AMD's Radeon HD 6970 & Radeon HD 6950: Paving The Future For AMD
by Ryan Smith on December 15, 2010 12:01 AM ESTPowerTune, Cont
PowerTune’s functionality is accomplished in a two-step process. The first step is defining the desired TDP of a product. Notably (and unlike NVIDIA) AMD is not using power monitoring hardware here, citing the costs of such chips and the additional design complexities they create. Instead AMD is profiling the performance of their GPUs to determine what the power consumption behavior is for each functional block. This behavior is used to assign a weighted score to each functional block, which in turn is used to establish a rough equation to find the power consumption of the GPU based on each block’s usage.
AMD doesn’t provide the precise equations used, but you can envision it looking something like this:
Power Consumption =( (shaderUsage * shaderWeight) + (ropUsage * ropWeight) + (memoryUsage * memoryWeight) ) * clockspeed
In the case of the Radeon HD 6970, the TDP is 250W, while the default clockspeed is 880MHz.
With a power equation established, AMD can then adjust GPU performance on the fly to keep power consumption under the TDP. This is accomplished by dynamically adjusting just the core clock based on GPU usage a few times a second. So long as power consumption stays under 250W the 6970 stays at 880MHz, and if power consumption exceeds 250W then the core clock will be brought down to keep power usage in check.
It’s worth noting that in practice the core clock and power usage do not have a linear relationship, so PowerTune may have to drop the core clock by quite a bit in order to maintain its power target. The memory clock and even the core voltage remain unchanged (these are only set with PowerPlay states), so PowerTune only has the core clock to work with.
Ultimately PowerTune is going to fundamentally change how we measure and classify AMD’s GPUs. With PowerTune the TDP really is the TDP; as a completely game/application agonistic way of measuring and containing power consumption, it’s simply not possible to exceed the TDP. The power consumption of the average game is still below the TDP – sometimes well below – so there’s still an average case and a worst case scenario to discuss, but the range between them just got much smaller.
Furthermore as a result, real world performance is going to differ from theoretical performance that much more. Just as is the case with CPUs where the performance you get is the performance you get; teraFLOPs, cache bandwidth, and clocks alone won’t tell you everything about the performance of a product. The TDP and whether the card regularly crosses it will factor in to performance, just as how cooling factors in to CPU performance by allowing/prohibiting higher turbo modes. At least for AMD’s GPUs, we’re now going to be talking about how much performance you can get for any given TDP instead of specific clockspeeds, bringing performance per watt to the forefront of importance.
So by now you’re no doubt wondering what the impact of PowerTune is, and the short answer is that there’s virtually no impact. We’ve gone ahead and compiled a list of all the games and applications in our test suite, and whether they triggered PowerTune throttling. Of the dozen tests, only two triggered PowerTune: FurMark as expected, and Metro 2033. Furthermore as you can see there was a significant difference between the average clockspeed of our 6970 in these two situations.
| AMD Radeon HD 6970 PowerTune Throttling | |||
| Game/Application | Throttled? | ||
| Crysis: Warhead | No | ||
| BattleForge | No | ||
| Metro | Yes (850Mhz) | ||
| HAWX | No | ||
| Civilization V | No | ||
| Bad Company 2 | No | ||
| STALKER | No | ||
| DiRT 2 | No | ||
| Mass Effect 2 | No | ||
| Wolfenstein | No | ||
| 3DMark Vantage | Yes | ||
| MediaEspresso 6 | No | ||
| Unigine Heaven | No | ||
| FurMark | Yes (600MHz) | ||
| Distributed.net Client | No | ||
In the case of Metro the average clockspeed was 850MHz; Metro spent 95% of the time running at 880MHz, and only at a couple of points did the core clock drop to around 700MHz. Conversely FurMark, a known outlier, drove the average core clock down to 600MHz for a 30% reduction in the core clock. So while PowerTune definitely had an impact on FurMark performance it did almost nothing to Metro, never mind any other game/application. To illustrate the point, here are our Metro numbers with and without PowerTune.
| Radeon HD 6970: Metro 2033 Performance | ||||
| PowerTune 250W | PowerTune 300W | |||
| 2560x1600 | 25.5 | 26 | ||
| 1920x1200 | 39 | 39.5 | ||
| 1680x1050 | 64.5 | 65 | ||
The difference is no more than .5fps on average, which may as well be within our experimental error range for this benchmark. For everything we’ve tested on the 6970 and the 6950, the default PowerTune settings do not have a meaningful performance impact on any game or application we test. Thus at this point we’re confident that there are no immediate drawbacks to PowerTune for desktop use.
