AMD HD6950/HD6970 1GB in a few weeks (the people's high end gpu)

[Nintendork]

It was more or less a matter of time until 1GB reptiles make an appearance. Now it's official. Sapphire should be one of the 1st partners with the new chips.

-New optimized pcb (maybe smaller)

http://ht4u.net/news/23174_amd_radeo...hauptspeicher/


So if you're not into the ultimate eyefinity perfomance or an 8xAA lover this 1GB offer a great bang for the buck.

Will this mean a 6870 price cut? Very likely

[zalbard]

These better be priced well below GTX570...

[Budwise]

probably 50-75$ less would be my guess.

[ap4lifetn]

maybe 330 for 6970 and 260 for 6950?

and i just bought a ref 5870 for 200, maybe i shoulda waited t.t

[Mad Pistol]

Yea, but the 2GB 6950/6970 are still going to scale better in Crossfire.

[cold2010]

1GB

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...8&postcount=82

[Sam_oslo]

These guys are going the wrong way.
If they want to make a good change, then they have to increase RAM (or something else, I dunno what) to match/beat nVidis 570 and 580. A 50-60$ price-cut wouldn't cut it.

[RaZz!]

[...]
Will this mean a 6870 price cut? Very likely

now this is getting interesting: 6950/70 with 1gb, probably lower prices on 6850/70 and then the release of nvidia's gtx560.

do you guys think we'll see any price cuts on the gtx570 soon? wanted to get an evga gtx570 but its availability is pretty bad here. 2 of my orders in different shops were cancelled already since the shops don't know when these EVGAs will be available again
if there's a price cut foreseeable, i'll just wait a few more weeks.

[PatRaceTin]

price?

[BeepBeep2]

These guys are going the wrong way.
If they want to make a good change, then they have to increase RAM (or something else, I dunno what) to match/beat nVidis 570 and 580. A 50-60$ price-cut wouldn't cut it.

Chances are, this sill hurt performance about 5% or less, I wouldn't mind two of these 1GB 6950's at all.

[Sam_oslo]

Chances are, this sill hurt performance about 5% or less, I wouldn't mind two of these 1GB 6950's at all.

I see what you mean. This move (and the following price-reduction) could work for mid-range or low-range cards, but we are taking about high-end cards here. In this segment, many would pay $100 more for 5% more performance, or so.

The high-end is all about the performance crown!. The next-best is usually uninteresting and therefore is much cheaper. Just like, 6970 is not that much better than 6950, but the price is much higher. The same is true for 580 vs 570 too.

I personally mean they should try to gain performance, not the opposite, because these are AMDs top-cards, not mid-range.

[cegras]

I see what you mean. This move (and the following price-reduction) could work for mid-range or low-range cards, but we are taking about high-end cards here. In this segment, many would pay $100 more for 5% more performance, or so.

The high-end is all about the performance crown!. The next-best is usually uninteresting and therefore is much cheaper. Just like, 6970 is not that much better than 6950, but the price is much higher. The same is true for 580 vs 570 too.

I personally mean they should try to gain performance, not the opposite, because these are AMDs top-cards, not mid-range.

No, they wouldn't. If I could get a 6950 for ~250, I would not pay another $50 to get 5% more performance, that being contingent on me using high res.

[zalbard]

^
I agree. $250 market segment does not behave the same as $500 one...
And with CFX and SLI available, it makes even less sense not to buy the best price/performance cards.

[Sam_oslo]

^
I agree. $250 market segment does not behave the same as $500 one...
And with CFX and SLI available, it makes even less sense not to buy the best price/performance cards.

If the CFX is the target, then why 1GB? It would reduce the scaling/performance, you know.

A price-cut can always be counted, overnight, but the performance can't. Specially in this round, where nVidia has been really aggressive and ready to fight by all means.

I'm confident, this move will be countered before it gets to the marked, either buy a new GPU or a aggressive price-cut on 570, or something else. They should go the other way and increase performance for a high-end cards.

[cegras]

VRAM has been conclusively shown to only make a difference at very high resolutions with unreasonable amounts of AA. This is why the 4870 2 gb (or was it the 5870 2 gb eyefinity?) failed to match the nvidia card it was supposed to be positioned against; the additional 1 gb simply didn't really matter.

[zalbard]

If the CFX is the target, then why 1GB? It would reduce the scaling/performance, you know.

At low and medium resolutions, it wouldn't.

[RaV666]

If they want to make a good change, then they have to increase RAM

Increasing RAM more than 2GB will have ZERO effect on performance even on eyefinity, 2GB is too much already really,AMD just cant make 1.5GB card because of their memory organization.No point there.

