# ASUS Radeon HD 6950 CrossFire



## W1zzard (Dec 14, 2010)

In this review we will look at the performance of two Radeon HD 6950 cards running in CrossFire. This delivers a massively powerful graphics solution that is over 25% faster than NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580 and also beats AMD HD 5970. At $600, this setup also manages to deliver maximum price/performance when looked at from a high-end graphics angle.

*Show full review*


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## AndreiD (Dec 15, 2010)

The 6990 isn't looking so bad right now, but I doubt that more than 0.5% of the people out there will have money for that card.


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## mdsx1950 (Dec 15, 2010)

Very nice! So HD6990 performance should be around this level i suppose. And with new drivers offer even better performance


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## Jamborhgini313 (Dec 15, 2010)

Crossfire scaling is pretty beast! Hope the 6990 has the full 1536 shaders enabled


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## wolf (Dec 15, 2010)

looking good for a 6990 at least, AMD do very well at dual GPU cards, on the whole.

Nvidia will have to do something to compete with it, and I have the feeling it's going to be announced and released lightning fast like the 580 and 570 before it.

Interesting Dual GPU times ahead!


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## Melvis (Dec 15, 2010)

First thing i said when i say the scores was WOW, that is impressive. Scales very well.


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## Johnny87au (Dec 15, 2010)

very impressive, smashes the 570 SLI and cheaper too! U missed power consumption in the review though hehe


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## mdsx1950 (Dec 15, 2010)

Johnny87au said:


> very impressive, smashes the 570 SLI and cheaper too! U missed power consumption in the review though hehe



Yeah! 

Now to see if the HD6970 CF beats GTX580 SLI.


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## human_error (Dec 15, 2010)

Wow, I must say I am very impressed with the scaling there - almost perfect. I would like to know what AMD has changed to achieve the new performance levels in scaling as I haven't seen any significant changes listed which would improve things. Obviously they are doing something differently here and I would like to know what it is...


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## DarkOCean (Dec 15, 2010)

Crossfire scalling is almost perfect very impressive very good value for this cards in crossfire.


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## pantherx12 (Dec 15, 2010)

human_error said:


> Wow, I must say I am very impressed with the scaling there - almost perfect. I would like to know what AMD has changed to achieve the new performance levels in scaling as I haven't seen any significant changes listed which would improve things. Obviously they are doing something differently here and I would like to know what it is...



They've increased how paralell the architechture is, so simply adding an extra card doesn't fudge up how it's all working so much.

Also vliv 4 vs 5 computers prefer even pairs so that could help also.


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## stupido (Dec 15, 2010)

Folks,

I'm curious is this CF setup viable using older processors like those from C2D/C2Q? Wouldn't bottleneck those cards?

I mean all reviews I read are always on highly clocked i7 machines...


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## HillBeast (Dec 15, 2010)

mdsx1950 said:


> Yeah!
> 
> Now to see if the HD6970 CF beats GTX580 SLI.



Anandtech checked and it doesn't just beat it, it DESTROYS the GTX580 in SLI. They must have really done some serious work to Crossfire this gen.

Just a shame it isn't as powerful in single card as it could be if they went for a slightly larger die. Oh well I'm not worried. I set a promise that I am completely skipping this generation. I told myself no matter how good this stuff is, I wouldn't buy it. So no first gen Sandy Bridge, and no GTX580s/HD6970s for me.


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## yogurt_21 (Dec 15, 2010)

HillBeast said:


> Anandtech checked and it doesn't just beat it, it DESTROYS the GTX580 in SLI. They must have really done some serious work to Crossfire this gen.
> 
> Just a shame it isn't as powerful in single card as it could be if they went for a slightly larger die. Oh well I'm not worried. I set a promise that I am completely skipping this generation. I told myself no matter how good this stuff is, I wouldn't buy it. So no first gen Sandy Bridge, and no GTX580s/HD6970s for me.



yeah I figured it would based on the 6950 crossfire vs the 580 slui reviews w1z did. difference between those two was minimal so 6970 crossfire had to be better.

looks like where the 6000 series fails in single card, they make up for in multi card.


