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 |
168 Comments
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henrikfm - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
The right numbers for these cards considering the performance:6970 -> 5875
6950 -> 5855
flyck - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
Anand also tested with 'outdated' drivers. It is ofcourse AMD fault to not supply the best drivers available at launch though. But anand used 10.10, Reviews that use 10.11 like HardOcp see that the 6950 performance equally or better than 570GTx!! and 6970 trades blows with 580GTX but is overall little slower (but faster than 570GTX).And now we have to wait for the 10.12 drivers which were meant to be for 69xx series.
flyck - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
my bad anand tested with 10.11 :shame:10.12 don't seam to improve performance.
That said, Anand would it be possible to change your graphs?
Starting with the low quality and ending with the high quality? And also make the high quality chart for single cards only. Now it just isn't readable with SLI and crossfire numbers through it.
According to your results 6970 is > 570 and 6950~570 but only when everything turned on.. but one cannot deduct that with the current presentation.
Will Robinson - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
$740 for HD6970 CrossfireX dominates GTX580 SLI costing over $1000.That's some serious ownage right there.
Good pricing on these new cards and solid numbers for power/heat and noise.
Seems like a good new series of cards from AMD.
prdola0 - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
No, you're wrong. Re-read the graphs. GTX580 SLI wins most of the time.softdrinkviking - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
By a small average amount, and for ~$250 extra.Once you get to that level, you're not really hurting for performance anyway, so for people who really just want to play games and aren't interested in having the "fastest card" just to have it, the 6970 is the best value.
Nfarce - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
True. However AMD has just about always been about value over an all out direct card horsepower war with Nvidia. Some people are willing to spend for bragging rights.But I'm a little suspect on AT's figures with these cards. Two other tech sites (Toms Hardware and Guru3D) show the GTX 570 and 580 solidly beating the 6950 and 6970 respectively in the same games with similar PC builds.
IceDread - Friday, December 17, 2010 - link
You are wrong. HD 5970 in crossfire wins over gtx 580 sli. But anandtech did not test that.ypsylon - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
A lot of people were anxious to see what AMD will bring to the market with 6950/6970. And once again not much. Some minor advantages (like 5FPS in handul of games) is nothing worth writing or screaming about. For now GTX580 is more expensive, but now with AMD unveiling new cards nVidia will get really serious about the price. That $500 price point won't live for long. I expecting at least 50$ off that in the next 4-6 weeks.GTX580 is best option today for someone who is interested in new VGA, if you do own right now 5850/5870/5970 (CF or not) don't even bother with 69[whatever].
duploxxx - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
at that price point a 580 the best buy, get lost. The 580 is way over prized for the small performance increase it has above 570-6970 not to mentioning the additional power consumption. Don't see any reason at all to buy that card.Indeed no need to upgrade from a 58xx series but neither would be to move to a nv based card.