Rumour control: ATI Radeon HD 6970 benchmarked
ATI's Radeon HD 6800-series has only just gone on sale, but already figures for the Radeon HD 6970 have leaked.
Chinese-language site Zol.com claims to have got its hands on benchmarks for the ATI Radeon HD 6970, although it's not revealing where the figures have come from.
The site is reporting, however, that the Cayman XT-based AMD Radeon HD 6970, believed to be the 1GB GDDR5 model, has performed admirably in the 3DMark Vantage test suite, scoring 23,499 3DMarks in Performance mode. In the Unigine Heaven benchmark, the card managed 36.6fps at a resolution of 1,920 x 1,200 with 4x anti-aliasing and 16x anisotropic filtering.
Those scores, which represent a pre-release version of the card with unoptimised drivers, are certainly a boost over the company's Radeon HD 5870 1GB card, which managed 19,337 3DMarks and 17.3 fps in Unigine Heaven at the same settings.
Impressively, the figures also beat Nvidia's current high-end card, the GeForce GTX 480 1.5GB, quite considerably: at the same settings, the GTX 480 1.5GB scored 21,106 in 3DMark Vantage and 29.5fps in Unigine Heaven.
Further details of the as-yet unannounced card aren't available, but it is rumoured to feature a TDP of 255W or higher, and require a six- and an eight-pin power supply connection.
Do you think that ATI's next-generation card will beat out Nvidia's up-coming Fermi refresh? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums Replyat least for the resolution i will need it to run: 2560x1440.
Every benchmark I've seen that show the 2gb results etc seem not to make a difference, so i beg to differ.
I run perfectly fine at 5040x1050 with a single 5870.
If this is true I'm potentially sold...
Going to rival GF100 for heat, then?
can you run BFBC2 at that resolution with 4xAA? can you run Crysis max with any level of AA?
im not sure if it's GPU underpowered or not enough memory, but fact is my 5870 struggles.
I don't use AA for obvious reasons. But i can't say too much as I'm currently bottlenecked by my cpu.
I've yet to see a benchmark were more than 1gb actually makes a difference with top end resolution.
And i would have thought it would be the gpu underpowered in general.
AA performance is bandwidth limited, usually, whereas memory capacity has more to do with resolution scaling.
nVidia did it before when initial chip was in general rushed/badly designed and refresh outperformed competition. It is not a secret that Fermi was rushed like mad. And while GTX480 is noisy and power hungry there is plenty of potential in this chip. nVidia just need to clean-up mess they created. If these numbers for 6970 are anything to go by, then I'm absolutely certain that Fermi refresh will beat them easily in synthetic benchmarks.
It's those last three words that detract from those results.
Try 6064x1200 or higher... and try turning details up. :) I found that frequently on 1GB cards pushing settings one notch too high resulted in large framerate drops as the cards ran out of VRAM. 2GB cards make a big, big difference between playable and unplayable at the more extreme Surround/EyeFinity resolutions. At least on GTX460 cards. I've not had the chance to play with ATi cards... and they're supposedly better at VRAM management so it might not have quite such the same impact.
edit: For those interested in 1GB vs. 2GB in Surround...
http://www.overclock.net/nvidia/801683-surround-gaming-nvidia-gtx460-mainstream-card.html
im not sure if it's GPU underpowered or not enough memory, but fact is my 5870 struggles."
Now, now ...naughty, naughty! The "but can it play Crysis?" question is one deemed nolonger relevant by Bit-tech and so is no longer asked nor answered!
No. That will be HD6990.
HD6990 = high end dual chip
HD6970/HD6950 = high end single chip
HD6870/HD6850 = high mainstream single chip
HD6770/HD6750 = mainstream single chip
HD66xx = high lowend/low mainstream single chip
The rest is lowend.
Ah, the eternal optimisim of the fanboi can never be crushed.
Reports indicate that although Nvidia is planning a paper launch to conicide with the 6970, cards won't be seen till the end of January and even then it isn't looking like it will beat the 6970 by a worthwile amount.
As usual though, only the benchmarks will tell for certin.
I also doubt that the GTX 580 will have 512 mem bit bus, 128 TMUs and 768 shaders, thats twice the GF104 core specs (aside from clocks) though i expect it to be 50% more spec wise compared to the GF104 (576 shaders, 384 bit bus and 96 Tmus for my prediction) and tweaked futher with maybe some kepler additions to its arch.
I can play every game I own maxxed out fully so I see no reason for a new GPU yet. Res is 1920x1080 btw so nothing crazy.
Have you seen metro on 2560*1440? It takes a lot. I don't like nVidia, and think that extra ram will make the card more expensive, but you have to have one in range so you won't need to CF...
There will probably be a 2GB eyefinity version. ;)
VGA SAPPHIRE|100314SR HD6870 R - "Estimated delivery 10/27/2010
Status In Transit"
****!
Uhhmm then you want something like the EVGA Precision ap to tell you how much GPU VRAM is being utilised (in an OSD) - whilst actually gaming. Anything else is idle speculation...
So those benchmarks may be of the HD 6950 variety. If it is the HD6970 then it's still very impressive.
still, a bit of option doesn't hurt, much like 4870 512MB vs 1GB, gtx460 768MB vs 1GB.
Will wait on 1st hand benchmarks from a reliable source.
Anyway they're moving way too fast for game developers. If games run brilliant on a 5-year old Xbox 360 then surely they should run smoothly on 2-year old GPU's. I think developers are paid to slow games down / or they're simply rushing code conversion on the PC.
A GTX 480 has already cured cancer, but still struggles to run 40 fps on Crysis max.
That's a good point. I've yet to find a game that my Sapphire 4890/2GB doesn't laugh at.
Same story since the 8800GTX lost the performance crown.
ATI has been coming up all aces, nvidia not so much.
Console games run on graphics settings that we would consider low on a PC. Have you seen GTA IV on both platforms?
.
That "but can run crysis?" is just a very crappy rumor.
One thing is that i wouldn't be surprised if on console versions they make sacrifices, say example in most FPS on a console i woudln't be surprised they intentionally gimp on the backgrounds to save resources or other stuff and tweak the engine alot to run it better which i say is increasing costs, but i'm not sure though.
It will be interesting to see the reviews and how far the 6950 and 6970 can be OC'd. If the 6950 will approach stock 5970 speeds or beyond it will offer a huge amount of performance for ~$400.
It is definitely upgrade time for me as my 4870 512MB is starting to show its age and also I'm sick of the all the idle power it burns while my desktop is sitting (almost) idle most of the time.