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Leaked AMD 6970 information

MenaceInc

Staff Member
Seen a few screenshots of some benchmarks and photos of what is supposedly AMD's new flagship graphics card 6970

oOe4P.jpg



There doesn't look like there's proper driver support just yet although apparently the card shipped with the 10.11 drivers on a disc.


3DMark 11 benchmarks
5thHU.jpg

eBAvx.jpg


Crysis benchmarks
mP6Bl.jpg




Personally, I'm not so sure about these figures. They may turn out to be legitimate or perhaps the introduction of 10.12 drivers will boost them a lot (catalystmaker on twitter has said that 10.12 would be HUGE).


Anyone care to comment what they think?
 

x3sphere

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I saw these surface yesterday and I question the validity of them to be honest. The figures are FAR below expectations and put the 6970 slightly on par or in some cases, below, a GTX570.

Now that's fine if the 6970 was a $300 part, but reports from retailers have pegged it at $400-450, more expensive than the 570. And even if it was $300, that'd leave no room for the 6950.

AMD has had 13 months to prepare for this launch, I can't seem them bringing out a card that's only 20% over a 5870.. and at a near 100% price premium to boot.

I think something funky is going on with the leaked drivers, possibly throttling - AMD added full driver control over power draw in the 6900 series.

Either way, NDA lifts on the 15th, so the real reviews will come out then.
 

MenaceInc

Staff Member
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what comes in the proper reviews. Personally I'll be sticking with my 4890 for the timebeing anyways until maybe this time next year. There doesn't appear to be many games on the horizon that I'm excited about and that will require anything more
 

x3sphere

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Some new slides just surfaced..

82892691.jpg

85193565.jpg


Well, 15% over a 480 puts it into GTX580 territory. That's not too bad, I suppose, but still disappointing. Not much of an increase over Cypress (30-35%) which will fall short of surpassing the 5970.

Seems weird to have a new-generation card in the same series perform slightly worse than the last (granted, 5970 is a dual GPU, but still..).

I still may get it though as the 1GB VRAM on my card is a huge bottleneck at 2560x1600. I can't max out GTA IV because of it.

Here's hoping it's a beast at OC'ing.
 

Adiuvo

Active Member
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what comes in the proper reviews. Personally I'll be sticking with my 4890 for the timebeing anyways until maybe this time next year. There doesn't appear to be many games on the horizon that I'm excited about and that will require anything more

I'm already starting to feel the 4890's age now that I have an i7 950. I think I'm going to go nVidia this time around due to heating issues. Also, when did cards starting requiring 4pin connectors?
 

x3sphere

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I'm already starting to feel the 4890's age now that I have an i7 950. I think I'm going to go nVidia this time around due to heating issues. Also, when did cards starting requiring 4pin connectors?

Well, 5xxx series and onwards has extremely good performance / watt. I think nearly all of the cards from Nvidia's current lineup run hotter than AMD equivalents.

4 pin connectors? You mean 8? (assuming you're referring to the 6970 pic). 6/8-pin has usually been a norm for top end cards. The 6950 will likely require only dual 6-pin.
 

Adiuvo

Active Member
Yeah, I meant 8. No clue why I said 4 >_>

I was under the impression that the 580 idled in the mid 30s and hit high 50s under load. Doesn't the 6870 go into the high 60s? I suppose it could just be people with poor cooling though.
 

x3sphere

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Yeah, I meant 8. No clue why I said 4 >_>

I was under the impression that the 580 idled in the mid 30s and hit high 50s under load. Doesn't the 6870 go into the high 60s? I suppose it could just be people with poor cooling though.

They brought down temps quite a bit compared to the 480 but it still runs hot, from Anandtech's review:

33987.png
 

MenaceInc

Staff Member
Just wondering but is the 6970 a dualGPU card the same way the 5970 was? I havent looked at any previews or specifications for it :\
 

x3sphere

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Just wondering but is the 6970 a dualGPU card the same way the 5970 was? I havent looked at any previews or specifications for it :\

Nah, it's single GPU. 6990 (which is due out early next year) will fill the dual GPU spot.
 

x3sphere

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This is interesting stuff, and supports the theory I had regarding throttling earlier. Seems you can set a threshold for TDP (wattage) through the driver and performance scales accordingly..

6ecc5900b43c207e98d1ed6eb5466775394dcae1.png


If the early benches were done at default (no real way to tell as proper drivers aren't out yet) then we could easily see the 6970 surpass the GTX580 by 10-20% given full juice.
 

MenaceInc

Staff Member
This is interesting stuff, and supports the theory I had regarding throttling earlier. Seems you can set a threshold for TDP (wattage) through the driver and performance scales accordingly..

6ecc5900b43c207e98d1ed6eb5466775394dcae1.png


If the early benches were done at default (no real way to tell as proper drivers aren't out yet) then we could easily see the 6970 surpass the GTX580 by 10-20% given full juice.

Those figures don't show the relative increase in temperature though with the increased performance. Personally if I could have my heat output (and the fans RPM) kept to a minimum while keeping good performance then I'd rather have that. Interesting though that they're allowing setting the voltage in 10.12 though. I wonder if it'll apply to all AMD/ATI cards or just the 69** cards and onwards
 

MenaceInc

Staff Member
This is interesting stuff, and supports the theory I had regarding throttling earlier. Seems you can set a threshold for TDP (wattage) through the driver and performance scales accordingly..

6ecc5900b43c207e98d1ed6eb5466775394dcae1.png


If the early benches were done at default (no real way to tell as proper drivers aren't out yet) then we could easily see the 6970 surpass the GTX580 by 10-20% given full juice.

Those figures don't show the relative increase in temperature though with the increased performance. Personally if I could have my heat output (and the fans RPM) kept to a minimum while keeping good performance then I'd rather have that. Interesting though that they're allowing setting the voltage in 10.12 though. I wonder if it'll apply to all AMD/ATI cards or just the 69** cards and onwards
 

x3sphere

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I'm pretty disappointed by them. Hopefully 10.12 will be godly like AMD claims.

This site benched on 10.12 beta:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...899-amd-radeon-hd-6970-hd-6950-review-19.html

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...899-amd-radeon-hd-6970-hd-6950-review-21.html

Not too bad when you consider the price point. I think I will buy one. near 5970 level performance without the crossfire headache sounds good to me.

although WTF is up with the performance in Dirt 2? Not much higher than a 5870

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...899-amd-radeon-hd-6970-hd-6950-review-17.html
 

MenaceInc

Staff Member
I'm pretty disappointed by them. Hopefully 10.12 will be godly like AMD claims.

Apparently the huge thing about it is a UI revamp >.<
at least looking at a few threads of the Amd forums that seemed to be the users experience
 

x3sphere

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I just took the plunge on a 6970. Going to sell my 5970 for $350 shipped (US only), if anyone is interested let me know.
 
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