AMD 6900 reviews thread (UPDATED)

[chucky2]

Anyone know if any website has posted on when they'll update with 10.12 drivers?

Chuck

 

[bryanW1995]

How is 570 Vs 6970 a tie?

I read vr, hardware canucks, AT, abt and tpu, and my take from them is that at avg res 6970 and 570 are tied. at lower res 570 wins by ~ 5% or so and at higher res like 25x16 6970 wins by ~ 5%. that's pretty close to a tie in my book, with the very slight 6970 price premium probably justified by the 2gb ram and ultra high end performance. xfire however looks to be a nice situation for amd. I suspect that we'll see some 3 gb gtx 580 and 2.5 gb 570's out pretty soon, those could end up having more impact for sli than simple oc versions.

 

[hclarkjr]

Anyone know if any website has posted on when they'll update with 10.12 drivers?

Chuck

10.12 drivers are out

 

[bryanW1995]

Where is Silverforce11 today? :hmm:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=30915045&postcount=489
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=30907384&postcount=255

while humorous, he was just going off of happy's leaked info from fudz/etc in that post I believe. and iirc you spent about 7 mos leading up to apr 2010 avoiding the AT forums, give him a couple days at least

 

[cusideabelincoln]

People who post ridiculous one-sided and false statements should be banned from this discussion. Not calling any names, but most of us, including themselves, know who they are

I'll name names: Happy that is most blatant spin in the history of.... HISTORY.

Ridiculous! Just look at what you wrote; it's no different than what I'm going to write, in satire...


From the Anandtech review @ 25001600 4x aa.

Win for the 6950 vs way more expensive gtx570

Minimums for the same game. 6950 and 6970 destroy gtx 570

6950CF and 6870CF are winning vs gtx580 by mudslide!

6950 wins vs gtx570

6970 6950 handily beats the gtx 470

6950cf , 6970cf and 6870 cf beat up gtx580 SLI

6950 destroyes gtx470 and 6970 wins vs gtx 570

6950 cf beat up gtx 580

6950 only .2 fps behind gtx570 incredible

6950 cf destroy gts580
[IMG

continued............

And again a win for the 6970
[insert image here

6950 finally loses to gtx 580 by just 6 fps

[Iinsert image here



:rolls eyes:

 

[hclarkjr]

http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/downloads.aspx

 

[Teizo]

Anyone know if any website has posted on when they'll update with 10.12 drivers?

Chuck

If it was going to make a differnce, I can assure you AMD would have insisted on those drivers being used for the reviews and waited until the end of the week for their launch, or released them in time be used for the reviews.

 

[busydude]

I suspect that we'll see some 3 gb gtx 580 and 2.5 gb 570's out pretty soon, those could end up having more impact for sli than simple oc versions.

Hmm, that could be interesting.

AMD did mess up this release with regards to the drivers. I am not happy about the variation of results.. depending on the game.

 

[MentalIlness]

If you are going to try to spin something. Do it with more than "one" review site.

And "noone" including myself, had said that the 6970 is "faster" than the GTX580. I said.......= to. I see what you did there....Oh my look...I can do that too.....

6970 beating the GTX580

They tie here

6970 beating GTX580

6970 beating GTX580

6970 beating GTX580

6970 loses by a few %

6970 loses by a few %

6970 loses by a few %

6970 loses by a few %

Continued............

 

[chucky2]

I know the 10.12's are out...just wondering, if any review website had actually said if they'd tried the 10.12's and noticed no difference, or, if anyone had said they'd be updating with 10.12's.

I think at this point, with all the benches done, it should be fairly simple to get 10.12 updates out. Might not be doable today, but, certainly in 2-3 days.

Chuck

 

[MentalIlness]

6970 loses by a few %

6970 loses by a few %

6970 loses by a few %

6970 beating GTX580

They tie here

6970 beating GTX580

They tie here

6970 beating GTX580

6970 loses by a few %

7 wins for the 6970
5 wins for GTX580 "by a very small amount"
3 ties

If your going to use comparisons like this...why not use multiple sites ?

I said it once, I'll say it again. This is absolutely not worth the $130 premium for the GTX580.

Heck, even in a few of those tests, even the year and a half old 5870 beats the GTX580.

Settled yet ?

 

[RussianSensation]

Really, price and performance per watt only comes up when *insert company name here* dosn't have the performance crown.

I disagree. If you are gaming at 1920x1080 why do you need to spend $500 on a GTX580? Unless you make so much $$ that you simply don't care, then buying the fastest videocard doesn't make any sense.

I grabbed a GTX470 for $200 over a GTX480 for $450. Now I have $250 in "savings" that I can put towards HD7000 or Kepler next year, for example. The difference between a 470 and a 480 is about 30% which isn't that breathtaking imo. However, I bet a $300 Kepler/HD7950 card will be 70%+ faster than my 470.

