AMD’s GTX 560 Ti Counter-Offensive: Radeon HD 6950 1GB & XFX’s Radeon HD 6870 Black Edition

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• Stuka87 - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link

  Why does every single ATI card get the EXACT same FPS in Civilization 5? Did the company that made it get paid off by nVidia to put a frame cap on ATI cards or what? It makes zero sense that 2 year old ATI cards would get the same FPS as just released ATI cards.
  
  So... What gives?

• Ryan Smith - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link

  Under normal circumstances it's CPU limited; apparently at the driver level. Just recently NVIDIA managed to resolve that issue in their drivers, which is why their Civ 5 scores have shot up while AMD's have not.

• Stuka87 - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link

  Hmm, interesting.

• WhatsTheDifference - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link

  please forgive me, Ryan, as I know this sounds abrasive and a little too off-topic from your response here. but speaking of 'score', what's the absolutely mind-boggling delay with including the 4890. quite frankly, if even one of any performance test over the relevant life of the 285 had not the 285 in it, nvidia would burn this site to the ground right after your nvidia-supporting readers did some leveling of their own. so honestly, for every 2xx series that finds its way into a benchmark, where in the world is ATI's top pick of that generation? site regs have posted about anandtech's nvidia-leaning ways, say, a few times, and this particularly clear evidence rather deserves an explanation - in my opinion. or, my spotty attendance contributed to missing at least one fascinating story.

• 7Enigma - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link

  4870 has been in most of the tests (see launch article) which can be used as a slightly lower-performing card. Use that as a guide.

• erple2 - Thursday, January 27, 2011 - link

  I agree with 7Enigma - the difference between the 4870 and 4890 are no longer significant enough to warrant inclusion in the comparison. I seem to recall that the performance of the 4890 was between the 4870 (shown) and the nvidia 285 (also shown). Couple that with the relative trouncing 30%+ increase in performance) that the newer cards deliver to the GTX285, plus that the frame rates of the GTX285 isn't that high (+30% of 20 fps is 26 fps, which is still "too slow to make it relevant"), I'm not sure that it becomes relevant anymore.

• cheese319 - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link

  It should be easily possible to unlock the card through manually editing the bios to unlock the extra shaders (like what is possible with the 6950 2gb) which is a lot safer for the ram as well.

• mapesdhs - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link

  
  Talk about not being consistent. :\ Here we have a review that
  includes an oc'd 6870, yet there was the huge row before about the 460
  FTW. Make your minds up guys, either include oc'd cards or don't.
  Personally I would definitely like to the see the FTW included since
  I'd love to know how it compares to the new 560 Ti, given the FTW often
  beats a stock 470. Please add FTW results if you can.
  
  Re those who've commented on certain tests reaching a plateau in some
  cases: may I ask, why are you running the i7 at such a low 3.33GHz
  speed?? I keep seeing this more and more these days, review articles on
  all sorts of sites using i7 CPU speeds well below 4, whereas just about
  everyone posting in forums on a wide variety of sites is using speeds
  of at least 4. So what gives? Please don't use less than 4, otherwise
  it's far too easy for some tests to become CPU-bound. You're reviewing
  gfx cards afterall, so surely one would want any CPU bottleneck to be
  as low as possible?
  
  Any 920 should be able to reach 4+ with ease. And besides, who on earth
  would buy a costly Rampage II Extreme and then only run the CPU at
  3.33? Heck, my mbd cost 70% less than a R/II/Extreme yet it would easily
  outperform your review setup for these tests (I use an i7 870 @ 4270).
  For a large collection of benchmark results, Google "SGI Ian", click
  the first result, follow the "SGI Tech Advice" link and then select, "PC
  Benchmarks, Advice and Information" (pity one can't post URLs here now,
  but I understand the rational re spam).
  
  Lastly, it's sad to admit but I agree with the poster who commented on
  the use of 1920x1200 res. The 1080 height is horrible for general use,
  but the industry has blatantly moved away from producing displays with
  1200 height. I wanted to buy a 1920x1200 display but it was damn hard
  to find companies selling any models at this res at all, never mind
  models which were actually worth buying (I bought an HP LP2475W HIPS
  24" in the end). So I'm curious, what model of display are you using
  for the tests? (the hw summary doesn't say, indeed your reviews never
  say what display is being used - please do!). Kinda seems like you're
  still able to find 1200-height screens, so if you've any info on
  recommended models I'm sure readers would be interested to know.
  
  Thanks!!
  
  Ian.

• Ryan Smith - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link

  Our 920 is a C0/C1 model, not D0. D0s can indeed hit near 4GHz quite regularly, but for our 920 that is not the case. As for our motherboard, it was chosen first for benchmark purposes - the R2E has some features like OC Profiles that are extremely useful for this line of work.
  
  As for the monitor we're using, it's a Samsung 305T.

• mapesdhs - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link

  
  Ryan writes:
  > Our 920 is a C0/C1 model, not D0. D0s can indeed hit near 4GHz quite
  > regularly, but for our 920 that is not the case. ...
  
  Oh!! Time to upgrade. ;) Stick in a 950, should work much better. My point
  still stands though, some tests could easily be CPU-bottlenecking when
  things get tough.
  
  > As for our motherboard, it was chosen first for benchmark purposes - the
  > R2E has some features like OC Profiles that are extremely useful for this
  > line of work.
  
  So does mine. :D No need to spend oodles to have such features. Your's
  would of course be better though for 3-way/4-way SLI/CF, but that's a
  minority audience IMO.
  
  > As for the monitor we're using, it's a Samsung 305T.
  
  Sweeeet! I see it received good reviews, eg. on the 'trusted' of the
  'reviews' dot com.
  
  Hmm, do you know if it supports sync-on-green? Just curious.
  
  Ian.