Hardware ATI Radeon HD 6970 2GB Review

the review made it clear, it is competing with gtx570, and with AA applied, gtx570 is faster.

where did you pull out 8xAA makes 6970 closer to gtx580? and any evidence on your ray tracing claims?

most people should see this, as written very clearly in the review, a nvidia win by gtx570. gtx580 is not competing at all at this point in time.


great review, very anticlimax after all the delays and hype. it's not even faster than gtx570 in most of the Dx11 titles in the review.

 

Somewhat disappointing but hey ho.

 

What i want to see is a head-to-head on HD6970 CF vs GTX 570 SLI on triplescreen resolutions. The benchmarks suggest that the HD6970 is getting closer at high resolutions, which is no surprise given it's 2GB memory.

Oh, and please don't make this out to be a fanboy thing, looking for the one thing the D6970 could excel at. I have the triplescreen setup, and am looking to do a jump up in performance from the single 5870 i have now.

 

New tech sounds promising. Good to see AMD tackle tesselation but it really does look like they got caught with their pants down on this :-(

Relieved with my decision to chuck a gtx580 in my rig. I genuinely thought I'd regret it

 

if you run multiple screens, avoid nvidia if you can. their cards suck up lots power at full 3D clock speed when more than 1 screen is running, and they require SLi for surround.

these 2GB cards will be great for high resolution eyefinity gaming.

 

Might aswell save yourself £60 and get a 480 that performs the same for only £249.99

Although after checking Scan, the prices of both this 6970 and the 570 start at about £278, so I'd go for one of those over the 480.

 

What does that mean? That when running more the 1 screen the cards don't idle regardless of what you are running? So even in the desktop you are getting very high power consumption or do you just mean Nvidia consumes more power in general? EDIT:Oh I think you just meant in general.

I just ordered 2 570GTX cards on sunday night (arriving today I believe) for £255 each. Was meant to hold out for today and see these cards benched but the limited time deal just swung me (the *******s!). Originally was going to get a single 6970 but having seen just how demanding eyefinity is I decided only last week to going dualcard. Nvidia only won by being out sooner. I have never run dual GPU's before and have never even came close to spending this kind of money on a GFX setup so I hope gaming on 3 screens kicks some major ass. Hope microstutter is not a big issue or im selling the cards and getting one 6970.

Thankfully the cards seem close enough to not make me regret my choice but saving 40 odd watts would be nice. Feel pretty guilty how power hungry this setup will be.

 

I wouldn't ever buy a 480 tbh. The power use, noise and temperature difference is not worth the cost saving.

 

Thanks for the write-up guys.

But ... this is worse than watching that Yogi Bear vid. Can only hope that 6990 is something special otherwise I'm off to Nvidia yet again like the hi-end GFX card tart I am.

 

no, i mean even in desktop, with multiple screens, you will never see these cards downclock to save power. they will always be running at full 3D clock speeds, always consuming a lot of power.

with single monitor, idle power is pretty even.

 

What!? That's insane! I need to look into this.

 

just one slight problem with the 480, the noise/heat/power usage, you know the couple of things that made the 480 a s***** card. the fact that this card is close to being inaudible could make it interesting for me. but for now it does seem like the 570 is a better by.

 

At first glance the cards seem dissapointing but reading the CF results over at anandtech really paint a difference picture. In most cases both HD6950 and HD6970 come close to the GTX580 SLI results. Given the price difference this is and excellent result.

The CF scaling and relative performance at 2560x1600 also bodes well for Eyefinity / Surround users.

Unfortunately the anandtech review also highlights something else... just how lacking the Bit review is. The detail is there on the architectural anaylsis (excellent BTW) but the benchmarks themselves are, well, lacking.

I

 

Failsauce.

 

Unfortunately, i agree...
Please support my suggestion!
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=199111

I'm also pretty impressed with the CF scaling, so as it stands now, i will be looking at getting two 6950's for my SFF eyefinity rig

 

I'm curious as to why Bit-tech didn't use the latest catalyst drivers for this review.

 

I am still interested to know if anyone or bit staff think that if this came out before the 570, we would be seeing the 570 as the more average card with a similar score?

It's hard to say maybe..

 

You didn't look very hard for your GTX 570 prices. You can get them in-stock delivered for £260 from dabs, with an additional £10 off using the Quidco812 voucher code. I know this works cause I bought one and had it in my pc last night

 

Greetings!

nVidia really needs to put a "560" out.
Between 200-350 there is no valid nVidia card:


Looking at the top dogs is fun but at the mid-level AMD still rules.

 

Wow, I'm running 2 monitors on my 460 and I never knew about that :/

Wish I'd waited for the 6870 now

This is somewhere bit's reviews always fall down IMO; four games really doesn't give you a good enough of overall performance.