I personally mean they should try to gain performance, not the opposite, because these are AMDs top-cards, not mid-range.

Thing is, 6990 is going to be the TOP DOG card from AMD camp.In around a month or smth like that.That was AMDs plan all along.

6950 1GB looks like a killer offer, if they would be still unlockable, thats just ejaculatious :-D.

[MpG]

At low and medium resolutions, it wouldn't.

But why are you running CFX'd 69X0's at low/med resolution?

I can see this being a pretty sweet budget card, as you can fit a lot of pretty into 1GB of Vram, but I'd certainly be interested to see some scaling compared to 2GB versions, in situations where the CFX is actually needed/useful.

[zalbard]

But why are you running CFX'd 69X0's at low/med resolution?

Because not everyone wants to spend $1000+ on a 30 inch display. For 1080p 1GB is fine, at least for now.
And I didn't mention specifically 69x0 cards, either, I mentioned SLI/CFX of cheaper cards over buying a single more powerful one.

[MpG]

Because not everyone wants to spend $1000+ on a 30 inch display. For 1080p 1GB is fine, at least for now.
And I didn't mention specifically 69x0 cards, either, I mentioned SLI/CFX of cheaper cards over buying a single more powerful one.

Well, the thread was about the 69X0 getting 1GB, so I assumed that was the focus. But yeah, 68X0 cards can still choke on 1080P with some games, so there's a fairly strong case for CFX there. But the 69X0? There aren't that many situations where one of them can't properly run a 1080P display. And those situations where they can't do it alone, they often involve more than 1GB of video memory. And in those sort of situations, running a pair of 1GB cards isn't going to help the memory bottleneck.

[Bodkin]

Guessing they will also laser cut the 6950?

[Sam_oslo]

Increasing RAM more than 2GB will have ZERO effect on performance even on eyefinity, 2GB is too much already really,AMD just cant make 1.5GB card because of their memory organization.No point there.



Thing is, 6990 is going to be the TOP DOG card from AMD camp.In around a month or smth like that.That was AMDs plan all along.

6950 1GB looks like a killer offer, if they would be still unlockable, thats just ejaculatious :-D.

Please QUOTE my lines in whole, cutting in the middle may serve to prove your points, but it will misrepresent my point. My line was:

If they want to make a good change, then they have to increase RAM (or something else, I dunno what) to match/beat nVidis 570 and 580.

Lets hope the "new" plan for 6990 can work, because the one you call for "That was AMDs plan all along", didn't work and they had to delay it a few months, you know.

But lets cut the the OT and keep it to these 1GB cards. My objection is, if they could somehow, I dunno how, offer more performance and challenge the 580, then it would result in a good price-cut from top, where it matters most. And they would have a better chance to sell too, of course.

[RaV666]

Sam, pasting all of your line doesnt make any difference.Because AMD plans to BEAT nvidias 580 with antilles (6990), not with 6950/6970.And that was a plan for, like a year.And still is.So i dont get your point.And really ,increasing vram size wont help 6970 at all.
I`m a good boy so i quote the whole line now ;-)

Lets hope the "new" plan for 6990 will work, because the "That was AMDs plan all along", as you put it didn't work and they had to delay it a few months, you know.

Plan is not new, and they did not delay it a few months, one month.Not sure if it was even a whole one.

But lets cut the the OT and keep it to these 1GB cards. My objection is, if they could somehow, I dunno how, offer more performance and challenge the 580, then it would result in a good price-cut in high-end segment. In this form, they can't trigger a price-cut where it matters, at the top.

Again, thats ,at least in theory if nothing goes horribly worng ,a job for 6990. As in 570 ,it has competition in the form of 6950/6970.
Specially interesting will be the 6950 1GB cards, CFX scaling is pure win with this generation, i feel kind fo tempted to sell of my 6850 and go that route.

[Sam_oslo]

You are new to this forum, but when i said something similar to your line (for a while ago, before the release of 6970) I got flamed with several personal attacks.

Everybody was expecting that 6970 would beat/match 580, that was the plan. At least every AMD-fan thought and believed. But it turned out to beat the 480 after release.

But lets hope the "new" 6990 plan works.

[STEvil]

VRAM has been conclusively shown to only make a difference at very high resolutions with unreasonable amounts of AA. This is why the 4870 2 gb (or was it the 5870 2 gb eyefinity?) failed to match the nvidia card it was supposed to be positioned against; the additional 1 gb simply didn't really matter.

High res with AA in crossfire had huge gains with 2GB cards. Its the 5870 2GB, btw.