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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Ryan Smith - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
AMD rarely has Linux drivers ready for the press ahead of a launch. This is one such occasion.MeanBruce - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
Great job on the review Ryan, hope you will cover the upcoming Nvidia 560 and 550 when they arrive. Peace Brother!gescom - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
Please Anand make an update with a new 10.12 driver. Great review btw.knowom - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
Until you keep into consideration1) Driver support
2) Cuda
3) PhysX
I also prefer the lower idle noise, but higher load noise than the reverse for Ati because when your gaming usually you have your sound turned up a lot it's when you aren't gaming is when noise is more of the issue for seeking a quieter system.
It's a better trade off in my view, but they are both pretty even in terms of noise for idle and load regardless and a far cry from quite compared to other solutions from both vendors if that's what your worried about not to mention non reference cooler designs effect that situation by leaps and bounds..
Acanthus - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
AMD has been updating drivers more aggressively than Nvidia lately. (the last year)Anecdotally, my GTX285 has had a lot more game issues than my 4890. Specifically in NWN2 and Civ5.
Cuda is irrelevant unless you are doing heavy 1. photoshop, 2. video encoding.
PhysX is still a crappy gimmick at this point and needs to offer real visual improvements without a 40%+ performance hit.
smookyolo - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
PhysX may be a gimmick in games, but it's one of the better ones.Also, guess what... it's being used all over the 3D animation industry.
And guess where the real money comes from? The industry.
fausto412 - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
physx is a gimmick that has been around for some time and will never take hold. when physx came around it set a new standard but since then developers have adopted havok more commonly since it doesn't require extra hardware.it's all marketing and not a worthy decision point when buying a new card
jackstar7 - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
Alternately, my triple-monitor setup makes AMD the obvious choice.beepboy - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
Agreed on triple-monitor setup. You can make the argument that 2x 460s are cheaper and nets better performance but at the end of the day 2x 460s will be louder, use more power, more heat, etc over a single 69xx. I just want my triple monitor setup, damn it.codedivine - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
Any info on cache sizes and register files?