AMD’s GTX 560 Ti Counter-Offensive: Radeon HD 6950 1GB & XFX’s Radeon HD 6870 Black Edition
by Ryan Smith on January 25, 2011 12:20 PM ESTFinal Words
AMD’s GTX 560 Ti counter-offensive leaves us with a few different thoughts, none of which have much to do with the GTX 560 Ti.
First and foremost we have the newly launched Radeon HD 6950 1GB. Having 2GB of VRAM does have its advantages, but at this point in time there aren’t any games that can exploit this advantage at the common resolutions of 1920x1200, 1920x1080, or 1680x1050. It’s only once we get to 2560x1600 or similarly large Eyefinity resolutions that we see the 1GB 6950 fall behind its 2GB counterpart.
In the long run (e.g. a year or longer) I believe having that extra 1GB of VRAM is going to make a difference at resolutions like 1920x1200, but amidst my prognostics we’re effectively making an argument on the futureproofness of a product, which is a difficult argument to make even in the best of times. Perhaps the best argument is one of price: the 6950 1GB starts at $259, while the 6950 2GB can be found for as little as $269, putting a $10 premium on the extra 1GB. For $10 I would suggest taking the plunge, however if your budget is absolutely critical then it’s clear under most games right now you will never notice the difference between a 1GB 6950 and a 2GB 6950.
Our second card presents a more interesting scenario. The factory overclock on the XFX Radon 6870 Black Edition is not very high, but then neither is the effective price of the overclock. Instead this is a story about a custom cooler, and whether at about $10 over the average price of a reference Radeon HD 6870 it’s worth the price. While I would not call the reference 6870 loud, I also would not call it quiet by any stretch of the word; if anything I would call it cheaply built. If you don’t care about noise then the Black Edition brings little to the table, but in a suitable case those of you with sensitive ears will be in for quite a surprise. Thus while the XFX 6870 comes up short as a true GTX 560 Ti competitor as AMD would seem to be hoping for, it clearly has other redeeming values.
With AMD’s latest cards squared away, our final thought is on today’s launch in general. If nothing else, hopefully today’s write-up has entertained you, and with any luck we’ve imparted upon you a bit of practical wisdom about how the GPU industry operates. As far as we can gather AMD went through quite a bit of effort to launch a viable GTX 560 Ti competitor today – a feat they appear to have succeeded at. The GPU industry is competitive from top to bottom, but there’s something special about the $200-$300 price range that brings out the insanity on all sides. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.
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Ryan Smith - Thursday, January 27, 2011 - link
Apparently there are 2 Black Edition cards. The one we looked at is the newer of them (687A-ZDBC), whereas the old one used the reference cooler. I'm not sure the newer Black Edition has as widespread availability as the older one, but it's been available at Newegg for as long I've had the card in my hands.antifuchs - Saturday, March 5, 2011 - link
That would be very interesting to note in the article - could help prevent some annoying mis-purchases: Newegg don't list the newer one (-ZDBC) as a "Black Edition", and searching for "black edition" will only find the reference-cooled card, whereas this article doesn't mention the full model number.I would almost have bought the loud reference edition one. Thank god I re-read the comments and re-did the search on Newegg one final time.
Hrel - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link
So, when am I gonna start seeing 1080p in these charts; as that's really all I care about. I was hoping 2011 would be the year of 16:9 only, to my great dismay this is wrong. Please update soon, 16:9 has been the standard for like 2 years at this point, longer depending on how you look at it.AnnonymousCoward - Thursday, January 27, 2011 - link
16:9 sucks.ibudic1 - Thursday, January 27, 2011 - link
if you did share your experience.This is how you unlock...
http://www.techpowerup.com/137140/AMD-Radeon-HD-69...
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=335318
erple2 - Thursday, January 27, 2011 - link
The problem with this is that it's not guaranteed. While you can always flash back if problems arise, making buying decisions strictly based on what the card might be able to do (granted, there's not a lot of cards in the general review cycle that haven't shown that it can be unlocked) sounds an awful lot like "two in the bush".7upMan - Thursday, January 27, 2011 - link
RYAN: Hi Ryan, while I usually find AnandTech articles quite entertaining and informative, I always wonder why the f*ck professional editors won't get it into their head to test 2GB cards in areas where they belong to. Meaning: a 2GB vs. 1 GB card test should be about graphically overly intensive games and game mods, like the Half-Life 2 Fake Factory mod, or the STALKER Complete mod (Oblivion too has such mods). There are a number of other mods that put massive numbers of huge textures into the graphics RAM, and I think they should be the ones you need to test the cards with. After all, you can't expect games that were written with 1GB VRAM in mind to utilize the full power of double VRAM.So please, please run some tests with the above mentioned mods. Thanks in advance.
snuuggles - Friday, January 28, 2011 - link
The chart for Stalker call of pripiate, is repeated on this page:http://www.anandtech.com/show/4137/amds-gtx-560-ti...
it just shows the same chart twice...
Also, canyou post an edit in the article itself with a link to the actual xfx card or a picture or something? The link you have currently seems to go to one with a stock cooler, and I don't want to just guess which one it is that you tested. Thank you!
snuuggles - Friday, January 28, 2011 - link
woopsies! I didn't see the *multiple* pictures you posted of the card. But it would still be awesome to get a corrected link to the exact card, I'm still not 100% clear which one you tested. I apologize if I (again) missed this bit if informationThanks!
Figaro56 - Friday, March 4, 2011 - link
For the same price of $500 you can get a couple of HD 5870 Crossfire that will kick the GTX 580's teeth down it's throat.