Radeon HD 6970 And 6950 Review: Is Cayman A Gator Or A Crock?

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Annisman

Annisman

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Thanks for the review Angelini, these new naming schemes are hurting my head, sometimes the only way to tell (at a quick glance) which AMD card matches up to what Nvidia card, is by comparing the prices, which I think is bad for the average consumer.
 
rohitbaran

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These cards are to GTX 500 series what 4000 series was to GTX 200. Not the fastest at their time but offer killer performance and feature set for the price. I too expected 6900 to be close to GTX 580, but it didn't turn out that way. Still, it is the card I have waited for to upgrade. Right in my budget.
 
IzzyCraft

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Sorry all i read was this
"This helps catch AMD up to Nvidia. However, Intel has something waiting in the wings that’ll take both graphics companies by surprise. In a couple of weeks, we'll be able to tell you more." and now i'm fixated to weather or not intel's gpu's can actually commit to proper playback.
 
andrewcutter

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but from what i read at hardocp, though it is priced alongside the 570, 6970 was benched against the 580 and they were trading blows... So toms has it at par with 570 but hard has it on par with 580.. now im confused because if it can give 580 perfomance or almost 580 performance at 570 price and power then this one is a winner. Sim a 6950 was trading blows with 570 there. So i am very confused
 
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sgt bombulous

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This is hilarious... How long ago was it that there were ATI fanboys blabbering "The 6970 is gonna be 80% faster than the GTX 580!!!". And then reality hit...
 
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tpi2007

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Not bad, but not very impressive either. It's hard to be impressed at 40nm by now.

But it is quite ironic that AMD has had a tesselator in their cards way before anybody supported the feature (let alone Nvidia), and now Nvidia does better tessellation than AMD.. they should really address that problem.. well, now the only way is to redesign the chip... at 28nm.

28nm it is then, the next big excitment.

What I would really like, now that the HD6xxx lineup is here (dual GPU still missing, but that is a niche product), is that AMD now focuses on fixing bugs in their drivers.
 
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namelessonez

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It's always the same story! nVidia pulls out a new product and then the wait begins for AMD to release its products! Ultimately, the difference isn't worth the wait. We know that AMD's winning factor is its price, but nVidia's is the quality....imho!

As rightly stated, 'reality hits'.
 
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yyk71200

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[citation][nom]AndrewCutter[/nom]but from what i read at hardocp, though it is priced alongside the 570, 6970 was benched against the 580 and they were trading blows... So toms has it at par with 570 but hard has it on par with 580.. now im confused because if it can give 580 perfomance or almost 580 performance at 570 price and power then this one is a winner. Sim a 6950 was trading blows with 570 there. So i am very confused[/citation]
Actually, in Hardocp review overall 580 has some edge over 6970 as well. Only in F1 6970 is ahead. 6970 is great value though.
 
joytech22

joytech22

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[citation][nom]IzzyCraft[/nom]Sorry all i read was this"This helps catch AMD up to Nvidia. However, Intel has something waiting in the wings that’ll take both graphics companies by surprise. In a couple of weeks, we'll be able to tell you more." and now i'm fixated to weather or not intel's gpu's can actually commit to proper playback.[/citation]

If intel entered the graphics market and provided a half-decent dedicated GPU, that would definitely make ANY GPU company shake in their boots.

But in all honesty i hope Intel does enter the market for graphics, making AMD and Nvidia push harder and faster for better products.
 
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Stardude82

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So the answer to the question posed in the title is that it is neither really a gator nor a crock. It works on so many levels! Well, maybe just one since caimans are more closely related to alligators than crocodiles.
 
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Lamiel

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About the only good news I can see in this for AMD is how much they've increased their multi-GPU scaling, making the 6850's in Crossfire a great bargain. That's great, sure, but the new 6900 cards leave me completely underwhelmed. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to follow up the 6800's in this way. I'm an Nvidia user, but I was still looking forward with curiosity to seeing how much stronger the 6970 would be than the GTX 580. Looks like the hype-machine broke down this time... My guess is that a lot of the AMD/ATI fanatics will be scrambling to salvage some dignity after all their talking up of Cayman and how it would eat Nvidia's lunch.
 
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fstrthnu

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This reminds me a lot about the recent release of the updated AMD processors - a temporary holdout while the company plans to release new ones ahead. Except these graphics cards don't even have value going for them. Nvidia was behind just a couple months ago, but now they're ready to crush AMD/Radeon. AMD better have something new coming, and FAST. Holding procedures will only do so much when your competitor is already developing their next-gen GPUs.
 
iam2thecrowe

iam2thecrowe

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Dissappointed. well i guess anyone that bought a 5xxx series card that couldnt wait can now be content that they made an ok choice. The only thing i got from this review is that i want 2 x gtx460's or 2 x 6850's, not the new amd cards.
 
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cheesesubs

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like i had mention it before it was all due to lack of rop count and narrow buss width because amd was simply been cheap ass create such failure chip to save pathetic die space and pcb layout because they're financial situation doesn't allow to. they were honestly believe they can milk it out just like they were with cypress but they are completely wrong. making same mistake like they were in k8's day prove amd can always to be a small-secondary company.

funny is, i was telling people from techpowerup that 6970 will either get more rop count/larger bus width or prepare get rape. and it seems my prediction was righ all along even though i was banned due to having conflict with their retarded administratorship and these stupid stanford university student believe graphic card should putting on folding@home to save pathetic man kind but actuall they are benefit them selves by using people's computing power for their research. that is the reason they support fermi and cayman architecture until i expose they true purpose and got banned.
 
beans4you

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All I can say is I bought my ASUS gtx480 for 480$ on newegg.ca back in Aug lol and two 460's in my bros setup for 400$. Have not seen any slow down in any situation, thats what counts right? weeeoooooo!
 
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bluekoala

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Seems like AMD really improved features and balance more than anything else with this card. I have a feeling the HD7000 series will be more inclined towards muscle like the HD4000 and HD5000 cards were. I'm not disappointed as this is good progress.
 
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