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## wahdangun (Dec 15, 2010)

so when the HD 6970 CF up ? i can't wait it


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Dec 15, 2010)

HillBeast said:


> Anandtech checked and it doesn't just beat it, it DESTROYS the GTX580 in SLI. They must have really done some serious work to Crossfire this gen.



Not sure I'd call winning 3/10 "destroying".


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## HillBeast (Dec 15, 2010)

LAN_deRf_HA said:


> Not sure I'd call winning 3/10 "destroying".



Most of the tests it didn't beat it are NVIDIA favoured games. Ever heard of them before? You know games that don't actually give a fair result and one brand higher results despite the other having the performance advantage. Oh wait, no all games give 100% fair and accurate results across two vastly different architectures. Silly me.

NVIDIA IZ BEST 4EVA!


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## Frizz (Dec 15, 2010)

That is so odd! I can see a single 6950 compared to 5/6850 isn't even that much different so you'd think crossfiring would produce the same results of a 5970 or close to a GTX 580 ... but that is not the case 2x 6950's produce a completely different price performance ratio in crossfire... it completely demolishes 5970 and GTX 580 flagship cards :S .................why?

Example Crysis 1080p Bench.... Anyhow you can see the difference more clearly on the Unigine benchmark... 1080p 4xAA and 78.5 FPS that is some good performance there, I may just end up getting two of these after all when they get cheaper.


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## Ser-J (Dec 15, 2010)

That is some amazing crossfire scaling, almost perfect!


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## Completely Bonkers (Dec 15, 2010)

Where is my favourite graph: performance per watt?


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## Dragoniten (Dec 16, 2010)

(Crossfire/Single)*100-100 in 2560x1600

AvP
+102.26%

BF: Bad Company 2
+102.65%

BattleForge
+99.30%

CoD4
+87.39%

Call of Juarez 2
-0.0079%

Crysis
+97.12%

Dawn of War 2
+102.82%

Far Cry 2
+100.72%

HAWX
+96.96%

Metro 2033
+81.42%

Riddick: Dark Athena
+90.37%

STALKER - Clear Sky
+96.21%

Supreme Commander 2
+22.06%

UT3
+75.80%

3DMark03
+94.11%

3DMark05
+24.76%

3DMark06
+31.52%

Unigine Heaven 2.0
+98.92%

Gaming (w/o Supreme Commander and Call of Juarez)
+94.41%

Gaming (w/o Call of Juarez)
+88.85%

Gaming (All games)
+82.50%

Average (All tests)
+78.02%



I don't think anyone will get a setup like this for less than 2560x1600.
Can't wait to see some Eyefinity tests


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## BraveSoul (Dec 16, 2010)

2gb seem like a great choice for amd
_____________________________





Antec1200 filter project


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## BarbaricSoul (Dec 16, 2010)

stupido said:


> Folks,
> 
> I'm curious is this CF setup viable using older processors like those from C2D/C2Q? Wouldn't bottleneck those cards?
> 
> I mean all reviews I read are always on highly clocked i7 machines...




I think those of us with the very high end of the C2Q are still ok, but anything less than a q9450 or higher will be loosing performance due to a CPU bottleneck. Granted, I'm in no way a tech guy,this is just my personal belief.


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## WarEagleAU (Dec 16, 2010)

Wow very impressed with the CF Scores.


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## HTC (Dec 16, 2010)

WarEagleAU said:


> Wow very impressed with the CF Scores.



These cards, as expected, perform best @ 2560x1600:






