Hardware ATI Radeon HD 6970 2GB Review

Anand also seem to have the 6970 having a clearer lead over the 570 aswell. Test set up differences?

 

i would have liked to have seen the benchies with the new 10.12 drivers, also i think peoples expectations were to high for the 6970 and 6950 it looks to have fixed the problems with the 58 cards as the 580 did the 480, as for bang for buck the 6950 crossfire looks realy good

 

But can it play Crysis?

From guru3d

However there are a handful of titles where the R6970 for example positions itself close to the GeForce GTX 580, take Crysis for example or Anno 1404 where the 6900 series absolutely annihilates and conquers. And yeah, that is what makes this product series hard to position and explain.

 

I personally think the 6950 is very keenly priced for the performance it offers. Plus the 480GTX is just too hot and power hungry! Time for an upgrade.

 

Oh and yes, Anandtechs reviews are far superior to anything else on the net.

 

Xtrafresh 3 hours ago
"What i want to see is a head-to-head on HD6970 CF vs GTX 570 SLI on triplescreen resolutions. "

+1

 

What's the multi-gpu scaling like? Does 6970CF beat 570SLI?

 

To be fair they are testing 10 games (9 is you exclude the rather random Wolfenstein (WTF?!)) so the clear lead may be down to these additional games rather than specifically favouring one card over the other.

From all of the reviews I have read it is VERY hard to decide who is the clear winner. In some cases the 6970 is able to keep up with (or at least offer a similar gameplay experience to) the GTX580 (HardOCP) whereas in other cases it is shown coming in behind the GTX570 / GTX480.

In my own opinion I prefer the way HardOCP run their tests (actual gameplay peformance rather than canned benchmarks) BUT I don't like the way they compile the actual review. I especially despise the way that Kyle acts like a petulant little child when people question his results, it is highly unprofessional.

 

They include Wolfenstein because it's the most recent OpenGL game, which makes it a very interesting benchmark if you are looking beyond the set paths.

 

I was going to say the same thing!

Although the power draw is still large, have you used a 480 recently? Newer drivers have definitely decreased temps and noise .

 

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1488/9/

crossfire comparison.... in this case (an issue) a wipe out....

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1488/8/

a wipe out the other way

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1488/15/

and about right

 

this means this season is Nvidia's - yay.
Great use of the vapour chamber by the way - good to see cooling value for our money

 

Bit-tech still hasn't managed to bring 3 screens together to test the 6970 in Eyefinity and compare it to the 5870 and an SLI 460 setup? Or is that for a later update article?

 

Delete please!

 

Unless new drivers and scaling gets rid of microstutter IMO after having xfired 5870's I wont be going with a crossfire/sli setup again unless I decide to go with a multimonitor setup. I was getting great fps with xfire but in all honesty games played smoother with one 5870 installed. This I found out when I sold my two cards a week apart in the run up to the 580 release. After gaming in crossfire for a year the smoothness was noticeable when I had one 5870 left. Then the 580 brought me back up to slightly above xfire framerates. I used to think people wer jabbering on when they were talking about dual gpu smoothness issues but now I'm a believer in buy the best single gpu you can and then get a second only if you need it down the line. It's a big win for nvidia. Looking through the comments on different websites I'm amazed at the comments about "but the 6970 is at 570 pricepoint so compare it to the 570". That's not the point... The 6970 is supposed to be amds killer single core card. It doesnt appear to have delivered and it's priced at the mid high end price point for this reason.

 

Legit seem to be saying that in Metro 2033 the 6970CF scores 36fps @ 1920x1200 and the GTX580SLI scores 76fps ... problem with their test rig or am I reading it wrong?

Ah I read the bottom about the issue, but Anandtech didn't seem to have that issue ...

In fact for Anandtech, at 2560 res, 6970CF = 46fps and GTX580SLI = 35.5 ...

Hmmm I'm swinging back towards ATi ...

 

Good points.

 

Agreed. From experience.

 

this seems to be the best view I've seen

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...s-card-review-crossfire-eyefinity-vs-sli.html

so all good

but this is the killer for me

Where we were a little disappointed was the cooler design. In single card mode the cooler works well, even if the 6970 does get a little hot and runs louder than the GTX 570. Add a second or third card in CrossFire mode on the average board and things dont go so well though. The box shape design of the 6900s means that on motherboards where there is no extra space between PCIe slots (most boards) the two/three cards sit so close that airflow is affected and on the 6900 series this significantly impacts thermal and acoustic performance. A GeForce style slant on the end of the card would have resolved this issue and revised models with alternate cannot come fast enough for us, at least for multi-GPU configurations.

 

Your second point is what has made me move my mouse away from the buy now button. I did have two HD6950's and 3 24" monitors in my basket but the cards would be sandwiched on my EX58 board and thus noise and temps would most likley suffer badly. I get away with it on my 460's as the top card is a blower design with a slanted fan (and the back is open).

I would look at two GTX570's but the lack of vram for Surround 5760x1080 resolutions is a worry. GTX480 are just too hot and noisy and GTX580 is too expensive.