HIS Radeon HD 6970 2 GB

[springs113]

i don't know if this was mentioned/discussed...but these cards have a dual bios...what are the possibilities of this being an undercut card...because it still seem like the shader count should be more...almost like unlocking a tri core processor into a quad?

everyone also forgets that the 5970 = 5850 x2 and not 5870x2...with that being said lets say for arguments sake what if the 6990 is a full 6970(with the assumed 1900+shaders) and not that of the actual 6970 that is currently out...reading most of these reviews seem to indicate that amd is hiding/holding something back with this (new) design.

personally i am a little dissappointed but i am a little excited too, it feels as this a stopping gap for the 7000 series. after reading anandtech's review it looks like amd is really holding back.

 

[johnnyfiive]

Wow.... I think I speak for 95% of TPU when I say... shitty.

Great review wiz!

 

[CDdude55]

as were all of the nvidia based intel boards but someone has to buy them :shadedshu

I both agree and disagree with that, while they were plagued with problems, my 680i board has been solid and stable over around three years now.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

I both agree and disagree with that, while they were plagued with problems, my 680i board has been solid and stable over around three years now.

my friend had the 790i Ultra PWM by evga and it was any amazing board as well!

 

[RONX GT]

Damn, all i can say now is "I CANT WAIT FOR THE 7XXX TO SHOW UP".

 

[Wshlist]

OpenCL not tested

I hate to be negative towards techpowerup but I'm baffled why there are no benchmarks run for OpenCL, and seeing the GPUZ shot you did not even install the OpenCL driver, WTF guys? it is late 2010 you know, why run a 3dmark03 but not test the OpenCL performance differences? And I'm pretty sure OpenCL will become more important soon as developers start to employ it, it's an accepted standard that works cross platform and cross-OS after all.

And you can even install the AMD OpenCL driver on systems without hardwaresupport since ti will then use the CPU instead, even if that CPU is intel btw.

And yes there are some OpenCL benchmarks available now.

As for the results of the test, I too am a bit let down but the price is at least not in gtx580 areas which is way too high for a mere graphics card IMHO, and yeah the 570 is beating it sometimes but at the now standard resolutions of at least 1920 it is about even I think?
But some reviewers mock that nobody has the 2000+ resolutions however since monitors are relatively cheap I think you should look at it as a way to play mufti-monitor and then the 6970 is a competitor, but the problem though is that it's probably too weak to run recent games at HD resolution over 3 monitors, so you'd have to reduce resolution which is a pity.
What we need is a way to have a central monitor at full HD res and two side monitors that can simultaneously run at lower res on the same game (which is coincidentally how real simulators for flight training used to do it, have higher res at the focal point of the pilot).

I don't think crossfire is a fix BTW, it's too fraught with issues and draws insane power and heats up too much which requires ridiculous amounts of fans or complex expensive watercooling or it will drive the case temps to unmanageable levels, all for a buggy experience.

 

[Hayder_Master]

grate review w1z as always
expected performance after we see old 6850 review, but only feel happy with new improves in tessellation
can't force gtx580 anyway
congrats ATi your new toy fail

 

[Fourstaff]

I hate to be negative towards techpowerup but I'm baffled why there are no benchmarks run for OpenCL, and seeing the GPUZ shot you did not even install the OpenCL driver, WTF guys? it is late 2010 you know, why run a 3dmark03 but not test the OpenCL performance differences? And I'm pretty sure OpenCL will become more important soon as developers start to employ it, it's an accepted standard that works cross platform and cross-OS after all.

And you can even install the AMD OpenCL driver on systems without hardwaresupport since ti will then use the CPU instead, even if that CPU is intel btw.

And yes there are some OpenCL benchmarks available now.

As for the results of the test, I too am a bit let down but the price is at least not in gtx580 areas which is way too high for a mere graphics card IMHO, and yeah the 570 is beating it sometimes but at the now standard resolutions of at least 1920 it is about even I think?
But some reviewers mock that nobody has the 2000+ resolutions however since monitors are relatively cheap I think you should look at it as a way to play mufti-monitor and then the 6970 is a competitor, but the problem though is that it's probably too weak to run recent games at HD resolution over 3 monitors, so you'd have to reduce resolution which is a pity.
What we need is a way to have a central monitor at full HD res and two side monitors that can simultaneously run at lower res on the same game (which is coincidentally how real simulators for flight training used to do it, have higher res at the focal point of the pilot).

I don't think crossfire is a fix BTW, it's too fraught with issues and draws insane power and heats up too much which requires ridiculous amounts of fans or complex expensive watercooling or it will drive the case temps to unmanageable levels, all for a buggy experience.

