Quote Originally Posted by SKYMTL View Post
Adding geometry horsepower for high-level DX11 rendering adds die size and increases TDP.
Considering 6950 and 6970 have the same die, same tesselation and only minor differences as in less shaderclusters. i don't understand your comment :-)

but an 6950 ran at 870MHz and slightly higher memory clock than 6970 (so little less core clock and bit more memory bw, 10% less shaders etc) causes a a performance difference of 1-2% and a difference of 80W on average (between 6970 and the oced 6950) makes me wonder what is wrong.

You have your numbers wrong.

HD 6950 PowerTune Max = 200W

"Typical" Gaming Power (whatever that is...) = 140W

So yeah, I AM getting close to 200W which is the upper limit of power tune and basically justifies the methodology.
If that is the case then yes.