Ultimately this is a negative feedback mechanism, unlike Turbo which is a positive feedback mechanism. Without overclocking the best a 6970 will run at is 880MHz, whereas Turbo would increase clockspeeds when conditions allow. Neither one is absolutely the right way to do things, but there’s a very different perception when performance is taken away, versus when performance is “added” for free. I absolutely like where this is going – both as a hardware reviewer and as a gamer – but I’d be surprised if this didn’t generate at least some level of controversy.
Finally, while we’ve looked at PowerTune in the scope of desktop usage, we’ve largely ignored other cases so far. AMD will be the first to tell you that PowerTune is more important for mobile use than it is desktop use, and mobile use is all the more important as the balance between desktops and laptops sold continues to slide towards laptops. In the mobile space not only does PowerTune mean that AMD will absolutely hit their TDPs, but it should allow them to produce mobile GPUs that come with higher stock core clocks, comfortable in the knowledge that PowerTune will keep power usage in check for the heaviest games and applications. The real story for PowerTune doesn’t even begin until 2011 – as far as the 6900 series is concerned, this may as well be a sneak peak.
Even then there’s one possible exception we’re waiting to see: 6990 (Antilles). The Radeon HD 5970 put us in an interesting spot: it was and still is the fastest card around, but unless you can take advantage of CrossFire it’s slower than a single 5870, a byproduct of the fact that AMD had to use lower core and memory clocks to make their 300W TDP. This is in stark comparison to the 4870X2, which really was 2 4870s glued together with the same single GPU performance. With PowerTune AMD doesn’t necessarily need to repeat the 5970’s castrated clocks; they could make a 6970X2, and let PowerTune clip performance as necessary to keep it under 300W. If something is being used without CrossFire for example, then there’s no reason not to run the 1 GPU at full speed. It would be the best of both worlds.
In the meantime we’re not done with PowerTune quite yet. PowerTune isn’t just something AMD can set – it’s adjustable in the Overdrive control panel too.
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versesuvius - Friday, December 17, 2010 - link
Ananke,I am not very knowledgeable about this, but I don't think a modern GPU can fit inside a CPU for now. A better idea would be a console on a card. The motherboards on the consoles are not much bigger than the large graphic cards of today. A console card for $100 would be great. I am sure that there is no technical obstacles that the average electronic wizard cannot overcome, doing that.
Sure, there is a use for everything. I can imagine that every single human being on earth can find a use for a Ferrari, but the point is that even those who do have it, do not use it as often as their other car, (Toyota, VW or whatever). In fact, there is rarely a Ferrari that has more than 20,000 km on it, and even that is put on it by successive owners, not one. The average total an ordinary person can stand a Ferrari is 5000 KM. (Disclaimer: I do not have one. I only read something to that effect somewhere). Having said that, I do have a sense of the "need for speed". I can remember sitting in front of the university's 80286 waiting for the FE program to spit out the results, one node at a time, click, click, ... . You have millions of polygons, we can have billions of mesh nodes, and that even does not even begin to model a running faucet. How's that for the need for speed. I do appreciate the current speeds. However, the CPU deal was and is a straight one. The graphic card deals, today, are not. To be clear, the "and" in "High End"s and "Fool"s is an inclusive one. "Someone will pay for it", was also initiated in the eighties of the last century. By the way, the big question "can it play crysis", will no longer be. Crysis 2 is coming to the consoles.
Quidam67 - Friday, December 17, 2010 - link
"But can it play Crysis" should be in the Urban dictionary as a satirical reference on graphics code that combines two potent attributes: 1) is way ahead of its time in terms of what current hardware can support 2) is so badly written and optimised that even hardware that should be able to run it still can't.In 1000 years time when Organic Graphics cards that you can plug into your head still can't run it smoothly @2560*1600 60fps they will realise the joke was on us and that the code itself was written to run more and more needless loops in order to overwhelm any amount of compute-resource thrown at it.
