AMD Radeon HD 6970 review

Late last year AMD released its new generation of high-end graphics cards: the Radeon HD 6950 and HD 6970. We already reviewed the HD 6950 and found it to offer excellent performance in its price range. The HD 6970 is a bit more expensive and is AMD’s fastest single GPU graphics card, boasting slightly higher specs than the HD 6950.

The HD 6970 adds an extra 128 Steam Processors, 8 Texture Units, and slightly higher core and memory clock speeds. These are relatively modest enhancements, but then the card is only slightly more expensive than the HD 6950. Like previous generations of Radeon cards, the HD 6970 features a 256-bit memory bus width, which some would argue would benefit with an increase in order to compete with Nvidia’s performance monster, the GTX 580 which uses 384-bit memory bus. Nevertheless, the HD 6970 does come standard with a generous 2GB of ram, and superior clock speeds to Nvidia’s competing products.

Having said that, AMD is clear about not wanting its graphics cards to compete with Nvidia’s purely on performance. Value for money is what they are striving for, and the HD 6970 is about R1000 cheaper than the GTX 580.

A bigger problem for AMD is Nvidia’s GTX 570, which retails for slightly less than the HD 6970. With these cards priced similarly, performance, stability and noise levels will be key variables in your decision making process.

When we started testing the HD 6970 in January, the performance figures were not impressive at all. A hot-fix firmware update seems to have unlocked the card’s potential, and whereas previously it would offer very similar performance to the HD 6950, it now outstrips it quite nicely in most cases as we can see from the benchmarks below. After downloading and installing the regular HD 6970 driver found on AMD’s support page, it is highly recomended that you grab and install the hotfix from here.

Benchmarks

All benchmarks were run on the same PC, with the only changing variable being the graphics card. CCleaner along with Driver Sweeper were used to make sure there were no left over files clogging up the registry. Each benchmarks was run three times to ensure consistent results. All benchmarks were run at 1920×1200, with all settings set as high as possible, including anti aliasing settings in order to push the cards to their respective limits. The scores in the graphs below indicate the average frames per second achieved in each benchmark. The GTX 570 used was an overclocked Gainward Phantom Edition supplied by Evetech.

Benchmark rig

AMD Phenom II [email protected], 8GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM, Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P motherboard, Windows 7 64-bit

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Bad Company 2 is a fairly demanding game, and delivers fantastic visuals. The HD 6970 offered a noticeable improvement over the HD 6950, but was significantly outperformed by the cheaper GTX 570 Phantom Edition. We used a set one minute portion from the introduction sequence of the game using Fraps to get a benchmark score.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Arkham Asylum uses the Unreal Engine 3, delivering impressive visuals while also maintaining high frame rates. THe HD 6970 performed well in this game, nipping closely at Nvidia’s heals. We used Arkham Asylum’s built in benchmark.

Dirt 2

Dirt 2 offers absolutely stunning visuals, and is a good benchmark for pushing graphics cards to their limits. The HD 6970 was again unable to keep up with the cheaper GTX 570 Phantom Edition which tore its way through Codemasters’ racer. Having said that, being able to play this game at maximum detail settings with frame rates consistently hovering below the 80 frames per second mark made for a very smooth gameplay experience. We used Dirt 2’s built in benchmark. 

HAWX 2

HAWX runs well on most PCs, and the HD 6970 did not offer a noticeable improvement over other Radeon Cards. Once again, it was overshadowed by the GTX 570 Phantom Edition, which achieved the same score as the GTX 580. We used the official HAWX 2 benchmarking software.

STALKER: Call of Pripyat

Call of Pripyat is a beast of a game, and on max settings it will push most graphics cards pretty hard. The HD 6970 scaled well, offering playable frame rates. We used the official Call of Pripyat DX11 ‘Day’ benchmark.

StarCraft II

For some reason, Nvidia’s cards were unable to replicate their high performance figures in StarCraft II. The HD 6970 came into its own, beating the GTX 570 Phantom Edition and coming extremely close to the more expensive GTX 580. We used a replay along with Fraps to benchmark StarCraft II.

Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 2 – Chaos Rising

AMD’s cards actually outperformed Nvidia’s cards almost accross the board in Chaos Rising. For some reason, none of the cards were able to nudge over the 60 frames per second mark, which may be due to a built in frame rate limiter. We used the built in Chaos Rising benchmark.

AMD Radeon HD 6970

Performance wise, the HD 6970 is a capable high-end gaming graphics card. It quite easily delivers 60fps+ in most modern games at a resolution of 1920×1200 with everything set to max, including anti-aliasing. Put simply, you will not be dissatisfied with the gaming performance delivered by this card in modern games.

In terms of noise, the card is relatively quiet when idling, but the fan becomes audible under load. This is to be expected with current generation high-end graphics cards, and you will not find a graphics card that competes at this performance level running quieter – not with air cooling, at least.

All in all, the HD 6970 is a solid package. However, it does not nail the price-performance sweetspot we were hoping for from AMD. The biggest problem, as previously mentioned, is Nvidia’s GTX 570. We were supplied with a Gainward GTX 570 Phantom Edition for comparison purposes. This card uses a specially designed cooling system, and ships with a mild overclock. The end result is that the Gainward GTX 570 Phantom Edition is significantly faster than the HD 6970 in most cases, and is available for R3,649. The cheapest HD 6970s come in at around R3900.

While the Radeon HD 6970 is a capable graphics card, it feels like it should have been priced at around R3,500. It just doesn’t offer the performance to justify its R4000+ price tag, especially when there are various special edition Nvidia GTX 570s available that deliver better frame rates.

Pros

– Can handle high-res, maximum detail gaming

– Dual bios and other neat built in features

– Relatively quiet

Cons

– Outperformed by cheaper competing products from Nvidia

– Noisier than a mid-range graphics card

Conclusion

I wanted to love the HD 6970, but the GTX 570 special edition cards offer better performance at a lower price.

Overall score 3.5/5

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