AMD 6900 reviews thread (UPDATED)

[Lonbjerg]

Really ? I have $700 remaining to finish the upcoming build. And if I can save an additional $100 for "other" hardware like a even faster CPU. I know I would.

1920 Res + GTX580 = $688 *Cheapest 580
1920 Res + 6970 = $548 *Cheapest 6970

$140 in savings for "something else" like a faster CPU.

So why not ?

Highlighted part above, the only person that would do this, are NV fans. And there is nothing wrong with that.

You know what I am a BIG fan of.....?? My money.

Then stop buying enthusiast cards and use IGP?
What?
Dosn't perform to your liking?

Can't have your cake and eat it too...

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

 

[Lonbjerg]

Slower - check.
Less features - does not compute.

Show me AMD's counter to CUDA?
Show me AMD's counter to PhysX?
PR talk won't do it...show me those features.

 

[Lonbjerg]

Why try to argue with fanboys?PhysX is a rotting corpse as far as I see.The 6900 reviews have not blown me away except for the crossfire scaling.I'll hold on to my trusty 'economy' 5850 for the while even though the 570 and 6970/50 is slightly tempting.

PhysX is the most used physcsc API...when will the lies stop?

 

[Zargon]

Show me AMD's counter to CUDA?

please tell me how that matters for gaming? I didnt think it did...

Then stop buying enthusiast cards and use IGP?
What?
Dosn't perform to your liking?

Can't have your cake and eat it too...

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

what a horrid arguement. we like games so we should eithe shell out 100 bucks for almost nothing or use IGP? lol

 

[NIGELG]

PhysX is the most used physcsc API...when will the lies stop?

Let me rephrase GPU PhysX is a festering,rotting,dead corpse.....am I lying?Name the upcoming big GPU PhysX titles.

 

[tviceman]

HardOCP seem to have a glowing review for these new cards. From performance stand point, they are a little disappointing I say for me, but that's because NV surprised w/ 570+580. however, I think these parts are priced right. adding more competition to 300-400 range doesn't hurt.

I'm not a fan of HARDOCP reviews. They test a very limited number of games, and usually test at settings which are unplayable.

 

[happy medium]

lets put this high resolution BS to bed with the gtx580 vs the 6970.

From the Anandtech review @ 25001600 4x aa.

Win for the gtx580 vs the 6970

Minimums for the same game. gtx 580 wins vs the 6970

gtx580 and gtx570 wins vs the 6970

gt580 wins vs the 6970

gtx580 and gtx570 wins vs the 6970

gtx580 ,gtx570 and the gtx470 wins vs the 6970

gtx580 winvs the 6970

gtx580 ,gtx570 and gtx470 wins vsthe 6970 in minimums also

gtx580 wins vs the 6970 again

gtx580 and the gtx570 wins vs the 6970

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

 

[Zargon]

lets put this high resolution BS to bed with the gtx580 vs the 6970.
.

uh I said you beat me to it, and left it, because I was infact confused

 

[happy medium]

And again a win for the gtx580

The gtx580 finally loses in wolfenstein by 3 fps.

The 6970 has trouble beating the cheaper gtx570 in 5 out of ten games. In fact the gtx570 wins in 5 out of 10.
THE gtx580 wins 9 out of 10

Settled?

 

[nitromullet]

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

I am more into racing games.. not a big fan of MMO's and BF:BC2>COD(Atleast on the PC)

You certainly have a right to your own opinion on this but, you do realize that NV has 120 games listed in TWIMTBP and AMD has 39 for Gaming Evolved?

 

[Lonbjerg]

please tell me how that matters for gaming? I didnt think it did...

Just Cause 2 for one.
Or all games using GPU PhysX...runs via CUDA.

what a horrid arguement. we like games so we should eithe shell out 100 bucks for almost nothing or use IGP? lol

"Almost nothing"...spin some more will you?
Sorry AMD's GPU performance isn't there...get over it

Let me rephrase GPU PhysX is a festering,rotting,dead corpse.....am I lying?Name the upcoming big GPU PhysX titles.

You sound mad over AMD lack of performance?
Why don't you take a look for you self?
http://physxinfo.com/

What is next?
"I.Q. dosn't matter"?
Oh wait...sorry...forgot about how AMD's I.Q has been dropping as they sliced more and mor in there cores.

And don't get me started on AMD's none unified GPU's cores....fixed function is so...pre-G80

 

[Rhonen]

And again a win for the gtx580

The gtx580 finally loses in wolfenstein by 3 fps.

The 6970 has trouble beating the cheaper gtx570 in 5 out of ten games. In fact the gtx570 wins in 5 out of 10.
THE gtx580 wins 9 out of 10

Settled?

I think the real story is the 6950 beating the 570 in several of those benches.

It seems the 6900's excel at HQ rez and settings - I'd like to see benches with 4x, 8x + AA, all the bells and whistles turned up, ultra settings, etc. It seems that's where the 6900's hidden advantages are. From your HardOCP chart you previously posted, the 6970 gets better fps the higher the AA gets turned up.

 

[NIGELG]

Just Cause 2 for one.
Or all games using GPU PhysX...runs via CUDA.






"Almost nothing"...spin some more will you?
Sorry AMD's GPU performance isn't there...get over it

I only see Aliens Colonial Marines...I said upcoming GPU PHYSx titles.

You sound mad over AMD lack of performance?
Why don't you take a look for you self?
http://physxinfo.com/

What is next?
"I.Q. dosn't matter"?
Oh wait...sorry...forgot about how AMD's I.Q has been dropping as they sliced more and mor in there cores.

