Radeon HD 6930 2 GB Tested

[btarunr]

Unbeknownst to many, AMD launched the Radeon HD 6930 in some markets. The company apparently doesn't want this launch to disturb reviewers from key high-volume markets, who have their hands full with Radeon HD 7970, and so the HD 6930 got a limited launch. For one, the HD 6930 is most certainly launched in China, and so Expreview gave it a run against the HD 6950 1 GB. The Radeon HD 6930 is carved out of the 40 nm "Cayman" silicon, on which other HD 6900 series products are based. It features 1280 VLIW4 stream processors, 1 GB or 2 GB of GDDR5 memory over a 256-bit wide memory interface, 80 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and clock speeds of 750 MHz (core), 1200 MHz or 4.80 GHz effective (memory). Very few partners made English press-releases about this SKU, HIS was among them. The company launched an IceQ-X graphics card on Monday.



Performance summary follows.

Expreview put the HD 6930 through its usual battery of tests, covering a large variety of games and synthetic benchmarks. The results are tabled below. Overall, the HD 6930 was found to be about 7.8% slower than the HD 6950 2 GB.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Over_Lord]

if this is for 199$ then it's a darn good deal I say!

 

[THE_EGG]

love how the picture is of a 6950 >.<

 

[Over_Lord]

^^ LOLing, I had gone straight for the benchies!

 

[John Doe]

love how the picture is of a 6950 >.<

It's based on the exact same card... either way, if these numbers are right, this could be a decent card unlike the 5830 which was a flop.

 

[pantherx12]

Hopefully only the disabled shaders were crappy rather than the entire chip, because if that is the case, these things will overclock like mad.

 

[ZoneDymo]

Soooo can these be unlocked to an HD6950/HD6970 or what?

 

[xenocide]

I feel like this is a tad too late, if they had released this when they did the 6950 1GB they probably would have sold a bunch...

 

[THE_EGG]

It's based on the exact same card... either way, if these numbers are right, this could be a decent card unlike the 5830 which was a flop.

lol i realise that but it seems strange AMD did not change the numbers on the shroud especially in their own marketing and pictures.

 

[John Doe]

lol i realise that but it seems strange AMD did not change the numbers on the shroud especially in their own marketing and pictures.

They don't bother with little things. nVidia has also shown a 570 in their slides for the 560 Ti 448, which didn't use a 570 PCB and got me confused. That was worse.

 

[Completely Bonkers]

Once again, AMD Marketing team should be FIRED.

Look at their chart "Cayman CE Positioning".

Oh, see how 6930 is so superior to the 560 Ti

Now look at the benchmarks.

The 6930 is between 5%-20% SLOWER than the 560 Ti.

How about AMD Marketing gets honest. Put the 6930 NEXT TO the 560 Ti and say "this is our direct competitor product but at a price 30% lower, therefore buy US". No. Lie lie lie instead. :shadedshu

 

[Zubasa]

Once again, AMD Marketing team should be FIRED.

Look at their chart "Cayman CE Positioning".

Oh, see how 6930 is so superior to the 560 Ti

Now look at the benchmarks.

The 6930 is between 5%-20% SLOWER than the 560 Ti.

How about AMD Marketing gets honest. Put the 6930 NEXT TO the 560 Ti and say "this is our direct competitor product but at a price 30% lower, therefore buy US". No. Lie lie lie instead. :shadedshu

The games that run 20% slower are the few Physx games which have more to do with the CPU slowing down more than anything.
Their marketing can't be "honest" when their main competitor is just as "dishonest".

Edit: Some of those games run significantly better on nVidia hardware also do affect the results.

 

[Completely Bonkers]

The games that run 20% slower are the few Physx games which have more to do with the CPU slowing down more than anything.
Their marketing can't be "honest" when their main competitor is just as "dishonest".

Edit: Some of those games run significantly better on nVidia hardware also do affect the results.

RUBBISH!!!

Those games where AMD is the slowest is when PhysX is on and AMD is 30% slower. When PhysX is off, it is still 25% slower.

WHAT DID YOU SAY? "Some of those games run significantly better on nVidia hardware also do affect the results." SERIOUS WTF? Are you saying benchmarks should exclude all those games where they run better on nV? ROFL IN DISBELIEF! BANGHEAD! So you want to exclude all the results where nV is better, and heypresto! AMD looks better if you only choose the games where AMD wins. Oh. Might not be many games in those results! :shadedshu

While I might not agree with some of the words John Doe has chosen, I do agree with his sentiment! He spotted you a mile off.

 

[AsRock]

No I just buy what I think makes sense, my PC is actually my first and for now only AMD machine in my house.
And I'll say this again, learn how to communicate with people.

EDIT: he was spreading his opinion, if he is wrong you just correct him in a civil way not just call him a fanboy and be done with it.

Yes getting tired of it too..

And even if every system in your house was AMD don't mean ya a fanboy.. Could be as simple as price\performance..

