to become a "what video card is best for me" so I'll put more information specific to my situation in this paragraph down here:

Reason I ask is that WoW is the only game I am playing right now that is choking under my system. I also play Bad Company a lot, but wouldn't put graphics settings above medium even if I had a 580 because I am really competitive when I play that game. Those are the only two games I play because I recently started a full time job so don't have the time to branch out. I also have a $100 gift card to EVGA, so I could get a 570 for $250, but I'm in good financial circumstances right now so $50 for less lag in crowd situations might be worth it to me. I play at 1080p and won't be doing Eyefinity or Xfire/SLI so don't need to worry about those factors.

Get GTX570, then... Fermi seems to do better in WoW, but really, it will be barely loaded either way, your bottleneck is your CPU.

I went from a 5870 and the difference was noticeable in WoW. As far as extra VRAM, won't help much. An SSD will better bring the change your seeking in this game. That said, to those insistent on running the game with the dynamic shadows on Ultra, they are asking for poor performance. There are sections on Ultra that took my 5870 below 20 in the beta ( Twilight Highlands in Cataclysm was / is quite nasty with full dynamic ) WoWs Dx11 renderer (although buggy, it has a tendency to revert to the DX9 renderer on restarts ) boosts performance a good bit to but again could be done on either of the cards you are considering.

Both cards will do good in BC2, but if you spend any serious amount of time with WoW do yourself a favor with the 570. I played BC2 with a competitive config on my 5870 and it purred along just great (120fps constant ) at 1680x1050 ( I play in DX9 with reduced folliage / shadows )

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Heinz68

TechGage AMD Radeon HD 6950 & HD 6970 CrossFireX, December 27, 2010

Another review confirming the great CrossFireX scaling.

Few selected points from the "Final Thoughts"

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Quote:

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...the GeForce GTX 580 is faster than AMD's HD 5970 by about 7~10%...

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This is where I stop reading. His own review, yes his very own review, shows the 5970 beating the 580 the majority of the time (looking at all 3 resolutions benched per game) in the games tested. The only bench that the 580 won in all 3 resolutions was using Heavens Benchmark and that didn't use AA.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Eastcoasthandle

This is where I stop reading. His own review, yes his very own review, shows the 5970 beating the 580 the majority of the time (looking at all 3 resolutions benched per game) in the games tested. The only bench that the 580 won in all 3 resolutions was using Heavens Benchmark and that didn't use AA.

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Looks like it was a typo and he meant to say 6970.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Heinz68

Quote:

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GeForce GTX 580 is faster than AMD's HD 5970 by about 7~10%

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that was an unfortunate brain fart typo for that author to make. stupid amd model names

CHEWBENATOR just oc the CPU to 4ghz get a 570 and woiw should play just fine.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Chewbenator

Anyone know if the 2GB on the 6950 will help with MMO's like World of Warcraft where you might be in situations with 100s of characters? Would the capability of drawing all the textures on many characters put performance past the 570?

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2GB should help graphically on a per scene basis.

But I would hold off and do a bit more research from gamers who play your games for more appropriate feedback.

Found the first 1GB 6950 priced in a webshop in Norway just now. Muct be crazy to buy it since the 2GB version only costs about 100 nkr or 17$ more...

jarle

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bamtan2

that was an unfortunate brain fart typo for that author to make. stupid amd model names

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Yes, it's AMD's fault the author made a typo. Come on.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JH_man

Found the first 1GB 6950 priced in a webshop in Norway just now. Muct be crazy to buy it since the 2GB version only costs about 100 nkr or 17$ more...

jarle

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In store with immediate delivery or to be announced? The 1 GB versions will to the best of my knowledge come with a price tag of 50-75$ less as compared to the 2 GB versions…

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Particle

Yes, it's AMD's fault the author made a typo. Come on.

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Not AMD fault but a somewhat understandable mistake. I think alot of people have called cayman 6870 at one point or another and called the dual part 6970. It hard to completely shift to the new numbering system.

I have a topic in the Intel support forum with this question asked as part, but I figure it couldn't hurt to ask in here real quick too.

Is there any reason to buy a 6970 or 6950 over the GTX 570 other than "supporting the underdog?"

Because in this case, I couldn't really care less about the underdog when he's grinding down parts to make heatsinks fit and delivering 3% performance gains.

Don't mean to incite flames or anything, anyone who knows me can tell you that I'm NOT an NV fanboy, and I typically take ATI's side. But I was pretty disappointed with the 6000 series, at least the stuff I've read thus far.

Well, in my opinion, the 500 series kinda caught AMD a wee bit more off guard than expected, so the HD6900 series is more reactive than not. The HD6800 series were right on the dime, however. If you want a GTX570, go get one. I have no qualms for buying from either one (laptops are a different case, for me). Though I typically buy nVidia used, since I hated looking at their 8800 prices when I first started out.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sly Fox

I have a topic in the Intel support forum with this question asked as part, but I figure it couldn't hurt to ask in here real quick too.

Is there any reason to buy a 6970 or 6950 over the GTX 570 other than "supporting the underdog?"

Because in this case, I couldn't really care less about the underdog when he's grinding down parts to make heatsinks fit and delivering 3% performance gains.

Don't mean to incite flames or anything, anyone who knows me can tell you that I'm NOT an NV fanboy, and I typically take ATI's side. But I was pretty disappointed with the 6000 series, at least the stuff I've read thus far.

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For multi monitor the 6900 series are above the GTX 570. The 1280 MB of ram puts a major limitation on the GTX 570 SLI when attempting to do multi monitor. The 2GB of ram on the 6900 series allows a crossfire setup with those cards to easily over come the GTX 570 SLI in multi monitor. This was shown just a few days ago by Kyle @ Hard OCP.

Even if it came down to a single monitor I would still choose a 6950 over a GTX 570. The card is with in spitting distance of a 570. It is $50 cheaper. Hell it is even with a 6970. IMO The 6970 is more of a outcast then any other card atm.