In AvP, 6950 CF has 48.5% over 5970 and 71.9% over 580






In Bad Company 2, 6950 CF has 24.8% over 5970 and 62.9% over 580






In Battleforge, 6950 CF has 10% over 5970 and 15% over 580






In Call of Duty 4, 6950 CF has 3.6% over 5970 and 56.3% over 580






In Call of Juarez 2, 6950 CF has 20.8% over 5970 and *-30.7%* over 580






In Crysis, 6950 CF has 36.9% over 5970 and 77.6% over 580






In Dawn of War 2, 6950 CF has 22.3% over 5970 and 75.1% over 580






In Far Cry 2, 6950 CF has 45.4% over 5970 and 36.9% over 580






In HAWX, 6950 CF has 43.6% over 5970 and 33.2% over 580






In Metro 2033, 6950 CF has 35.1% over 5970 and 32.3% over 580






In Riddick: Dark Athena, 6950 CF has 21.1% over 5970 and 51.6% over 580






In STALKER - Clear Sky, 6950 CF has 37% over 5970 and 42.3% over 580






In Supreme Commander 2, 6950 CF has 2.2% over 5970 and 9.6% over 580






In Unreal Tournament 3, 6950 CF has 13.8% over 5970 and 47% over 580






In 3DMark 03, 6950 CF has 21.8% over 5970 and 84.3% over 580






In 3DMark 05, 6950 CF has 6.2% over 5970 and 7.7% over 580






In 3DMark 06, 6950 CF has 5.4% over 5970 and 19.1% over 580






In Unigine Heaven 2.0, 6950 CF has 96.8% over 5970 and 77.9% over 580


6950 CF is $600: that's 3.4% more then a 5970 and 20% more then a 580 but how much better then a 5970 and 580 is it? Shall we add up?

*Not counting the 3DMark benches AND Unigine bench: 6950 CF has 26.1% over 5970 and 41.5% over 580

Not counting 3DMark benches only: 6950 CF has 38.8% over 5970 and 43.9% over 580

Counting everything: 6950 CF has 27.5% over 5970 and 42.8% over 580*

That's 27.5% more power costing 3.4% more or 42.8% more power costing 20% more. To put it into perspective, 6970 costs 23.3% more then 6950 and only brings ~12% better performance then 6950.


Unless i made some mistake, i didn't arrive @ the same conclusion as W1zzard:







Judging from this, the 6990 will totally destroy 5970 and 580: i wonder how it will stand against the dual GPU card nVidia is supposedly working on.


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## Dragoniten (Dec 17, 2010)

HTC said:


> [...]
> 
> Counting everything: 6950 CF has 27.5% over 5970 and 42.8% over 580[/B]
> 
> ...



You calculated that the 6950 crossfire will do 142.8% of a GTX580 and 127.5% of a HD5970, but this is considering both cards full performance, the graphs show the HD6950 performing 100%, and following your math, the GTX580 does 70% of the crossfire, and the 5970 does 78,4%

A little different, but not that much.


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## HTC (Dec 17, 2010)

Dragoniten said:


> You calculated that the 6950 crossfire will do 142.8% of a GTX580 and 127.5% of a HD5970, but this is considering both cards full performance, the graphs show the HD6950 performing 100%, and following your math, the GTX580 does 70% of the crossfire, and the 5970 does 78,4%
> 
> A little different, but not that much.



Correct: still doesn't add up to W1zzard's findings, but it's much closer.

So i really was making a mistake in my calculations. This means that i made the same error in this 6870 CF post.

EDIT

Only noticed ... now ... that you did the same calculations a few posts back ... that's what i get for not reading all the posts when i make my own ...


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## horik (Dec 22, 2010)

just got mine


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## Johnny87au (Dec 23, 2010)

HTC said:


> These cards, as expected, perform best @ 2560x1600:
> 
> http://tpucdn.com/reviews/ASUS/Radeon_HD_6950_CrossFire/images/avp_2560_1600.gif
> 
> ...



Thanks for the write up, couldnt of said it any better.. Antiless vs 590gtx, game on it seems!


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## Dragoniten (Dec 24, 2010)

Johnny87au said:


> Thanks for the write up, couldnt of said it any better.. Antiless vs 590gtx, game on it seems!



how do you expect nvidia to do a dual gpu card if their tdp is over 9000? ._.


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## manofthem (Jan 17, 2011)

I'd really like to get another 6950 to CF. These results are great!  

edit: just ordered a new gigabyte 6950 to CF.  hope my psu can handle it


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## JimmyJump (Jan 28, 2011)

In the meantime, we know that the first batch of HD6950's were in fact down-BIOS'ed 6970's, so maybe that's why they scaled so good in CFX...


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