And don't get me started on AMD's none unified GPU's cores....fixed function is so...pre-G80

IQ does matter.

 

[thilanliyan]

lets put this high resolution BS to bed with the gtx580 vs the 6970.

The 6970 has trouble beating the cheaper gtx570 in 5 out of ten games. In fact the gtx570 wins in 5 out of 10.
THE gtx580 wins 9 out of 10

Settled?

Two can play at that game!!

I can't pick out all the images from computerbase.de so I'll leave you with one that was quoted before:

You see that...even the 6950 is beating the 570 and the 6970 matches the 580. You can take a look at the individual benchmarks if you're interested. So yes at high resolutions it is VERY close. So no, nothing is settled...sorry. As I've said before, it is very hard to make all-sweeping statements about this launch, especially while picking one or two sites to argue your case. Only thing I would say is overall the 580 is still the fastest single GPU card. And IMO for the money the 6970 is better than the 580.

 

[dookulooku]

lets put this high resolution BS to bed with the gtx580 vs the 6970.

Did anyone ever say the 6970 beats the 580 at those settings? I didn't. Even Hardocp concludes the 580 is still faster overall. But it often comes within 5% at those settings, whereas the gap if more than 15% at 19x12. At the end, I think both companies are going to be concerned.

Nvidia for pricing the 580 way above 6970, yet barely beating it at 25x16.

AMD for pricing the 6970 above 570, yet failing to beat it at the most common resolution.

 

[tviceman]

anand shows a commanding lead while [H] shows they are almost equal - maybe 1-5 frames. HMM who to believed.

Kinda goes back to what I said a few posts ago:

"I'm not a fan of HARDOCP reviews. They test a very limited number of games, and usually test at settings which are unplayable. "

When their apples-to-apples results are averaging 25-30fps, they're pointless benchmarks IMO. Most people are going to lower image quality in some way to get more playable performance.

 

[bryanW1995]

I don't know. The 5800 series had some nice improvements over its life (don't know exact % increase) and it was using the same VLIW5 as the previous 3 generations. I'd think if any series had the most potential for driver improvement in the future it would be the 6900 series since it made a rather significant change to VLIW4. The Anandtech article seemed to imply the same potential.

That's not to say that people should buy a card based on performance increases that could come. They shouldn't if one card currently shows a better price/performance ratio. But if you have to choose between two similar cards at a similar price point (GTX 570 vs 6970 for example), I'd bet on the AMD cards showing the biggest gains in the future.

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.

 

[dookulooku]

And again a win for the gtx580
The 6970 has trouble beating the cheaper gtx570 in 5 out of ten games. In fact the gtx570 wins in 5 out of 10.
THE gtx580 wins 9 out of 10

Settled?

The gtx580 has trouble beating the cheaper 6970 in 5 out of ten games. The gap between the 570 and 580 is only about 16% to begin with, so if the 6970 has trouble beating the 570, then usually the 580 will have trouble beating the 6970 also.

Settled? Not yet.

I'll make a deal with you and (Nemesis). I'll give away my Geforce card to whoever does a better job over the next weeks of posting fair, unbiased, sane comments WITH PROPER SPELLING.

 

[busydude]

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.

Totally agree.

 

[hclarkjr]

i think the video section needs a thread for neffing\trolling like off topic has. this thread has been derailed by all this back and forth over which card is better. there are what 3-4 threads all arguing over the same thing???

 

[nitromullet]

this thread has been derailed by all this back and forth over which card is better.

If debating the results of the benchmarks in relation to other factors (price, features, etc) isn't the intent of the thread, what exactly is the purpose?

 

[dookulooku]

If debating the results of the benchmarks in relation to other factors (price, features, etc) isn't the intent of the thread, what exactly is the purpose?

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

 

[SirPauly]

Imho,

From what I did gauge the 6970 is about even but at higher resolutions and some extreme testing, the product shined a bit more than the 570. The product scaled well with CrossFire, and offers 2 gigs of ram. The price is targeted fairly, a bit more than a 570, but the key is some may receive OC 570's for a similar MSRP.

The 2 gigs of ram, will help in some titles, particularly 2560 x 1600 and with EyeFinity platforms.

The weakest areas of the HD 5870, this is where the 6970 shined. Where there may be future bottlenecks in future titles, and as time passes, the 6970 may separate from the 5870. It was good to see improved tessellation in a benchmark like HawX2 -- not for a gaming point-of-view but more-so a synthetic point-of-view.

The product that shined is the 6950; as the products competing with this, has a clearer advantage, especially in CrossFire.

All-in-all, it seemed AMD had an opportunity to drive the hammer hard to nVidia this round, considering it is a new arch, but for me, tried to create the best situation they could and still deliver value and compelling choice. This chip may of not been what AMD hoped but certainly competes, offers value and very compelling with some differentiation like MLAA.

As a consumer, this is great, IHV's offering compelling choice with both around 50/50 discrete share.

 

[Grooveriding]

You sound mad over AMD lack of performance?
Why don't you take a look for you self?
http://physxinfo.com/

How many of those games are GPU PhysX games ?

You keep linking nonsense like that when there are less than 10 games that use GPU PhysX.

lol

 

[bryanW1995]

How is it a win for Nvidia...when you pay around $100 premium for 10% more performance? $10 for every 1% gain for performance ? That does not = a win.

Unless you are looking at "maximum" frames per second only at he resolution you pick.

it might not be a "win" for nvidia, but it's not going to cause them to drop prices $150+ overnight either. gtx 580 has enough of a performance edge + enough scarcity to justify $500 right now imho.