Well, I believe W1zzard have already stated some time ago that unless someone sponsors him some more monitors, we will have to settle for 1920X1200 and 2560x1600. Lots of people still game on 1650x1050 and below, not everybody can afford the hardware upgrades all the time. Even in Steam, the gamer-centric shop still report masses of Intel graphics, something which is too weak to power 1920x1080.

As a TPU regular, I have seen a few members with crossfire and the likes, and their opinion is that Crossfire can be a bitch at times, but it works most of the time, so I believe that your criticism against Crossfire is a bit skewed. It does not draw insane power, indeed, if you crossfire 2 5770's the power draw will still be less than a GTX470 while providing performance within 5% of the GTX470.

3 monitors is a luxury a very select few can have, and so its justified that its left out, seeing that there will be no competition from Nvidia anyway (they will need to use 2 graphics card, and if you are not pro-crossfire, then I would assume that you don't like SLi either).

I am not too sure about the OpenCL, but W1zzard tends to add things bit by bit as he go along reviewing things, and right now he has all the benches in 3Dmark03, so its good base for comparison. I would like to have some OpenCL benches up though, of course once he deems it is necessary/desirable.

W1zzard's review might not be the best in the world, it might not be perfect, but its consistent, which is the most important criteria when you compare things.

 

[Xaser04]

everyone also forgets that the 5970 = 5850 x2 and not 5870x2

A HD5970 IS HD5870 x 2. It was clocked at HD5850 clocks to keep it within the 300w TDP PCI-e spec.

The cooler on the card is capable of dealing with 400W of heat so its easy to see what ATI had in mind...

I am slightly baffled why 1024x768 is still included in these reviews along with 3DMark03 and 05?. All these do is cloud the overall averages. Removing them would reduce the workload without any detrimental effect on the actual review.

As for Eyefinity or Surround being a luxury... you can pick up 3 22" 1680x1050 monitors for around £300. Whist I can appreciate why this is not included in the standard reviews it isn't eaxctly out of reach for most enthusiasts.

 

[H82LUZ73]

Well, I believe W1zzard have already stated some time ago that unless someone sponsors him some more monitors, we will have to settle for 1920X1200 and 2560x1600. Lots of people still game on 1650x1050 and below, not everybody can afford the hardware upgrades all the time. Even in Steam, the gamer-centric shop still report masses of Intel graphics, something which is too weak to power 1920x1080.

As a TPU regular, I have seen a few members with crossfire and the likes, and their opinion is that Crossfire can be a bitch at times, but it works most of the time, so I believe that your criticism against Crossfire is a bit skewed. It does not draw insane power, indeed, if you crossfire 2 5770's the power draw will still be less than a GTX470 while providing performance within 5% of the GTX470.

3 monitors is a luxury a very select few can have, and so its justified that its left out, seeing that there will be no competition from Nvidia anyway (they will need to use 2 graphics card, and if you are not pro-crossfire, then I would assume that you don't like SLi either).

I am not too sure about the OpenCL, but W1zzard tends to add things bit by bit as he go along reviewing things, and right now he has all the benches in 3Dmark03, so its good base for comparison. I would like to have some OpenCL benches up though, of course once he deems it is necessary/desirable.

W1zzard's review might not be the best in the world, it might not be perfect, but its consistent, which is the most important criteria when you compare things.

He also does not know that 2 6950 in crossfire is beating gtx570in sli and gtx 480 also 2 6970 in crossfire are dead even to gtx580 in sli,go read some more reveiws please.


At first i was upset that the cards did not perform,but AMD is a manufacture that sells cards,why sell 1 at $599 when you can sell 2 at $349 ,They in turn just made it very cheap to run crossfire.And they also promote the Eyfinity Look 2 6950`s will cost you the same as 1 gtx580. And get the same performance out of it.And for all we know these 6970`s could have a bios update from them to enable the 1920 shaders ....... I`m buyin 2 of em in a week for reasons that my board does not do sli and i like AMD of just plugging in my hdmi cable for sound DTS Master and True Dolby through my AV receiver.I like to game and watch Blu-Ray on my PC and Nvidia has it also but you have run this cable to that ......

 

[W1zzard]

why there are no benchmarks run for OpenCL

which opencl consumer application would you suggest?

 

[Mr McC]

When I bought my 5870, I bought it with the intention of skipping this generation. This review now allows me to smugly affirm that I was correct to do so.

I don't know whether AMD or forum hype is to blame, but certainly everybody was expecting much more from these cards and I can't help feeling that, given the lead established over Nvidia with the 58xx series, the 6xxx series is, for the most part, a missed opportunity.

