AMD's Radeon HD 6970 & Radeon HD 6950: Paving The Future For AMD
by Ryan Smith on December 15, 2010 12:01 AM ESTThe Test
For the launch of the Radeon HD 6900 series, AMD supplied us with a 6900-enabled version of the Catalyst 10.11 driver, version 8.79.6.2RC2. This is older than the Catalyst 10.12 preview released Monday, which was 8.8xx.
Otherwise our test setup has not significantly changed from the GTX 570 launch last week. For our existing AMD cards we’re still using the Catalyst 10.10e, while for NVIDIA it’s a mix of 262.99 and 263.09. Note that we do not have a 2nd GTX 570 yet for GTX 570 SLI comparisons; given the equality between the 570 and 480, the GTX 480 in SLI is a reasonable stand-in.
Finally, all tests were done with the default driver settings unless otherwise noted.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-920 @ 3.33GHz |
| Motherboard: | Asus Rampage II Extreme |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.1.1.1015 (Intel) |
| Hard Disk: | OCZ Summit (120GB) |
| Memory: | Patriot Viper DDR3-1333 3 x 2GB (7-7-7-20) |
| Video Cards: |
AMD Radeon HD 6970 AMD Radeon HD 6950 AMD Radeon HD 6870 AMD Radeon HD 6850 AMD Radeon HD 5970 AMD Radeon HD 5870 AMD Radeon HD 5850 AMD Radeon HD 5770 AMD Radeon HD 4870 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 768MB NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA ForceWare 262.99 NVIDIA ForceWare 263.09 AMD Catalyst 10.10e AMD Catalyst 8.79.6.2RC2 |
| OS: | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
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fausto412 - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
6970 just 4 to 6 fps faster in Bad Company 2 than my 5870? WTF!not worth the upgrade. what a lame ass successor.
Kibbles - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
It's 7% faster at 1920 and 9% faster at 2560. BC2 obviously doesn't need the extra GPU power at 1680.I wouldn't call it weak, but this card certainly isn't the clear winner that the 5870 was.
fausto412 - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
its weak if i was expecting a response to the gtx580 to upgrade to.may as well stay with my 5870.
ClownPuncher - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
For now... But who really bases their purchase on one game anymore? It looks like 10.12 or 11.1 drivers will help performance a good amount.fausto412 - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
I base my performance on 1 game...because it is a very taxing game and my #1 game right now.MeanBruce - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
Yup, dude I heard the AMD 7000 series might make an early appearance next July, with the die shrink @28nm you might want to wait and pick up a 7970!fausto412 - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
that's what i'm considering now. need to upgrade for 30% more performance than 5870 for it to make sense.Stuka87 - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
The game is CPU limited at lower resolutions. BC2 is known for being more CPU bound than GPU bound.But I was hoping for a larger jump over the previous cards :/
fausto412 - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
I understand BFBC2 is more cpu bound. But in this testing Anandtech did they use a TOP TOP TOP of the line cpu so that rules that out as a bottleneck.Belard - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
Yeah... at least the model numbers didn't make things confusing!In some benchmarks, the 6950 is faster than your 5870... but it would have made far more sense to call these 6850/6870 or even 6830/6850..
AMD screwed up with the new names...