Today AMD formally announces its new high-end range of graphics cards; the HD 6900 series. The HD 6900 series follows hot on the heels of AMD’s HD 6800 series, which is meant to provide a more affordable mid-range solution. Nvidia also last month launched their new high-end solution, the GTX 580, and last week we saw the release of the GTX 570.
There is now a ridiculous number of high-performance graphics cards for consumers to choose from, including the HD 5850, HD 5870, HD 6850, HD 6870, GTX 570, GTX 580, HD 6950, HD 6970, and of course, the dual core performance monster; the HD 5970.
To make matters worse, the performance difference between many of these cards is slight, as is the price difference, which makes for a very confusing state of affairs, even for hardware enthusiasts.
Today however, we are looking at the new flagship performance offerings from AMD; the HD 6950 and HD 6970.
Technical specifications
| GTX 580 | GTX 570 | HD 6970 | HD 6950 | HD 6870 | HD 6850 | HD 5870 | |
| Stream Processors | 512 | 480 | 1536 | 1408 | 1120 | 960 | 1600 |
| Texture Units | 64 | 60 | 96 | 88 | 56 | 48 | 80 |
| ROPs | 48 | 40 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 |
| Core Clock | 772MHz | 732MHz | 880MHz | 800MHz | 900MHz | 775MHz | 850MHz |
| Memory Clock | 1002MHz (4.08GHz effective GDDR5) |
950MHz (3.8GHz effective GDDR5) | 1.375GHz (5.5GHz effective) GDDR5 | 1.25GHz (5.0GHz effective) GDDR5 | 1.05GHz (4.2GHz effective) GDDR5 | 1GHz (4GHz effective) GDDR5 | 1.2GHz (4.8GHz effective) GDDR5 |
| Memory Bus Width | 384-bit | 320-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Frame Buffer | 1.5GB | 1.28GB | 2GB | 2GB | 1GB | 1GB | 1GB |
| Transistor Count | 3B | 3B | 2.64B | 2.64B | 1.7B | 1.7B | 2.15B |
| Manufacturing Process | 40nm | 40nm | 40nm | 40nm | 40nm | 40nm | 40nm |
| Price Point | ~R5200 | ~R4000 | ~R4300 | ~R3400 | ~R3000 | ~R2400 | ~R4000 |
On paper, the HD 6950 is slightly beefier than the previous generation high-end AMD offering, the HD 5870. It trades blows with this card, with a lowered clock speed and less Stream Processors, offset by more texture units, transistors and RAM. Our benchmarks (which will be published in our full review tomorrow) indicate that the HD 6950 is slightly faster than the HD 5870 in most cases.
The HD 6970, interestingly, also features less Stream Processors than the HD 5870. However, its significantly increased memory bandwidth should make it quite a bit faster than AMD’s previous single GPU performance king. We have not played with the HD 6970 yet, but it is expected to be easily beaten for sheer performance by the GTX 580.
Pricing then, as usual, will be what makes or breaks AMD’s new product range.
AMD SA has confirmed that the HD 6950 will carry a recommended retail price of R3399, while the HD 6970 will sell for around R4,299.
In contrast, you will struggle to find a GTX 580 in SA for under R5200. AMD effectively does not have an answer to Nvidia’s high-end offering in this price category.
Therefore, the HD 6970 will compete directly with the GTX 570, which can be found for under R4000. So, if the GTX 570 performs better, or even similarly to the HD 6970, then Nvidia may well begin to retake market share.
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