AMD Radeon HD6950/6970(Cayman) Reviews

[safan80]

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/Radeon_HD_6950/
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/Radeon_HD_6970/

finally some opengl benchmarks

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is a first person shooter game set in a far future. You are Riddick, a notorious space criminal played by Vin Diesel in the movies. Dark Athena continues where Escape from Butcher Bay ended. A major aspect of the game is its tactical use of shadows and stealth so that enemies can't detect you. Vin Diesel's voice acting also adds greatly to the game experience.
The 0.0 FPS scores for NVIDIA cards at 2560x1600 are caused by driver crashes which seem to be related to card with 512 MB memory and below. Since it works fine on ATI this is not a game problem but an NVIDIA driver issue.

[SKYMTL]

They disabled some of the SP's.

Huh?

[SpuTnicK]

Gigabyte HD6970//HD6950 review at Lab501.ro

[Andypro1]

Anandtech review: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4061/a...radeon-hd-6950

[saaya]

why are there only 7 reviews at launch?
is this a preview of things to come, as in bad availability? :/

it has less shaders than a 5870????
what the h3ll amd???

EDIT: 73W blue ray playback power consumtpion??? thats almost double that of a 5870?
EDIT2: same performance as a GTX570/GTX480???
EDIT3: only overclocks around 5% on gpu and 5% on memory????????

WHAT THE H3LL AMD????
this is the worst POS you guys have launched since R600!
399$ for this???
cause its faster in unigine? WHO THE H3LL CARES ABOUT UNIGINE!!!!!!!!!!
god im so soooo dissapointed...

the only advantage amd has is that their chip is smaller, which doesnt make a difference in chip costs as 40nm yields should be pretty damn mature right now... *facepalm*
and even if its cheaper to make, they are trying to sell it for more than a 570? FU AMD!
if it would at least cost less than a 570...
boy what a disappointment...

[kadozer]

Wow just wow. Apples to apples paints a much better picture from Hardocp vs the other reviews. Interesting.

[onethreehill]

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/...eo_card_review
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews.php?reviewid=1084
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/g...0-und-hd-6950/

[Mad Pistol]

Huh?

The original model from AMD's press conference said the 6970 was supposed to be a 1920 SP card. The 6970 we have now is a 1536 SP card.

What it was supposed to be:

6970: 1920 SP
6950: 1536 SP



What actually happened:

6970: 1536 SP
6950: 1408 SP




It looks like they moved everything down a level. This might confirm the yield issues that were rumored to be happening. It also leaves the door open to a 6990 in the future.

[Dezmen]

me doin good?^^

[SKYMTL]

The original model from AMD's press conference said the 6970 was supposed to be a 1920 SP card. The 6970 we have now is a 1536 SP card.

What it was supposed to be:

6970: 1920 SP
6950: 1536 SP



What actually happened:

6970: 1536 SP
6950: 1408 SP




It looks like they moved everything down a level. This might confirm the yield issues that were rumored to be happening. It also leaves the door open to a 6990 in the future.

I may be completely off my rocker but AMD stated that there are no disabled SMD engines.

AMD and NVIDIA seed false info to certain press outlets to narrow down where leaks are coming from.


You never know though but at 30 SIMDs, this would be one hell of a hot and power hungry chip.

[-=DVS=-]

finally some opengl benchmarks

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is a first person shooter game set in a far future. You are Riddick, a notorious space criminal played by Vin Diesel in the movies. Dark Athena continues where Escape from Butcher Bay ended. A major aspect of the game is its tactical use of shadows and stealth so that enemies can't detect you. Vin Diesel's voice acting also adds greatly to the game experience.
The 0.0 FPS scores for NVIDIA cards at 2560x1600 are caused by driver crashes which seem to be related to card with 512 MB memory and below. Since it works fine on ATI this is not a game problem but an NVIDIA driver issue.

I don't see no zeros lol did they recycle text from 2009

[tajoh111]

Hmmm that techpowerup paints a somewhat disappoint picture. About the same speed as a gtx 570(the 6970 has a slight edge) but it is a little more expensive. It's a lot cheaper than the $450 I had expected, but its now wonder, it priced appropriately compared to the gtx 570 which is more or less same speed. Both are better values compared to the gtx 580, but waiting for the 69xx has really brought nothing to the pricing landscape. It competes price wise and performance wise with an existing product.

Thank goodness we have competition though. I imagine this card would have been significantly more expensive if NV didn't release the gtx 570 and 580.

Although it is a good step in the right direction with the increase power tesselation power, it appears to take a couple steps back with power consumption and heat.

I do expect driver's to increase performance, its no wonder there was a delay though. AMD needed as much performance out of their drivers as they can get. I expect improvements out of drivers(more than usual) because I can't imagine AMD disappointing this much. For that much change in the arch and to get 25% better than the 5870, it is rather disappointing. I don't think it close to being worthy of the 6970 moniker though. I expect good driver's to bring out alot more performance.

This is a so so product so far.

[DiGiTaL_MoNkEY]

why are there only 7 reviews at launch?
is this a preview of things to come, as in bad availability? :/

it has less shaders than a 5870????
what the h3ll amd???