Iketh - Friday, December 24, 2010 - link
LOLmarc1000 - Friday, December 17, 2010 - link
I swear I've read ALL the comments to see if anyone already pointed it... but no one did.I feel a bit disappointed with this launch too (I have a 5770 and wanted to get 6950 but was wanting a bigger increase %-wise). But one thing interesting it the number of Stream Processors in the new gpus. By the "pure processor" count this number decreased from 1600 SPs on 5870 to 1536 SPs on 6970. But the size of the VLIW processors changed too. It was 5 SPs on 5870 and now is 4 SPs.
So we have:
hd5870 = 1600 SPs / 5 = 320 "processors"
hd6970 = 1536 SPs / 4 = 384 "processors"
if we take that 384 and multiply by 5, we would have 1920 SPs on the new generation (on par with many rumors). this is 20% more shaders. and considering AMD is saying that the new VLIW4 is 10% faster than VLIW5 we should have more than 20% increase in all situations. but this is only true in the minority of tests (like crysis at 2560x1660 where it is 24%, but in the same game at 1680x1050 the increase is only 16%). and at the same time the minimun FPS got better, yet in another games the difference is smaller.
but then again, I was expecting a little more. I believe the 6950 will be a worthy upgrade to me, but the expectations were so high that too much people ended a little disappointed... myself included.
Sunburn74 - Tuesday, December 28, 2010 - link
Well... at least they delivered on time and didn't make you wait 6 more months to simply deliver an equivalent, if not considerably worse, product.Mr Perfect - Friday, December 17, 2010 - link
Yes, the minimums are appreciated when they're included.It would be even better if the framerates was displayed as a line graph instead of a bar graph. That way readers could tell if an average consisted of a lot of high peaks and low valleys, or really was a nice smooth experience all the way through. Some other review sites use linegraphs and while I visit Anandtech for it's timeliness, professionalism, industry insight and community involvement, I go to the other sites for the actual performance numbers.
Quidam67 - Friday, December 17, 2010 - link
There is further rationale for splitting the article. Lets say someone is googling "HD 6970 architecture" perhaps they will pick up this review, or perhaps they won't, but either way, if they see that it is actually a review on the cards, they might be inclined to bypass it in favour of a more focused piece.And again, there is no reason why the Architecture Article can't provide a hyperlink to the review, if the reader then decides they want to see how that architecture translates into performance on the current generation of cards supporting it.
I really hope AT are reading this and giving it some consideration. As you say, they are a great sight and no one is disputing that, but it's not a religion, so you should be allowed to question it without being accused of blasphemy :O)
dustcrusher - Friday, December 17, 2010 - link
It really comes down to how important the mainstream market is. If they are a large enough segment of the market, one company using a simple, easy-to-grasp naming convention would likely grab some market share. Make it easy to buy your product and at least some people will be more likely to do so.If not, then it's fun to talk about but not terribly important. Tech-savvy folk will buy whatever meets their needs price/performance-wise after doing research, even if a card is named the Transylvania 6-9000 or the Wankermeister GTFO. Eager to please tech-naive folk are going to buy the largest model number they can get with the money they have, because "larger model numbers = bigger/better equipment" is a long-established consumer shorthand.
I have a half-baked idea for a model numbering system that's based around the key specs of the card- it's a 5 digit system where the first digit is the hardware platform ID (like what we have now, mostly) and the other four would represent combinations of other specs (one digit could be the lowest memory clock speed and bus width would be 1, the next lowest memory clock speed and lowest bus width would be 2, etc).
No idea if this could actually be implemented- there are probably too many variables with GPU/memory clock speeds, among other things.
Shinobi_III - Saturday, December 18, 2010 - link
If you ever saw Nvidia 4xAA in action, you know it's not as smooth as the radeon implementation (especially in motion) and z-buffer miscalculations has always been a nvidia feature.Go up a hill in Fallout New Vegas and look at Vegas in the horizon, with Nvidia cards it always looks like a disco due to meshes overlapping. Now do the same on Radeon.
TheUsual - Saturday, December 18, 2010 - link
Right now, Newegg has a 6870 for $200 after rebate. Two of these makes for an awesome value at $400. The top tier of cards doesn't give a corresponding increase in performance for the extra cost. Two 6950s costs 50% more but does not give you 50% more FPS. Two GTX 460 1GBs is also a great bang for the buck at $300.Neither of these lets you do triple SLI/XFIRE however. That would be what would be paying extra for.
My hope is that the price will drop on the 6950 by around February. By then the GTX 560 should be out and might drive prices down some. The benchmarks could change some with Sandy Bridge too, if they are currently CPU bound.