Similarly, I picked a $175 HD4890 over a $350 GTX285 and now would pick a GTX570/HD6970 over a $500 GTX580 in a heartbeat. Not everyone is willing to pay $100-200 more for another 20% performance increase when in 15 months or so that $100-200 in "savings" will buy you at least another 50% performance increase.

HD6970 vs. GTX580 is HD4890 vs. GTX285 all over again. Sure GTX285 was faster, but no one cares anymore since we have upgraded from those generations a long time ago (but some of us did come away with $175 savings in our pocket). It's not even that....even if I had the $$, it's the principal - I hate the idea of funding 50%+ profit margins on $500 videocards and throwing $$ for the sake of higher AA quality alone. If anything HD6970 is even closer in performance to the 580 at highest resolution than the 4890 was to the 285 due to the card featuring 2GB of Ram, and AMD historically being more efficient at 8AA.

Even the most hardcore NV fan would have to think twice when cross-shopping an 800mhz GTX570 for $370 and a $500 GTX580....
At 2560x1600 4AA/8AA, GTX580 is at best 12% faster and at worst about 2% faster than the HD6970 on average, while being 35% more expensive. :whiste:

Whoever is buying the 580 - Thank you on behalf of all of us for funding NV's R&D.

 

[nitromullet]

I'll name names: Happy that is most blatant spin in the history of.... HISTORY.

LOL! You apparently have no clue about some of the events that transpired prior to your membership on these forums.

 

[Lonbjerg]

IQ does matter.

So you agree that AMD's AF issue (hardware issue) is bad...and you should stop cutting out transistors when it starts affecting I.Q.?

 

[SirPauly]

So you agree that AMD's AF issue (hardware issue) is bad...and you should stop cutting out transistors when it starts affecting I.Q.?

imho,

How am I going to put this. It was great to see AMD improve the mip-map transitions, and have acknowledged the shimmering, so these are steps forward. Even with todays filtering, IHV's still don't go far enough on all texturing artifacts and much more work to do. This is why IHV's offer super-sampled abilities and to some extent MLAA from AMD; to help curb texturing artifacts. IQ flexibility to help gamers curb artifacts.

There are some gamers that may desire a crisper texture over-all at the expense of some shimmering in a high noise texture over-all and then there are some gamers that may desire a smoother texture with less shimmering. Tolerances are the key and eyes differ so much.

Even with the advantages nVidia may have with some gamers or web-sites, in most cases, both offer wonderful filtering over-all and many, many gamers may be pleased with both, even at default, one may imagine. However, there are some eyes that may be just like eagles and notice things that may be very subtle to some may stand out much more than others. This is why I preferred nVidia's filtering, turned off all optimizations and high quality with smoother transitions and less shimmering -- and always enjoyed hybrid modes or mixed modes as well.

It's when a gamer offered they're [AMD]the same quality or superior based on the flower that bothered me personally. The flower is important but not the end-all-be-all for AF quality -- the other is investigations of movement. It's not that AMD's filtering was poor or suckful over-all, just felt that nVidia's was a bit better when moving, specifically mip-map transitions and shimmering at times. So, when sites go the extra mile it is so appreciated, specifically movement.

 

[waffleironhead]

I know the 10.12's are out...just wondering, if any review website had actually said if they'd tried the 10.12's and noticed no difference, or, if anyone had said they'd be updating with 10.12's.

I think at this point, with all the benches done, it should be fairly simple to get 10.12 updates out. Might not be doable today, but, certainly in 2-3 days.

Chuck

Alienbabeltech is very good at rebenching each time a new driver set comes out, they also show the differences between the new driver and the past few.
I imagine that Apopin will be rebenching with the 10.12's after some much needed rest after the last week spent getting the review out.

 

[Janooo]

while it's true that AT mentioned potential driver improvements, and their logic is sound, I must admit that I'm very skeptical of this. I remember reading 3+ years ago that 3870 would improve much more than 8800gt over time b/c ati had a better history of driver improvements, etc etc blah blah blah. we all know how that turned out. in many more recent releases we've heard info that one card or the other was likely to show great improvement from newer drivers b/c of this or that. Has it happened in a small way in some isolated cases? sure, but typically we're only looking at a few % improvement vs the competition. gtx 570 isn't exactly an old hand, fermi has only been out in the wild for 8 mos or so and this is a tweaked version of it.