EDIT: 73W blue ray playback power consumtpion??? thats almost double that of a 5870?

Plenty around....

General 6970/6950 Reviews:
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/AMD-R...-Enter-Cayman/
http://pcper.com/article.php?aid=1051
http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-rade...html?doc=10474
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4061/a...radeon-hd-6950
http://www.fudzilla.com/reviews/item...hd-6950-tested
http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-6950-6970-review/
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/...eo_card_review
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...50-review.html
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/review...roduction.html
http://www.hardwarezone.com/features/view/109424
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=27983
http://www.pureoverclock.com/article1164.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...yman,2818.html

6970 Specific:
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.ph...=605&Itemid=72
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.ph...=606&Itemid=72
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/gra...-6970-review/1
http://www.legionhardware.com/articl...970_2gb,1.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/Radeon_HD_6970/
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/373...ard/index.html

6950 Specific:
http://www.modders-inc.com/modules.p...Story&reid=340
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/Radeon_HD_6950/
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/373...ard/index.html

[GoldenTiger]

I don't know what to make of this 6970 release... seems half the games it's WAY slower in (especially min FPS) than a GTX 580, some it's neck-in-neck.... much less expensive @ $370 vs. 510ish but the thing is so inconsistent it's unbelievable . I'm glad I opted against listing my 580 on the 'bay for the time being. Still, if they had managed to even out the performance across the board... this would have been an unbelievably good release.

[Mad Pistol]

I may be completely off my rocker but AMD stated that there are no disabled SMD engines.

AMD and NVIDIA seed false info to certain press outlets to narrow down where leaks are coming from.

Seeing as you've reviewed these cards, I have a feeling you're probably right.

This is rather disappointing to be honest.

However, since it only uses 250-watts at max, that leaves some room for a dual-GPU card. If that's the case, AMD may yet claim the prize of top dog.

[kadozer]

6950/GTX570 = pound for pound champ this round.

[Johnny87au]

I just noticed this:

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.ph...1&limitstart=3

The 6970 only has 1536 Stream Processors, and yet it's beating the 5870 (1600 SP) by a healthy margin. What happened to the 1920 SP monster we were hearing about???


I don't believe it. They disabled some of the SP's.


The HD 6970 is AMD's version of the GTX 480!

read mate

What does it do? Easy enough, it swaps the shader count. The 'normal' count is 1920 for a 205W 6970 card, and the switch opens up the full force of all 2520 shaders. The reason this switch is set to 'low' is that between the clock speed advances, 730MHz/1920 shaders to 920MHz/2520 shaders, it blows the card through the 300W cap for PCIe cards.

This switch is an elegant way of going from sub-GTX570 performance to way way way over GTX580 performance, and still getting PCIe certification. Very slick guys, well done. If you don't have the right drivers though, the switch does basically nothing, which is why those who bough the card retail haven't seen the results they think they should get.

[tdream]

6950/GTX570 = pound for pound champ this round.

That doesn't sound right, makes it sound like the best. I prefer price/performance ratio.

[kite7]

read mate

I think it's you who needs to re-examine that article's intent

[SKYMTL]

read mate

That's BS. The switch is a simply BIOS swap that is loaded with two default BIOS images. One of the BIOS images can be over-written with custom data for the overclockers out there who are willing to venture into that area.

[saaya]

could still be that cayman has 1920sps, and the yield problem isnt about them being broken, but all the sps running too hot, which is why they had to disable sps...
less sps at higher clocks seem to be faster than more sps at lower clocks... so this would make sense, especially if you factor in that mem bw isnt infinitive...

so what, after amd doing 40nm right, they somehow "forgot" how to design a chip for that node?
this doesnt make any sense whatsoever... wth is going on at amd???

[-=DVS=-]

semiaccurate is a gag article always read the end

Editor's note: This article heavily uses the new HTML6.2 <sarcasm> and <bullsh*t> tags. If your browser does not support them, please upgrade to a version that does. Thank you.

semiaccurate.com

[SKYMTL]

could still be that cayman has 1920sps, and the yield problem isnt about them being broken, but all the sps running too hot, which is why they had to disable sps...
less sps at higher clocks seem to be faster than more sps at lower clocks... so this would make sense, especially if you factor in that mem bw isnt infinitive...

so what, after amd doing 40nm right, they somehow "forgot" how to design a chip for that node?
this doesnt make any sense whatsoever... wth is going on at amd???

1920 was likely for the 32nm Ibiza card. On 40nm that number would have pushed the HD 6970 well beyond the 300W mark if AMD had any hope of retaining nominal clock speeds.

[Johnny87au]

That's BS. The switch is a simply BIOS swap that is loaded with two default BIOS images. One of the BIOS images can be over-written with custom data for the overclockers out there who are willing to venture into that area.

Yeah thats what i was thinking, the switch for bios protection, 3 sites ive been too are BS.. i swear what is this world coming to

[kuroikenshi]

1920 was likely for the 32nm Ibiza card. On 40nm that number would have pushed the HD 6970 well beyond the 300W mark if AMD had any hope of retaining nominal clock speeds.

thats what I thought as well, wasn't this architecture intended more for a smaller process? that being 32nm