AMD HD 6950 and 6970 released

[desiibond]

Re: All Graphics Cards related queries here.

@vickybat. HD6950 goes head on against mid range cards and I see it sitting next to HD6870. It costs similar to GTX480 while performs much better. HD6970 on the other hand is in a bad situation. It costs more than GTX570 but then for the same price, one can get dual HD6850s in CF mode that pawns both 570 and HD6970

 

[Ishu Gupta]

Re: All Graphics Cards related queries here.

A 15-17k range would be great for HD6950.

 

[ico]

Re: All Graphics Cards related queries here.

It costs more than GTX570 but then for the same price, one can get dual HD6850s in CF mode that pawns both 570 and HD6970

HD 6850 in crossfire actually even edges a single GTX 580 in most benchmarks.

A 15-17k range would be great for HD6950.

which would mean HD 6870 and 6850 getting even more cheaper.

Here are the prices, refer to these while making comparisons.

HD 6850 = $170
HD 6870 = $240
HD 6950 = $299
GTX 570 = $349
HD 6970 = $369
GTX 580 = $510

 

[Ishu Gupta]

Re: All Graphics Cards related queries here.

Yeah. Only thing against 6850CF is people prefer single cards over two cards.

 

[vickybat]

Yes 6850cf edges past 580 but at ultra high resolutions i.e 2560x 1600 due to large frame buffer. They speak utter value and its truly undeniable.

But talking about single cards, the fermi duo still bests the caymans in all departments. 570 also performs close to 6970 and beats it in some benches and so is the 6950( it trails slightly). But the gtx 580 is untouchable currently. So amd has to lower prices in order to take on the fermi duo and i guess they won't be that low. 6950 will still cost around 20k and 6970 will be above 25k in india.So they will face stiff competition from nvidia. Even in power consumption nvidia is very close this time. So the cards to recommend here is nvidia gtx 570 and amd radeon hd6950 (nvidia performs a tad better).

Nvidia's answer to 6850cf will come in the form of gtx 560 and when slied, it should even take down a 6870cf(atleast from what gf110 promises).

This conclusion says it all.

 

[Joker]

here is my conclusion after reading all the reviews...

AMD's cayman is not a match for GTX 580 in terms of single cards but...i've been surprised by their CF scaling. currently if take two HD 6950 and HD 6970 in CF each, you get really excellent performance at the price point of $600 and $740 respectively which is great even with temperature and power under control.

But the gtx 580 is untouchable currently.

it is a much bigger die with more transistors..should be better.

 

[vickybat]

here is my conclusion after reading all the reviews...

AMD's cayman is not a match for GTX 580 in terms of single cards but...i've been surprised by their CF scaling. currently if take two HD 6950 and HD 6970 in CF each, you get really excellent performance at the price point of $600 and $740 respectively which is great even with temperature and power under control.

Very true. Cf has improved. 6950cf are the cards that scales well and beats gtx 570 sli in some benchmarks but thats due to improved driver optimisations and large frame buffer.Expect nvidia to release new drivers to improve sli scaling and thus fight back.(we all know about nvidia's drivers prowess). But a gtx 580 sli will still be at top but that increases the costs much higher than caymans.

Tesselation is also a factor and though amd has improved a lot and stress on geometry more unlike its earlier iterations but they are no match for nvidia. This is an important consideration imo because i see games like crysis 2 to utilize tesselation.

 

[desiibond]

yes. the pricing of HD6970 is a bit higher than required. With the amount of profits they raked in for DX11 series, AMD should've been more competitive. A $310 for 6970 and $270 for HD6950 would've been superb and i do expect the price to fall below these very soon.

And yes, GTX560 will be the fastest single GPU card available in the market for few more weeks atleast. And I doubt if AMD has answer to this in near future. That Fermi architecture is finally making some inroads right now. Two things that AMD needs to get right:

1. Tessalation performance (with very high settings, HD69xx lag behind competition)
2. Physics engine (if every game manufactuer decide to make use of physics processing in games, it will be big trouble for AMD as their Havok is yet to make a mark.

 

[vickybat]

@ desiibond

Yes buddy you are absolutely correct.

About this physx thing amd is really backed off cause of not understanding the older x87 instruction set that physx code uses. And if upcoming games utilize more of this then surely amd will be in big trouble.