Thanks for the review Wizz.

 

[bear jesus]

As for Eyefinity or Surround being a luxury... you can pick up 3 22" 1680x1050 monitors for around £300. Whist I can appreciate why this is not included in the standard reviews it isn't eaxctly out of reach for most enthusiasts.

I really have to agree with that and even more so as I'm running 3 1680x1050 monitors that cost about £100 each, but i already had one of the exact same kind so a £200 upgrade and when many people on here are spending more than that on a gpu alone and often even double i think it is a relatively cheap upgrade.

Also i have to say it's the best upgrade i have ever done excluding the 4mb voodoo card i got in the mid 90's trying to play a game with a single monitor now feels like i have one eye closed and the remaining one half closed thus why i recommend it as the best upgrade to everyone i game with and none of those people are enthusiasts they just like pc gaming and most don't have a lot of cash to spare (mainly students) and now many of them are looking at good value monitors as a future upgrade

Triple monitor setups may be a luxury but it is far from enthusiast only territory when talking about lower res monitors, even more so when thinking about say 3 19" 1280x1024 monitors.

I think as time goes on triple monitor resolutions will become more of a normal thing in reviews even if its only 5040x1050 and/or 5760x1080.

 

[Wshlist]

which opencl consumer application would you suggest?

Now come on, read the rest where I say:
"And I'm pretty sure OpenCL will become more important soon as developers start to employ it, it's an accepted standard that works cross platform and cross-OS after all."

And I found a site that has everal directcompute and opencl tests now:
http://www.rage3d.com/reviews/video/amd_hd6970_hd6950_launch_review/index.php?p=7

Which nicely shows that there are some benvmarks out and that interest is growing.

 

[Wshlist]

...
3 monitors is a luxury a very select few can have
....

It's amusing that in the same breath people suggest crossfire, needing 2 expensive cards (and a fat PSU and a high energy bill), but then claim you can't afford 2 more monitors that you can get for half the price of a single gtx580 for instance, so make up your mind, are the people poor or wealthy?

Monitors go for prices like $150 and lower these days and it seriously is not the issue it used to be.

As for crossfire, I heard a LOT of bitching about it, from annoying micro-stutters to not speeding up anything because of lacking profiles, and when I read the driver release notes AMD adds a good deal of pain themselves with weird bugs. (Note that SLI is also not smooth sailing, but we are talking AMD here)

And it's a bit strange to retort to my crossfire remark related to running several HD monitors in a modern game with a reply suggesting low-end cards in crossgire, that's not going to do anything except give you the crossfire issues on top of lacking power in that scenario.

Thanks for all the replies though guys and for reading my post

 

[Fourstaff]

Now come on, read the rest where I say:
"And I'm pretty sure OpenCL will become more important soon as developers start to employ it, it's an accepted standard that works cross platform and cross-OS after all."

And I found a site that has everal directcompute and opencl tests now:
http://www.rage3d.com/reviews/video/amd_hd6970_hd6950_launch_review/index.php?p=7

Which nicely shows that there are some benvmarks out and that interest is growing.

Don't worry, W1zzard did not jump straight into benchmarking everything in DX11 when it first started, and even now he is slowly easing DX11 into the benchmarks. If he deems OpenCL worthy of his time, then he will do it. Reviewing so many graphics card while keeping rowdy forum members takes a lot of time, and he needs a life too .

As for crossfire, I heard a LOT of bitching about it, from annoying micro-stutters to not speeding up anything because of lacking profiles, and when I read the driver release notes AMD adds a good deal of pain themselves with weird bugs. (Note that SLI is also not smooth sailing, but we are talking AMD here)

Well, you did not hear from people whose crossfire ran right, did you? While its true that people can afford to get GTX 580 and stuff like that, if you take a general consensus in the forums (this one for example), you will notice that most people are running mid-high graphics cards. If you think that 5770 is rather low end, well, when it was released it was a solid mid range graphics card. Perhaps I should have used 6870 as examples, because they handily beat GTX 580 by a good margin and consumes less power too.

You might think that I would run crossfire with only the most expensive cards and so on, but many people forget that crossfire is a very handy tool if you cannot afford a kickass graphics card in one go. You can get a mid range value for money graphics card like the 6850, and then add another one in a year or two's time to up your graphics power, and that is a better decision than otherwise, for example, getting a GTX 580 in a years time while continuing to game with your 9800GTX or something in the meantime.

