AMD Radeon HD6950/6970(Cayman) Reviews

[Oztopher]

Haha wow, i've come back to a very thick atmosphere this morning.

Needless to say, i've got my 6950 sitting here right beside me ready to install Just downloading the 10.12 CCC2 preview. Benchmarks and clocking results soon to follow.

[safan80]

Why has no one done crossfire at 2560x1600 with 2 6970s and compared them to the 580 GTX SLI other than anandtech?

here's another crossfire review from guru3d with the 6950s

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon...irex-review/12

[Tenknics]

i really wish Adobe's Mercury Engine wasn't cuda only...I really would like to get a 2GB 6850..but noooo. Stupid adobe...Im sure got paid off. I have to wait for non-ref 570's to come out with hopefully 2GB+ VRAM..

[KoHaN69]

i really wish Adobe's Mercury Engine wasn't cuda only...I really would like to get a 2GB 6850..but noooo. Stupid adobe...Im sure got paid off. I have to wait for non-ref 570's to come out with hopefully 2GB+ VRAM..

AMD doesn't want to support CUDA

Does adobe still use the gpu if you have it a secondary card (likea physx card) and not as the primary display card?

[generics_user]

Crossfire scaling really seems to be superb as 6970s in CF take down the 580sli in alot of games while the single gpu struggles to keep up with nvidia


speculation: the new dual graphics engine really looks like on-chip crossfire with shared memory; amd may be able to use an off-chip command processor+pcie switch based on this change in the next gen to finally reach the holy grail of 100% scaling without driver issues (this statement does not imply any shared resources, memory still has to be doubled)

[zerazax]

well anandtech hinted that the 6990 has some new features, so who knows what all this new stuff means...

[Kuroimaho]

well anandtech hinted that the 6990 has some new features, so who knows what all this new stuff means...

Probably more hand polished parts this time.

[SKYMTL]

well anandtech hinted that the 6990 has some new features, so who knows what all this new stuff means...

The features center on somehow reducing power consumption while holding rendering operations at near-HD6900 levels.

[Kuroimaho]

Count on it that in the next six months nvidia will take back most of the dx11 market share it lost in 2010.

I would be surprised to see that. The high end is way over what's needed right now for games unless you use 30" or multimonitor setup. I do not see that change suddenly by the games of next year.

So I think 560 and it's competitors will decide market share, but who knows.

[Motiv]

I would be surprised to see that. The high end is way over what's needed right now for games unless you use 30" or multimonitor setup. I do not see that change suddenly by the games of next year.

So I think 560 and it's competitors will decide market share, but who knows.

Is that the 6950 territory?

[Olivon]

Is that the 6950 territory?

Seems really close ...

[bamtan2]

there has also been hint that fusion graphics will be synergistic somehow with 6900 graphics. obviously that means either power saving or performance combining.

[Motiv]

Seems really close ...

It just seemed an odd comment he made. Almost like there wasn't anything in that segment yet. I would of thought the 6870 and 6950 filled it quite well currently.

[Olivon]

It just seemed an odd comment he made. Almost like there wasn't anything in that segment yet. I would of thought the 6870 and 6950 filled it quite well currently.

Okay, my bad

http://bbs.expreview.com/thread-38537-1-1.html

The source said the new GF104 (in fact GF114) an initial release on January 20, frequency 820MHz/1640/4000MHz, 384SP, at this frequency under the high yield. The only regrettable, the public version of video memory is 1GB. I estimate that under this standard, easily get rid of HD 5870 is not a problem.

[Nintendork]

There's the possibility of a 1GB 6950(with price between 6870 & 6950 2GB) and still be faster than a 560 with 1GB also.

Any more than that at it will kill their "new gen" 570. Now, if they want a marketshare wars some sacrifices need to be made.

[SKYMTL]

There's the possibility of a 1GB 6950(with price between 6870 & 6950 2GB) and still be faster than a 560 with 1GB also.

Any more than that at it will kill their "new gen" 570. Now, if they want a marketshare wars some sacrifices need to be made.

Actually, AMD has already announced it. Price ~$275.

[Motiv]

There's the possibility of a 1GB 6950(with price between 6870 & 6950 2GB) and still be faster than a 560 with 1GB also.

