AMD's Radeon HD 6970 & Radeon HD 6950: Paving The Future For AMD
by Ryan Smith on December 15, 2010 12:01 AM ESTMetro 2033
The next game on our list is 4A Games’ Metro 2033, their tunnel shooter released earlier this year. In September the game finally received a major patch resolving some outstanding image quality issues with the game, finally making it suitable for use in our benchmark suite. At the same time a dedicated benchmark mode was added to the game, giving us the ability to reliably benchmark much more stressful situations than we could with FRAPS. If Crysis is a tropical GPU killer, then Metro would be its underground counterpart.
The Crysis comparison seems particularly apt here, as our rankings closely mirror Crysis. The 6970 takes a small lead over the GTX 570, while the 6950 rides shotgun with the GTX 570. Note that none of these single-GPU cards, not even the GTX 580, get exceptionally good framerates at 1920 or 2560, so we have to resort to CF/SLI to get there. CF/SLI makes things all the more interesting, as any kind of parity the GTX 400/500 series has goes right out the window at 2560. AMD simply outscales NVIDIA here, leading to the 6970 CF surpassing the mighty 580 SLI by 30%. Reality reasserts itself at 1920 however where we end up with a more typical order.
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DoktorSleepless - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
What benchmark or game is used to measure noise?Hrel - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
I'm not 100% but I believe they test it under Crysis. It was either that or a benchmark that put full load on the system. It was in an article in last year or 2, I've been reading so long it's all starting to mesh together; chronologically. But suffice it to say it stresses the system.Hrel - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
It's furmark, it's in the article.Adul - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
nice Christmas gift from the GF :DAstroGuardian - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
I saw my GF buying a couple of those. One is supposed to be for me and she doesn't play games...... WTF?MeanBruce - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
Wow, you are getting a couple of 6950s? All I am getting from my 22yo gf is a couple of size F yammos lying on a long narrow torso, and a single ASUS 6850. Don't know which I like better, hmmmmm. Wednesday morning comic relief.Adul - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
damn sounds good to me :) enjoy both ;)SirGCal - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
I'm happy to see these power values! I did expect a bit more performance but once I get one, I'll benchmark it myself. By then the drivers will likely have changed the situation. Now to get Santa my wish list... :-) If it was only that easy...mac2j - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
One of the most impressive elements here is that you can get 2x6950 for ~$100 more than a single 580. That's some incredible performance for $600 which is not unheard of as the price point for a top single-slot card.Second... the scaling of the 6950 combined with the somwhat lower power consumption relative to the 570 bodes well for AMD with the 6990. My guess is they can deliver a top performing dual-GPU card with under a 425-watt TDP .... the 570 is a great single chip performer but getting it into a dual-gpu card under 450-500w is going to be a real challenge.
Anyway exciting stuff all-around - there will be a lot of heavy-hitting GPU options available for really very fair prices....
StormyParis - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
It's nice to have all current cards listed, and helps determine which one to buy. My question, and the one people ask me, is rather "is it worth upgrading now". Which depends on a lot of things (CPU, RAM...), but, above all, on comparative perf between current cards and cards 1-2-3 generations out. I currently use a 4850. How much faster would a 6850 or 6950 be ?