Hardware AMD Radeon HD 6950 1GB Review

AMD's latest is an HD 6950 on a diet, boasting just 1GB of GDDR5 but with a price to match.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2011/02/11/amd-radeon-hd-6950-1gb-review/1

 

The HD6950 1GB can be found in stock online for about £190 + £7 delivery. Surely that improves its competitiveness against the GTX560 Ti.

Also does it have a dual BIOS? Any chance of flashing it with a 6970 BIOS or will that simply not work because of the smaller memory...

 

Erm surely you mean: The 128 fewer stream processors that the HD 6950 1GB has in comparison to the HD 6970 2GB didn’t hold it back much, as it performed very closely to the HD 6970 2GB after our overclock.

So confusing numbers! ;-)

 

Does this answer it for you?

 

Cheers, I shouldn't keep skipping the whole review and just reading the conclusions page! :-D

It looks like the HD6950 2GB is now widely available for about £220. Since this 1GB card can't be BIOS hacked I would much rather spend £20 extra and get a 6950 2GB and flash it to a full 6970 and get a whole lot more performance.

 

Can't see why anyone would get this rather than a 6950 or 560? The price is way off imo.

 

Honestly, I couldn't buy myself an Nvidia card. I use 3 screens of differing size constantly, which is why I picked up a 6870 a while ago. Like the 6950 it's only 1GB, but since I'm not using Eyefinity, I only game on one screen, so it still works great.

Perhaps it's not the top gaming card, but it runs nicely and gives me tons of display space. There's even room for a 4th monitor easily, or if I buy other adapters perhaps 6, yet the high end Nvidia cards still only allow 2.

 

Thanks BT for this review. This just convinces me further that my decision to get the 560Ti is the right onee especially considering the factory OC models from MSI and Gigabyte and the lower price. If people were hoping for AMD to respond to the competition from the 560Ti with something spectacular, I think they're going to be sorely disappointed with this.

 

Looks like it comes down to personal preference and features between the 6950 and 560. Certainly the 560 isn't the clear choice in all scenarios. If i was shopping for a 6950 though, i'd definitely spend a bit extra on the 2GB model rather than the 1GB version.

 

Would like to see the difference in Crossfire and Eyefinity (and combined) situations, I can imagine that's where the VRAM difference would show most.

 

if your going to do eyefinity buy a better card in the first place

as if you can afford 3 moniters you can afford the extra £90 for the 6970

 

I was expecting more of a difference between the 1gb vs. 2gb. Maybe you should try the test using 8AA instead of the 4AA and see if it makes any difference.

 

Were you expecting the performance to exceed that of the 2GB version? We knew going in that the performance could only get worse and the only thing to pay attention to was how much AMD could knock off the price. On this side of the pond, a quick check on newegg.ca reveals the cheapest (after the dreaded main in rebate) 6950 is $5 less than the 560Ti. While I do think nvidia has the better hand here, at least AMD has put out something that competes.

 

Or do what smart people do and grab the 6950 2gb and reflash it!

 

+1

Funny thing is, I can find four games where the 6950 beats the 560 at stock. Does that make the 6950 "faster?" Maybe the 560 overclocks better.

 

Heh, people seem to forget that the BIOS flashing usually comes with limits. I remember Parge finding out that the 6950 cooler couldn't cope with the temperatures of the flashed card, but he still managed to get a 6950 with extra cores, which is good. Still, people who watercool shouldn't have an issue.

There are resolutions and AA/AF settings where the 560 does better than the 6950 and vice versa, so buyers should carefully consider their intended resolution and settings.

I think the 560 does overclock better but most are factory overclocked anyway and so will quite happily beat a stock 6950 (depending on settings).