 

[Wshlist]

Don't worry, W1zzard did not jump straight into benchmarking everything in DX11 when it first started, and even now he is slowly easing DX11 into the benchmarks. If he deems OpenCL worthy of his time, then he will do it. Reviewing so many graphics card while keeping rowdy forum members takes a lot of time, and he needs a life too .

Oh I'm not seriously mad at him, I'm just reminding him and showing that there is interest from 'the public' in these things, and both AMD and nvidia spent a lot of design effort in the compute element of their cards the last years and it would seem they consider it significant and we might respect that a bit.
And there are actually already games that use directcompute I understand.

Oh one more thing, I thought he didn't install the OpenCL driver since the GPUZ screenshot had the box unchecked but that seems to be a bug in GPUZ since the other site that did test OpenCL also has that box show unchecked in GPUZ, so my bad in misinterpreting that.

 

[springs113]

hey W1zz what are your thoughts on the dual bios...and is possible that theres hidden potential there also do you think that this sort of a radical change in using vli4 instead of 5 is amds way to catch up with this tessellation craze and that the realization of this(performance wise) should come next series?

i don't know if you read anandtechs article but they seem to imply that amd is not letting on some tricks that they might have when it comes to this series...could it also be that because this was designed to be made on 28nm and not 40 originally could you elaborate on what kind of impact that could have had?

could that dual bios be an unlocker so to speak?...it just seems like something is missing and can be placed/unlocked at moments notice.

 

[Wshlist]

...
You might think that I would run crossfire with only the most expensive cards and so on, but many people forget that crossfire is a very handy tool if you cannot afford a kickass graphics card in one go. You can get a mid range value for money graphics card like the 6850, and then add another one in a year or two's time to up your graphics power, and that is a better decision than otherwise, for example, getting a GTX 580 in a years time while continuing to game with your 9800GTX or something in the meantime.
...

Fair enough, you do tend to hear the complainers, (but the errors in the release notes come from AMD though), and as for crossfire being an alternative, sure, and many people are content I'm sure depending on their setup and favorite games, but my specific remark was about the setup where you use 3 monitors to play a single modern game, at that point you are looking at a very much increased use of the GPU and increased demand on the RAM, both in speed and how much of it is used, and I'm not sure mid-range crossfire is good for that situation.
And of course the advantage AMD quotes in their slide of the 69xx features is that for use with many monitors you don't need SLI and it works from a single card.

 

[bear jesus]

I wonder if the dual bios is so people trying to flash a 6950 to a 6970 and failing would help them out

I really don't know why they added such a feature, i think some bios editing from the master is required *hint, hint* you know you want to take a look w1zzard

Hmmm i don't suppose AMD plans to release a new bios or something? thus the feature is to make sure people can't easily brick their cards, although i admit if that was intended i assume we would have heard some rumors by now.

 

[newtekie1]

I both agree and disagree with that, while they were plagued with problems, my 680i board has been solid and stable over around three years now.

Not to mention the nForce 4 boards were actually pretty damn good for thier time, especially compared to the Intel 925/915 offerings of the same time.

The nforce 600 and 700 series were a little lacking compared to the Intel chipsets in overclocking performance, but they still offered some great features. Such as x16/x16 slots on 750i vs. the x8/x8 slots of the P45.

 

[Wshlist]

As a general remark I can tell you that I'm in the market for a new graphics cards, something that has some lasting power so not too low end, and now I'm looking at the HD6970 and GTX570 and am really in a bind, and in my neck of the woods I notice the GTX570 is actually quite a bit more expensive than the HD6970, and availability seems to be not that great either if you don't want to pay a lot extra (hence the higher price, the retailers exploit the opportunity.)
Both have things that are attractive, and both have direct disadvantages as well as potential ones for the future, it's quite vexing.

 

[FilipM]

To me it looks like ill hold on to my 5870 for a bit longer than expected

 

[W1zzard]

Now come on, read the rest where I say:
"And I'm pretty sure OpenCL will become more important soon as developers start to employ it, it's an accepted standard that works cross platform and cross-OS after all."

And I found a site that has everal directcompute and opencl tests now:
http://www.rage3d.com/reviews/video/amd_hd6970_hd6950_launch_review/index.php?p=7

Which nicely shows that there are some benvmarks out and that interest is growing.

so you are saying "test opencl, even though no actual applications exist other than benchmarks?"

why benchmark something that nobody uses?

does anyone know an actual consumer application that uses opencl or dx compute? (not games)

we had folding in our reviews for a while. nobody said anything about it so i assumed people were not interested in it

 

[W1zzard]

the dual bios...and is possible that theres hidden potential there

its just 2 bios chips that you can switch via switch. what potential are you looking for, other than the obvious?