HD 6970 & HD 6950 Reviews

Hardware Canucks did some power tune testing. Increasing doesn't seem to do all that much, decreasing has a more pronounced result.

 

I hate NV naming/numbering schemes too and renaming in general. Its like the two companies have decided collectively to stop thinking of a new name for their graphics card besides the codenames . GeForce was a 1999 product, Radeon was a 2000 product so why do we still use them in the latest GeForce GTX 580 or RADEON HD 6970 names?

 

why do we have


Windows 1 , windows 2 , windows 3 , windows 3.1 , windows 3.1 work group , windows 95 , windows 98 , windows ME , windows 2000 , windows xp , windows vista , windows 7 , windows nt and the like ?

Why do we still have iphones and ipods ?

Branding helps.

 

omg you went from Windows 7 to Windows NT! Is that what we're to expect from the next windows?

 

na , i just put that at the end cause i forget all the nt verisons

 

NT 3.1, 3.5, 3.51, 4.0, 5.0 (Win2000), 5.1 (XP, Fundamentals for Legacy PCs), 5.2 (XP x64, Home Server, Server 2003) 6.0 (Vista, Server 2008), 6.1 (Win7, Server 2008 R2)

 

Not to mention NT coexisted with the consumer line up until XP when consumer and business lines were consolidated.

But this is taking things way off course.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...899-amd-radeon-hd-6970-hd-6950-review-26.html

Although I wish they would have conducted testing at 2560x1600 which would presumably have been more stressful on the GPU.

Likewise, it would have been interesting to see tests with no case, well ventilated case, and not well ventilated case. And perhaps a comparison of ambient room temperature around 23c versus 35c (hot climate, no air con). Just to see how well AMDs powertune algorhithm deals with variable conditions.

Of course, that's enough stuff for a seperate ariticle on its own.

I also agree with their request for an automatic game profiling system so that users could set powertune levels per game and have the driver automatically apply them when the game is launched. This is one feature I could see myself actually using profiles for if I had a powertune enabled card.

Regards,
SB

 

I have never been a huge fan of overcloked reviews since it can change based on the random chance (or placement) of one unrepresentative GPU, or skill of the reviewer. Still I am happy they exist so some people can at least not complain that they should have overclocked.

 

Average + Variance Should be a good balance.

If you could chose one word of form 2 words dictionary - "Disappointing, Better Then Expected" to describe HD6970 / HD6950, what would you chose?

I would go for Disappointing, ATI had all needed to really outpower nVidia this and next year.
They lost it to a mediocre offerings of nVidia.

 

AMD Catalyst 10.12 Performance Analysis

Very informative article, includes three generations of flagship boards: 6970, 5870 and 4870, tested with a range of Catalyst suits, incl. the latest 10.12 release.
5870 seems to age fairly well, here.

 

This ATI launch is the same as the past 3 launches. The top end card is the dual chip solution. The top single chip boards were not as fast as NVIDIA's fastest single chip board.

Previously,
3870 X2
4870 X2
5970

The latest dual chip board is coming soon and unless NV comes out with their own dual chip board, it will probably be the fastest single card.

 

call of juarez disagrees:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Catalyst_10.12_Performance/5.html

looks fishy.

 

I don't get your comment. It went up 2fps so they must be cheating?

 

The radeon 5870 at 9.10 drivers had 126.4fps and with 10.12 had 109.8 fps

The hd 6970 with 10.12a has 120.1 fps which is mroe than 6fps slower than launch day radeon hd 5870


Wonder what hte deal is as its the only one to show such negative gains

 

Maybe they fixed bugs in rendering which makes the CoJ scores drop? I really don't know as I haven't followed anything CoJ related.

 

They might be, or it might be a honest error. I am just cranky about not having MLAA on 48xx series.

Though this gentleman thinks that ati can do such stuff even to make some driver launches look better than what they would be.(scroll down to far cry 2 results)

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/page-265155_28_50.html

 

I really don't like that MLAA stuff anyway. It doesn't look anywhere near as nice as SSAA or even MSAA due to its strange artifacts. Driver forced MLAA is not great IMO.

I would be much more cranky about 48xx not having SSAA. That's much more beneficial IMO and all NV cards can do it.

 

Just started playing gta iv, and the jaggies are too much.

friggin' ati cheapskates

 

I suggest you funnel your anger at Rockstar instead because it really is the developer's responsibility to implement anti aliasing. It really is pretty crazy that NV and ATI are tasked with hacking it into almost every game these days.