News Rumour control: ATI Radeon HD 6970 benchmarked

ATI's Radeon HD 6800-series has only just gone on sale, but already figures for the Radeon HD 6970 have leaked.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2010/10/25/ati-radeon-hd6970-benchmarked/1

 

I already have enough trouble fueling my car, I don't want to fuel my PC too...

 

but 1GB isn't enough. nVidia's 1.5GB or rumoured 2GB gtx580 makes more sense.

at least for the resolution i will need it to run: 2560x1440.

 

As always, I feel it best to wait for the Bit-Tech benchtests and not rely on third or fourth party reporting.

 

But isn't the 6970 a dual gpu card?

Every benchmark I've seen that show the 2gb results etc seem not to make a difference, so i beg to differ.
I run perfectly fine at 5040x1050 with a single 5870.

 

This more like it.

If this is true I'm potentially sold...

Going to rival GF100 for heat, then?

 

can you run BFBC2 at that resolution with 4xAA? can you run Crysis max with any level of AA?

im not sure if it's GPU underpowered or not enough memory, but fact is my 5870 struggles.

 

This is the card I've been waiting for, but not until the GTX 580 is released to see which is faster and how fast the competition brings the prices down.

 

I don't use AA for obvious reasons. But i can't say too much as I'm currently bottlenecked by my cpu.
I've yet to see a benchmark were more than 1gb actually makes a difference with top end resolution.

And i would have thought it would be the gpu underpowered in general.

 

AA performance is bandwidth limited, usually, whereas memory capacity has more to do with resolution scaling.

 

I find it unlikely AMD would release new top end cards that didn't beat the 480. So the results might be legit. But they don't really mean anything. It's all about the official benchmarks!

 

6xxx series need to succeed fast. GTX580 and/or other Fermi-refresh could wipe the floor with 6xxx. Unfortunately for AMD, people will wait for GTX580.

nVidia did it before when initial chip was in general rushed/badly designed and refresh outperformed competition. It is not a secret that Fermi was rushed like mad. And while GTX480 is noisy and power hungry there is plenty of potential in this chip. nVidia just need to clean-up mess they created. If these numbers for 6970 are anything to go by, then I'm absolutely certain that Fermi refresh will beat them easily in synthetic benchmarks.

 

"the 1GB GDDR5 model, has performed admirably in the 3DMark Vantage test suite, scoring 23,499 3DMarks in Performance mode."

It's those last three words that detract from those results.

 

GTX580 has been rumoured to be merely 20% faster than the GTX480, so...

 

Try 6064x1200 or higher... and try turning details up. I found that frequently on 1GB cards pushing settings one notch too high resulted in large framerate drops as the cards ran out of VRAM. 2GB cards make a big, big difference between playable and unplayable at the more extreme Surround/EyeFinity resolutions. At least on GTX460 cards. I've not had the chance to play with ATi cards... and they're supposedly better at VRAM management so it might not have quite such the same impact.

Only partially. Use Afterburner and a Logitech G15 to watch VRAM usage on cards with enough VRAM, and you'll see 4xAA push VRAM usage up tremendously.

edit: For those interested in 1GB vs. 2GB in Surround...

http://www.overclock.net/nvidia/801683-surround-gaming-nvidia-gtx460-mainstream-card.html

 

"can you run BFBC2 at that resolution with 4xAA? can you run Crysis max with any level of AA?

im not sure if it's GPU underpowered or not enough memory, but fact is my 5870 struggles."

Now, now ...naughty, naughty! The "but can it play Crysis?" question is one deemed nolonger relevant by Bit-tech and so is no longer asked nor answered!

 

Looking forward to seeing proper figures. As has been said, it would be nice if they release a version with more VRAM, especially with AMD pushing Eyefinity.

 

No. That will be HD6990.
HD6990 = high end dual chip
HD6970/HD6950 = high end single chip
HD6870/HD6850 = high mainstream single chip
HD6770/HD6750 = mainstream single chip
HD66xx = high lowend/low mainstream single chip
The rest is lowend.

 

As above HD6990 (Antilles) will be the high end dual gpu card (not sure if it will be dual chip or dual card)...

 

hmm ya I think I will go with two 6870 then since it will be more then enough for the current market of games and most likely for a while with the norm being ported console games to PC.