AMD's Radeon HD 6970 & Radeon HD 6950: Paving The Future For AMD
by Ryan Smith on December 15, 2010 12:01 AM ESTCivilization V
The other new game in our benchmark suite is Civilization 5, the latest incarnation in Firaxis Games’ series of turn-based strategy games. Civ 5 gives us an interesting look at things that not even RTSes can match, with a much weaker focus on shading in the game world, and a much greater focus on creating the geometry needed to bring such a world to life. In doing so it uses a slew of DirectX 11 technologies, including tessellation for said geometry and compute shaders for on-the-fly texture decompression.
Once more Civilization V throws us a curveball, with some interesting results. At 2560 we’re GPU limited to the point where the 6900 series pulls ahead of the 5870, while at 1920 there’s something going on that doesn’t sit well with Civ V, leading to sub-5870 performance. In any case this is another game where NVIDIA traditionally does well, leading to even the fast 6900 series coming in well below the GTX 570 and even the GTX 470. AMD’s CrossFire scaling reigns supreme however, giving all the CF configurations an edge over their NVIDIA counterparts.
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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?