AMD Radeon HD6950/6970(Cayman) Reviews

[Frodin]

I just can't believe that Cayman draws more juice than a GTX280. Where are all of the hot and power hungry complaints now?

The 6950 is best-in-class in performance per watt, only beaten by the lowly 5450 in Techpowerup´s test, at least in 1680x1050 and up:
http://techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/R...D_6950/30.html

It draws less power than the GTX 280 in all tests by 17- 67w, except for BD- playback where it draws 6w more:
http://techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/R...D_6950/27.html

The 6970 is quite a bit less efficient though, drawing 12w less in idle and up to 38w more under load:
http://techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/R...D_6970/27.html

The GTX 280 is not in the performance per watt charts, but I think it is safe to say that it would be way below either Cayman, much more than the around 20% lower power consumption vs the 6970.

I think, all in all, that the 6950 is a pretty solidly performing card, priced around 80% of the 6970 and GTX 570 which are priced equally locally.

Edit: I don`t know where you read that the Cayman GPUs draw more power than a GTX 280, I just checked the results in a second review I had read earlier (Anandtech), and there the GTX 285 (which is even better than the GTX 280 in this regard) draws more power than both 6950/70 in all tests:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4061/a...eon-hd-6950/24