Hardware ATI Radeon HD 6970 2GB Review

Our sources say that the release driver will become Catalyst 10.12 once it's gone through the WHQL process. Typically WHQL doesn't flag the need to change anything.

The driver in the box might be slightly older than the one we used (so that manufacturers had the time to make the CDs), so check AMD's driver download page for updates if you have ordered a card.

 

if you believed the gtx580 beating screenshot seen on ocuk forums. don't, it was a fake by the poster. he admitted it on aria forum.

 

Naaa, not those. I'm loking at the mixture of results across different sites and how the same card can go from less than a 570 on some to nearer a 580 on others. If it's simply down to to test rig used or methodology then fine. But you'd expect to see a similar variation in results in previous reviews ...and as far as I remember, there hasn't been.

 

The quality of Bit's reviews is not in question, what is in question is the lack of benchmark content, more specifically the lack of games tested.

How can you get a good picture of a cards performance when only 4 games have been tested*? The simple answer is you can't, you need to look at a lot more to a get a good all round picture.

Whilst we can argue that other review sites have done exactly that wouldn't it be simpler for Bit to include an extra game or two into their own results so people can get the results in one place without worrying about differing systems and game settings between sites? This last point is especially important as results seem to vary wildly all around the net.

What is really annoying to me is that I really wanted to drop my GTX460 SLI setup and upgrade to 2 HD6970's for eyefinity. Unfortunately the cooler design means they would cook themselves on my board and so I will have to wait for the HD6990 (or go with a single HD6970 for now).

 

Xaser04, if you get two cards, you can run the second card on the orange PCIe x16 slot on your UD5. It supports x8 bandwidth, which should not bea bottleneck, especially for a second card.

 

How disapointing, I have 2 x 4890's in crossfire that have served me well and have been waiting for a single powerful card as crossfire is not really worth the bother. Looks like I will be moving camps over to the green side as the GTX 580 is a monster. Sad

 

I only have a corsair HX 520w PSU, the Geforce 570 makes the power requirements a bit too marginal for my liking. 6950 2gb looking good then for £220 when you get 5870 performance with less power used

 

What's the folding performance? That's the only thing that's stopping me buying ati cards atm.

 

Technically yes but it won't fit in my case due to the PSU being located in the floor (Define R2).

I don't really want the added expense of a new case so I will probably have to stick to a single card for now (or just try surround on my 460s').

Javaman - we can probably assume it will be no better than the HD5xxx series at the moment as the cards arn't *that* different in architecture to show a massive folding performance increase (which would be required to at least match Nvidia's cards). This of course ignores the inherant fact that folding at the moment seems to be geared towards CUDA rather than OpenCL.

 

Review says the card is PCI express 3.0, some tech specs on scan say it is PCI-E 2.1 and board used for testing is PCI-E. I assume it'll work on all PCI-E 2.0 boards then but with what restrictions?

 

tom seem to think that the ati cards win out with high res...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-6970-radeon-hd-6950-cayman,2818-22.html

we need more surround benches.

 

I have an Asus P6X58D-E and was wondering about using the lowest slot for my second card. It only supports x8 but I'm not sure if the configuration works like that. Would free a PCI slot as well, not that it really matters as I have ordered a new PCI-e Wifi card to do dualGpu. I may have just try both and see if there is a difference in performance.

 

It would be interesting to see those benches. I'm convinced the difference won't be more the 3-5%, but it would sure be nic to have some solid results to point to

 

HardOCP did some testing recently on PCI-e bandwidth myths and concluded that even 4x PCI-2.0 had only a marginal (5-10%) effect on overall performance of GTX480 SLI at 2560x1600. At surround resolutions the difference (at 4x) was more pronounced but it is highly unlikely anyone running surround would be working with this limitation in the first place.


At 16x/8x or 8x/8x PCI-2.0 they noticed no real world performance differences outside of normal margin for errors.

Found the review:

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/08/25/gtx_480_sli_pcie_bandwidth_perf_x16x16_vs_x4x4/

16x/8x comparison: http://hardocp.com/article/2010/08/16/sli_cfx_pcie_bandwidth_perf_x16x16_vs_x16x8/

 

Just to be sure, are the numbers on the Call of Duty: Black Ops correct? The first graph shows a 5870 faster than the tested 6970 card. The more I look at it, I may well just buy another 5870 in January, as it is now down to around £180 (!!!), and fast becoming a legendary card, given its age.

Any chance for a mini-review on two 5870's vs one 6970?

 

This is a fantastic review, in-depth and exactly what I want to read. Great job guys!

 

Standard issue card is standard issue.

 

Thanks for that. I will be running in surround, which according to one person on this thread may be a huge mistake as I went with 2x570's and they run at full pelt ALL the time .
I really should have waited till today before even considering what side to go with but that damn Dabs deal got me on sunday night. 3 screens is turning into quite the headache, I'm sure none of this will matter when I get it up and running

 

@runadumb
"I went with 2x570's and they run at full pelt ALL the time"

Is this actually happening to you - or just that someone told you it would?

 

My only niggle to bit-tech testing method is that the now "standard*" resolution for 22"-26" 1920x1080 isn't tested on Bit-tech.
(and of course the lack of crysis...even though it's mentioned multiüple times in the text)
*and no, I don't like it either, I'd prefer "monitor" over TV resolution, but the sales figures are different alas.

I suppose the cards will gain a bit through driver updates (as did the GTX480 that went up a lot over the last year) but all in all i'm disappointed the "fastest" single core AMD isn't up to the fastest single-core nVidia.