Talking of my own experience, my 5750 failed to run mafia 2 at 1600x900 res and all settings high with apex physx on. The fps were a paltry 5-10 fps. I think a gts 450 would have faired a lot better in this scenario as opposed to my current radeon. Was it a wrong buying decision from my side? What do you think on this buddy? Will all of 6 series fare like this in physx based games?

 

[Faun]

To be fair you should use fare. And no, anything within range of GTX 460 would have been smothered on activating apex physx.

 

[vickybat]

^^

Sorry it was a typo. I meant fare. But don't you think gts 450 would have been better than 5750 cause of its ability to decode physx instruction set atleast?

Maybe not in the league of gtx 460 but atleast it would have given playable framerates. Now my question is how will the 6 series fare in physx based games?

 

[ico]

2. Physics engine (if every game manufactuer decide to make use of physics processing in games, it will be big trouble for AMD as their Havok is yet to make a mark.

PhysX is a joke, seriously. You really think AMD can implement "nVidia PhysX"??? It is nVidia's technology and only the game developers who decide to go nVidia's way will use it. I've played Batman: Arkham Asylum with PhysX turned OFF and ON. PhysX turned ON just adds some fancy papers flying here and there with some extra cracks in the walls, nothing else and that too with a ~60% frame rate deficit. These effects aren't something which can't be achieved without going the "nVidia PhysX way" by developers. Those developers are developing games for nVidia PhysX cards, so be it. Not every developer will do that if they really want their game to be blockbusters.

Havoc does those physics calculations on the CPU itself and it is owned by Intel. Every game makes use of physics processing; they leave it to the CPU.

 

[Arun_joseph]

Phyx is good,not more game use Nvidia phyx!

 

[Faun]

^^
NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 GF106 Video Card | GeForce GTS 450,Review,Benchmarks,Performance,NVIDIA,Fermi GF106,Graphics,Video Card,3D Vision,NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 Fermi GF106 Graphics Card Video Game and 3D Vision Benchmark Performance Review

Draw your conclusions.

 

[ico]

^^ hardly a difference of Rs.500 between GTS 450 and HD 5770 here in India. I'd go for the faster card for games which is HD 5770 and this is what generally gets suggested in the PC Configuration section when someone is purely going for a gaming machine unless he mentions rendering/CUDA. PhysX isn't the deciding factor when it only supports a handful of games. Metro 2033 and Mafia II heavily favour the nVidia camp whereas BF: BC2 is known to be favouring AMD cards. I just read the Crysis and CoD:MW2 benchmarks (which are again optimized for nVidia but without fancy PhysX - still neutral to both the camps) and make the judgement.

 

[clear_lot]

6970 is very overpriced in india. i wonder why.

 

[Joker]

kneejerk prices by smcinternational.in..should get fixed.

 

[Cilus]

Regarding the pricing I completely agree with desibond, the pricing should be little lower. But lets check out for couple of days, the price drop could happen very quickly.
AMD can play a little with their price because of the low manufacturing cost due to the use of 256 data bus which is industry standard and pretty easy to implement compared to Nvidia's 320 and 384 bit memory bus.
I think release of new driver may also increase performance as from the guru3d review it is verfied in some games it performs as per with the older HD 5870.

 

[damngoodman999]

Phyx is good,not more game use Nvidia phyx!

Latest games are coming with Physx ! whether it is Nvidia or Aegia Physx -> Nvidia Owns It !!

 

[asingh]

Regarding the pricing I completely agree with desibond, the pricing should be little lower. But lets check out for couple of days, the price drop could happen very quickly.
AMD can play a little with their price because of the low manufacturing cost due to the use of 256 data bus which is industry standard and pretty easy to implement compared to Nvidia's 320 and 384 bit memory bus.
I think release of new driver may also increase performance as from the guru3d review it is verfied in some games it performs as per with the older HD 5870.

How will this affect the manufacturing cost.

Latest games are coming with Physx ! whether it is Nvidia or Aegia Physx -> Nvidia Owns It !!

DG.Man, you post well, but seriously what were you thinking here. How many games do we see with some type of physics (nVidia Physx or Havoc) coming out. Having the game do physics (paper flying/moving cloth) is different to exclusive physics being implemented via an engine. I have seen PhysX games being rendered and as Ico posted it is nothing great. Just something extra. It is not the differentiating factor between ATI and nVidia. Also I have seen the Havoc (CPU) physics on games like Red Falcon Guerilla and Timeshift but it does not 'make or break' the game.

End of the day it is how good FPS the accelerator can generate coupled to the overall system.