Any more than that at it will kill their "new gen" 570. Now, if they want a market share wars some sacrifices need to be made.

So we have a 560 out at the end of Jan. Looks like it will be competing with the 6870, which means the 6950 has it's own market sector for a while. Well that is unless the 560 with 384SP, isn't correct, and it has more shaders.

To me it still looks like Nvidia is struggling a little. They certainly have the cards, they just seem like they are maybe a month or two behind where they would like to be. AMD are still pumping out newer cards, and having stock of them.

The 570 is still a beautiful card. I would say it and the 6950, are the two cards that will sell by the bucket load.

[Motiv]

Actually, AMD has already announced it. Price ~$275.

is that the 1GB version of the 6950?

[Particle]

Anyone spot any reviews which tested Eyefinity under crossfire? With the 5Ks, crossfire often worked but the stutteriness was such that it was not an effective help for EF users.

[Gaul]

REVIEW 6950 CF by me,...............here :

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=263715

[SoulsCollective]

This whole thing is making it amazingly difficult to choose.

I was fairly confident I'd be going nVidia this generation, as I'd been predicting that the 69xx would disappoint compared to the 58xx series what with the unexpected transition back to the larger node. However, the performance of the 6970 at very high resolutions (2560 and Eyefinity res') is absolutely stellar and in many cases, as far as I've seen, at or above 580 performance, as is multi-card scaling. Further, "modern" games with heavy use of geometry, tesselation etc seem to favour the 6970 again (a la DiRT, Stalker COP, Metro), which suggests that the 6970 may well be a better future investment.

All this means that for me the 6970 is likely to outperform the 580 at the resolutions I play at, while costing about $250 less than the 580. Was not expecting this at all.

[cegras]

This whole thing is making it amazingly difficult to choose.

I was fairly confident I'd be going nVidia this generation, as I'd been predicting that the 69xx would disappoint compared to the 58xx series what with the unexpected transition back to the larger node. However, the performance of the 6970 at very high resolutions (2560 and Eyefinity res') is absolutely stellar and in many cases, as far as I've seen, at or above 580 performance, as is multi-card scaling. Further, "modern" games with heavy use of geometry, tesselation etc seem to favour the 6970 again (a la DiRT, Stalker COP, Metro), which suggests that the 6970 may well be a better future investment.

All this means that for me the 6970 is likely to outperform the 580 at the resolutions I play at, while costing about $250 less than the 580. Was not expecting this at all.

I noticed this as well. It's a little silly to say the nvidia cards are strictly better by comparing games where the min, avg, and max are well over 60.

[Gilgamesh]

Anyone spot any reviews which tested Eyefinity under crossfire? With the 5Ks, crossfire often worked but the stutteriness was such that it was not an effective help for EF users.

Only this:

http://www.kitguru.net/components/gr...cfx-review/22/

[flopper]

Anyone spot any reviews which tested Eyefinity under crossfire? With the 5Ks, crossfire often worked but the stutteriness was such that it was not an effective help for EF users.

6850 crossfire BC2 and lotro, 5760x1080 no issues what so ever, I play BC2 at low settings as I aim for max fps, best gaming experience ever for me.

[Motiv]

This whole thing is making it amazingly difficult to choose.

I was fairly confident I'd be going nVidia this generation, as I'd been predicting that the 69xx would disappoint compared to the 58xx series what with the unexpected transition back to the larger node. However, the performance of the 6970 at very high resolutions (2560 and Eyefinity res') is absolutely stellar and in many cases, as far as I've seen, at or above 580 performance, as is multi-card scaling. Further, "modern" games with heavy use of geometry, tesselation etc seem to favour the 6970 again (a la DiRT, Stalker COP, Metro), which suggests that the 6970 may well be a better future investment.

All this means that for me the 6970 is likely to outperform the 580 at the resolutions I play at, while costing about $250 less than the 580. Was not expecting this at all.

That's where the problems lie.

At 1080p, the 6970 is a little bit under powered, once you start raising the resolution up, it becomes a bit of a monster. I'm trying to work out if it's good at DX11 or bad (same with AA). I can't fathom out the scores from the reviews, they seem everywhere.