Not trying to say Mr John Doe is a Intel fanboy but he surly payed for his CPU.


Like others have said it's kinda late..

 

[Zubasa]

RUBBISH!!!

Those games where AMD is the slowest is when PhysX is on and AMD is 30% slower. When PhysX is off, it is still 25% slower.

WHAT DID YOU SAY? "Some of those games run significantly better on nVidia hardware also do affect the results." SERIOUS WTF? Are you saying benchmarks should exclude all those games where they run better on nV? ROFL IN DISBELIEF! BANGHEAD! So you want to exclude all the results where nV is better, and heypresto! AMD looks better if you only choose the games where AMD wins. Oh. Might not be many games in those results! :shadedshu

While I might not agree with some of the words John Doe has chosen, I do agree with his sentiment! He spotted you a mile off.

What I am saying is that it show the performance better if they test more than 7 fucking games and 1 benchmark.
If you don't know by now in some games the 560TI do out-perform the 6970 because those games runs better on nVidia's arch.
I am not saying the results are wrong.

Edit: I never said that those games should be excluded at all, you are the one that implies that.

 

[Completely Bonkers]

I think the 7 benchmarks are a pretty broad cross section of games from different publishers and using different games engines. I'm happy to accept the "average" of those benchmarks as truly indicative of real world performance differences between these two cards. 6930 2GB is 10% slower than 560 Ti 1GB.

Just accept it. The 6930 does NOT beat the 560 Ti. To be competitive, AMD needs to price this lower than the 560 Ti. And to be honest AMD Marketing needs to fall on swords for yet another fail at misrepresenting what the AMD "can do". Again. Again. BD, now 6930. Just tell the truth AMD. You have a competitive product. And you can price it to "win". BUT NO YOU DONT HAVE THE BEST PERFORMING PRODUCT

+++++

I'm retiring from this discussion. The facts have been laid bare. Nothing more to discuss.

 

[unsmart]

I love how you get a flame war over a card that's purpose is to empty stock chips and will have no impact on the the market. The card will most likely not even be released in your market because it would compete with the 77xx cards. They both lie about stats of the cards and so do the fakers out there drawing up fake slides. Whats new? But really "the way it's meant" games have a long history of being NV bias, I've renamed more then a few .exe and installed some config hacks to put my ATI cards on a level field. I feel that kind of biasing hurts the consumer more then the BS charts that "slip" on to the net. In the end 1% of PC users know or care what they have in the box as long as they can update facebook.

 

[brandonwh64]

I will wait for TPU's review of this card before getting my hopes up. 7XXX series is coming soon so this card is not going to have a good shelf life.

 

[Tatty_Two]

No, he wasn't. He was wrong and was being dishonest at best. It was just a fanboy post.

It's starting to get tiresome.... me coming into threads to see you accusing a number of other members that they are fanboys just because they disagree with your line of thought, from what I have seen over the last few weeks, everyone is a fanboy if they don't agree with your logic, whilst of course you never are..... so i will ask you nicely.... debate, disagree or whatever you like without the attitude because if it continues my patience will abandon me.

 

[Isenstaedt]

I wanted a comparison against the 5870, because I believe the 5870 outperforms it.

 

[Strider]

All the "fanboy" crap aside .. since it's obvious most of them have no real clue what they are talking about ...

If the price is right, this would make a great "budget" high-end gaming card. I would be less interested in its performance vs the 6950, but how much better it would perform vs a 6870. Would it be enough to justify getting a 6930, at a slightly higher price point over the 6870, yet still cheaper than the 6950.

As far as the "PhysX" debate, you notice there is only one game listed using that engine? There is a reason for that, PhysX is all but dead. There are hardly any games that use it anymore, and even fewer mainstream games. Nvidia refuses to allow it to run on any GPU other than their own. An AMD card can run PhysX just as well as an Nvidia, its simply not allowed because AMD would have to pay Nvidia for the right to do so. That's simply not going to happen.

Most developers are not using PhysX anymore, they either use Havoc or their own physics engine. They do not want to alienate what constitutes over half of the their customer base, especailly on money maker titles, since AMD is topping Nvidia in worldwide discrete GPU sales more often than not. So why would AMD pay to use PhysX, simply put, they wont, it would be stupid. PhysX is a great engine, but it can do nothing over Havoc or engines that developers create themselves and those other engines will run on any GPU, no matter the branding. So in a nut shell, Nvidia is killing the PhysX engine.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Bah. I was hoping for something faster then my 5850 for sub 200.

 

[brandonwh64]

Bah. I was hoping for something faster then my 5850 for sub 200.

I want the 6950 2GB prices to start falling, then we will have something to play with MM

 

[Wrigleyvillain]

Yeah...I'm jonesin' for some more VRAM than 1GB too...

debate, disagree or whatever you like without the attitude because if it continues my patience will abandon me.

Thanks and very much looking forward to the apparently inevitable day when this dude is no longer around.

 

[brandonwh64]

Would love to see if this card could be unlocked to a 6950