I'm still disappointed in overally 6970 performance, but I admit that much of that is due to the pre-release hype of >=580. I'm willing to throw out 16x10 since it's likely that most users of these high-end type cards are at 1920 +, but even then 6970 is around 10% slower on very high res/AA settings. Is that terrible? no. is it a letdown? yes. will that sort of gap encourage 580 to drop in price? depends on availability, but I'd say probably not. nv has been selling all the 580's they can make, and it is clearly still the single card performance leader (sorry amd fanatics, but 5970 is not a reasonable alternative to a single gtx 580, sli gtx 460, 6850/70 xfire, etc etc). It's funny, but once you get up to 8xAA @ 2560x1600+ 6970 becomes fairly competitive, and especially once you throw 2 of them into xfire I'd suspect that they are even a bit faster than gtx 580 sli due to better xfire scaling and larger frame buffer. so we'll see some guys with $1200 monitors spending $740 on video cards this round instead of $1100+ for once, but most of us mortals on 1680 or 1920 will get to flip a coin between green and red.

AMD knows they are going to improve drivers:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1503834&postcount=6632

There really aren't that many apps that are setup bound. You can see that from from any straight geometry tests the dual geometry engines in terms of setup are working fine. There are more improvements to come from the drivers with regards to the tessellation changes though.

Vec5 -> Vec4 is a big change as well. Drivers will improve the performance.

 

[exar333]

If you are going to try to spin something. Do it with more than "one" review site.

And "noone" including myself, had said that the 6970 is "faster" than the GTX580. I said.......= to. I see what you did there....Oh my look...I can do that too.....

6970 beating the GTX580

They tie here

6970 beating GTX580

6970 beating GTX580

6970 beating GTX580

6970 loses by a few %

6970 loses by a few %

6970 loses by a few %

6970 loses by a few %

Continued............

I take it your an "ATI guy". Interesting when the 580 loses by 1-3fps in some of your results (read: <%5%) you say "6970 beating GTX580" and when the 580 beats the 6970 by ~10% in fps, you say "6970 loses by a few %".

Nice spin.

 

[busydude]

Nice spin.

That was a sarcastic post.. in reply to Happy's.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Well I won't draw this offtopic any further. I will just say that some people who drive economy cars also downplay features like air conditioning, cruise control, seats, etc. That's all I see here. The fact is that NVIDIA is able to sell their cards for more money and make a substantial profit, while AMD is not.

If you want to discuss it more feel free to send me a PM, otherwise.... So the 6970 reviews are out eh? I still have not read all of them, I may just check out a few more today.

You are right Wreckage. Physx is like an option in a car, an option that the AMD 'cars' don't come with at that. But unlike useful options like A/C, it's like an option that lowers horsepower, lowers economy, and only works on <1% of roads.

 

[MentalIlness]

I take it your an "ATI guy". Interesting when the 580 loses by 1-3fps in some of your results (read: <&#37;5%) you say "6970 beating GTX580" and when the 580 beats the 6970 by ~10% in fps, you say "6970 loses by a few %".

Nice spin.

So one person can say the 580 wins by a few percent...but AMD isn't allowed to win by a few percent ? And no, I am "not" an ATI guy. I own zero ATI/AMD cards at the moment.

Get your facts straight before accusing.

If you want to see spin, try reading the posts from a certain poster that posts results from "one" review to spin it the way they want to fit their agenda..

I also see that Happy has not fired back yet. But if he would like to, my PM box is empty.

 

[MentalIlness]

That was a sarcastic post.. in reply to Happy's.

Exactly right. :thumbsup:

 

[happy medium]

Alienbabeltech is very good at rebenching each time a new driver set comes out, they also show the differences between the new driver and the past few.
I imagine that Apopin will be rebenching with the 10.12's after some much needed rest after the last week spent getting the review out.

Hardware Canucks used the 10.12 driver.
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...899-amd-radeon-hd-6970-hd-6950-review-28.html

 

[happy medium]

So one person can say the 580 wins by a few percent...but AMD isn't allowed to win by a few percent ? And no, I am "not" an ATI guy. I own zero ATI/AMD cards at the moment.

Get your facts straight before accusing.

If you want to see spin, try reading the posts from a certain poster that posts results from "one" review to spin it the way they want to fit their agenda..

I also see that Happy has not fired back yet. But if he would like to, my PM box is empty.

My point was to show that there is no real difference between the gtx580 and 6970 at ultra high res. 2500x1600.
Thanks for reinforcing that.

 

[MrK6]

I find it funny the amount of people that are upset by this release, especially when they don't even have a high-end card from last generation, never mind this new refresh. Honestly, it literally seems like some of you dig for things to whine or troll about.

Anyway, I read through all the reviews I could find and the 6950 and 6970 both look great. Unfortunately, this entire round from both companies didn't offer performance boosts so much as re-balancing their cards and adding features. I'll hold on to my 5850 for now, but if there comes a sale on the 6970 to bring it down to the ~$300 range I'll probably jump on it.