AMD's Radeon HD 6970 & Radeon HD 6950: Paving The Future For AMD
by Ryan Smith on December 15, 2010 12:01 AM ESTFinal Thoughts
Often it’s not until the last moment that we have all the information in hand to completely analyze a new video card. The Radeon HD 6970 and Radeon HD 6950 were no different. With AMD not releasing the pricing information to the press until Monday afternoon, we had already finished our performance benchmarks before we even knew the price, so much time was spent speculating and agonizing over what route AMD would go. So let’s jump straight in to our recommendations.
Our concern was that AMD would shoot themselves in the foot by pricing the Radeon HD 6970 in particular at too high a price. If we take a straight average at 1920x1200 and 2560x1600, its performance is more or less equal to the GeForce GTX 570. In practice this means that NVIDIA wins a third of our games, AMD wins a third of our games, and they effectively tie on the rest, so the position of the 6970 relative to the GTX 570 is heavily dependent on just what games out of our benchmark suite you favor. All we can say for sure is that on average the two cards are comparable.
So with that in mind a $370 launch price is neither aggressive nor overpriced. Launching at $20 over the GTX 570 isn’t going to start a price war, but it’s also not so expensive to rule the card out. Of the two the 6970 is going to take the edge on power efficiency, but it’s interesting to see just how much NVIDIA and AMD’s power consumption and performance under gaming has converged. It used to be much more lopsided in AMD’s favor.
Meanwhile the Radeon HD 6950 occupies an interesting spot. Above it is the 570/6970, below it are the soon to be discontinued GTX 470 and Radeon HD 5870. These cards were a bit of a spoiler for the GTX 570, and this is once more the case for the 6950. The 6950 is on average 7-10% faster than the 5870 for around 20% more. I am becoming increasingly convinced that more than 1GB of VRAM is necessary for any new cards over $200, but we’re not quite there yet. When the 5870 is done and gone the 6950 will be a reasonable successor, but for the time being the 5870 at $250 currently is a steal of a deal if you don’t need the extra performance or new features like DP1.2. Conversely the 6950 is itself a bit of a spoiler; the 6970 is only 10-15% faster for $70 more. If you had to have a 6900 card, the 6950 is certainly the better deal. Whether you go with the 5870, the 6950, or the 6970, just keep in mind that the 6900 series is in a much better position for future games due to AMD’s new architecture.
And that brings us to the final matter for today, that new architecture. Compared to the launch of Cypress in 2009 the feature set isn’t radically different like it was when AMD first added DirectX 11 support, but Cayman is radically different in its own way. After being carried by their current VLIW5 architecture for nearly four years, AMD is set to hand off their future to their new VLIW4 architecture. It won’t turn the world upside down for AMD or its customers, but it’s a reasonable step forward for the company by reducing their reliance on ILP in favor of more narrow TLP-heavy loads. For gaming this specifically means their hardware should be a better match for future DX10/DX11 games, and the second graphics engine should give them enough tessellation and rasterizing power for the time being.
Longer term we will have to see how AMD’s computing gamble plays out. Though we’ve largely framed Cayman in terms of gaming, to AMD Cayman is first and foremost a compute GPU, in a manner very similar to another company whose compute GPU is also the fastest gaming GPU on the market. Teething issues aside this worked out rather well for NVIDIA, but will lightning strike twice for AMD? The first Cayman-based video cards are launching today, but the Cayman story is just getting started.
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Roland00Address - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
1) The architecture article is something that can be written before hand, or written during benching (if the bench is on a loop). It has very little "cramming" to get out right after a NDA ends. Anand knows this info for a couple of weeks but can't discuss it due to NDAs. Furthermore the reason anandtech is one of the best review sites on the net is the fact they do go into the architecture details. The architecture as well as the performance benchmarks is the reason I come to anandtech instead of other review sites as my first choice.2) The spelling and grammar errors is a common thing at anandtech, this is nothing new. That said I can't complain for my spelling and grammar is far worse than Ryan's.
If you don't like the style of the review go somewhere else.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
1) That's only half true. AMD told us the basics about the 6900 series back in October, but I never had full access to the product information (and more importantly the developers) until 1 week ago. So this entire article was brought up from scratch in 1 week.It's rare for us to get too much access much earlier than that; the closest thing was the Fermi launch where NVIDIA was willing to talk about the architecture months in advance. Otherwise that's usually a closely held secret in order to keep the competition from having concrete details too soon.
Dracusis - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
Neither the AMD 6xxx series or Nvidia's 5xx series have been added. Would like to see how my 4870x2 stack up against this latest generation and weather or not it's worth upgrading.Makaveli - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
The Canadian pricing on these cards are hilarious.Ncix is taking preorder for the 6970 at $474.
While they sell the 570 for $379.
Can someone explain to me why I would pay $100 more for the radeon when the 570 gives equal performance?
Are these retailers that retarded?
stangflyer - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
They will price the 6950/6970 high for a few days to get the boys that bleed red and have to have the new cards right away to pay top dollar for the card.After a week they will probably be about the same price.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
Bench will be up to date by the start of next week.Paladin1211 - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
Whats wrong with you rarson? Do you even know whats the difference between "Graphics card review", "Performance review", "Performance Preview"? I dont know how good your grammar and spelling are, but they dont matter as long as you cant understand the basic meaning of the words.Most of the sites will tell you about WHAT, but here at AnandTech, you'll truly find out WHY and HOW. Well, of course, you can always go elsewhere try to read some numbers instead of words.
Keep up the good works, Ryan.
Belard - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
The 3870 and 3850 were the TOP end for ATI, as was the 4800 and the 5800. Their relationship of model numbers do not have anything to do with the status of Nvidia.When the 3870 was brand new, what was the HIGHEST end card ATI had back then? Oh yeah, the 3870!
4800 is over the 3870, easily.
4600 replaced the 3800
The 5800s replaces the 4800s... easily.
the 5700s kind of replaced the 4800s.
The 6800s replaces the 5700 & 5800s, the 6900s replace the 5800s, but not so much on performance.
I paid $90 for my 4670 and a much better value than the $220 3870 since both cards perform almost the same.
AmdInside - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
I can't think of a single website that has better hardware reviews, at least for computer technology than Anandtech. Ryan, keep up the great work.George.Zhang - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
BTW, HD6950 looks great and affordable for me.