AMD HD 6970 Graphics Card Review

It’s that time again; time for AMD to release another flagship that is! This time it’s their current single GPU flagship, right on the heels of their new Phenom II x6 1100T Black Edition.

They have a lot to live up to. Their venerable 5870 ruled the roost until the GF100-based Fermi GPUs came to market. Their current dual-GPU 5970 is still the overall performance leader (a testament to its brute strength) but the recently-released NVIDIA GTX 580 has seized the single-GPU throne.

So where does the new 6970 fit in this equation?

Specifications and Features

The specifications for this card are impressive from the start. It has AMD’s new VILW4 architecture, 24 stream processors, 96 texture units and a very stout 2 GB of GDDR5 memory.

A lot of improvements went into the design for the 6900 series GPUs. Since you can read as well as I can, just check out the slides.

One feature AMD feels is of import to the gaming audience is EQAA, or Enhanced Quality Anti-Aliasing. In the slide on the right, you can see graphically how it will help fill in those pixels for filling out that extra eye candy the 6900 series is capable of, especially in eyefinity mode.

In this last EQAA slide, you can see how little it affects performance. Free eye-candy without much FPS penalty? Sure, sign us up for some!

Also on their important feature list is an improvement on the 6800 series already impressive power consumption (or should I say power sipping?). There is a new feature called PowerTune and it will help your GPU stay cool and sip even less power.

Of course, this is thankfully adjustable (via CCC) from having the GPU take less power than the default setting or giving it full power all the time.

Of course, high on everyone’s list is Tessellation. AMD continues to focus on the low-to-mid end of the tessellation curve, which is where they think real-world (read: gaming) settings will be applied.

Extremely important to our audience is crossfire scaling. It’s no secret the 5800 series didn’t scale very well. AMD is looking to put that behind them and if these graphs are any indication, they’ve done just that.

Lastly a great new feature for all overclockers and tweakers – dual BIOSes!

Yep, on the stock board from the factory you have two BIOSes. One is the default BIOS,which is write-protected, so you always have something to come back to. The other is yours to do with as you please. Download a modified BIOS or try your hand yourself. If you bork it, just go back to the default and re-flash to stock!

Now, one thing that has been the subject of a lot of speculation – where will this fit in the market? AMD has a slide for that too.

As mentioned before, it’s not the single-GPU performance king some had hoped. However, it is almost there, pit against NVIDIA’s new GTX 570. They can still claim the top spot with their dual-GPU card, but the 580 is secure in its top single-GPU spot for now.

This is purely speculation, but I have a feeling this card was intended to beat the GTX 480. It takes a while to bring cards to market and NVIDIA pounced with their 580 before AMD could reclaim the top spot. How the 6970 fares will depend on how aggressive AMD’s pricing is.

First Impressions

The 6970 sports roughly the same appearance as the 6870, if a bit longer at 10 13/16″.

The style is definitely attractive, especially as reference cards go.

It has the same monitor connections as the 6870 before it, with plenty of options to choose from. With 2 GB of memory, there is plenty of reason to explore eyefinity if you have the monitor capability!

Cooling Solution

There is a standard squirrel-cage intake that exhausts out the rear of the case, but it uses a vapor chamber rather than a heatpipe design.

From appearances, it looks to be just one massive heatpipe straight from the CPU to all of the attached aluminum fins.

The fan is moderately noisy but not overwhelmingly so. Like the previous models, turned all the way up will require headphones for sure. These tests were run with the fan at 75%, which is certainly audible but at an acceptable noise level if you’re intensely gaming. Set on auto it is a bit warmer, but is perfectly silent.

So, no heatpipes in the traditional sense and a decent fan; how does it stack up?

Does it ever! Now, to be fair, the ambient temperature for the 6970 testing was about 3° C lower than for the other two cards (22° C as opposed to 25° C), but that is still a stellar difference.

When overclocked, a few degrees could be attributed to voltage differences, as I couldn’t find any software that worked with this GPU prior to its release. Regardless, this is a very solid performer.

6970 Defrocked

I’m pleased to say the 6970’s thermal paste was applied appropriately this time unlike the 6870’s over-application. It also came off with ease.

Regrettably, a photo of the card’s rear seems to be missing. I took plenty of them, just in small portions to send to people that specialize in volt-modding, so that doesn’t help much here. It looks like the back of a graphics card, if that helps.

Power Consumption

Power consumption was tested with the GPU at stock and the rest of the system set with precisely the same configuration of the previous tests.

Idle power is stellar, coming in at the least of the bunch by a nose under the 6870. Loaded it out-powers all but the 5870, but with such a powerhouse that’s to be expected. Definitely nothing to quibble over.

Overclocking

Overclocking this card was very easy, at least as far as it would go. CCC only allows clocks up to 950 MHz on the GPU and 1450 MHz on the memory (hereinafter referred to as GPU/memory, or 950/1450). Turning the PowerTune up to its maximum 20% to give the GPU all its juice, the card passed every bench and game at that speed.

Since it was neatly wrapped up at CCC’s max (which has now been increased with the release of the Catalyst 10.12 preview), this was also the overclocked result displayed

Not bad at all for a card with no voltage control. This thing has lots of potential, it just needs some voltage to reach the moon!

Test System & Methodology

This is the same test system as the previous reviews with an i7 870 clocked at 4GHz and some strong memory behind it.

All stock benches were run twice and the average result is displayed; overclocked benches were run once.

Please make one important mental note – very few of these graphs’ ranges start at zero. With such high numbers (some in the tens of thousands), this is necessary to be able to discern a graphical difference. So when reading the graphs, take note of the numbers within them as well.

Performance Stock & Overclocked

Gaming Performance

This card wasn’t just made for overclockers, it exists for some serious gamers too. While it definitely delivers on the eye-candy (see above re: EQAA), we’re here to see what kind of numbers it puts up.

Since DirectX 11 is the de facto standard in new games, all of these were benched using it.

Stalker: Call of Pripyat

Stalker is a great test of various settings, including changes in MSAA and Tessellation.

The previous top contender in these graphs was the GTX 470 and the 6970 beats it handily (as it should), especially overclocked.

Aliens vs. Predator DirectX 11 Benchmark

Short and sweet, this one was run in two modes – with all settings at default and with all of them turned up to the maximum.

Strong numbers again; both easily playable gaming. Watching it run was a great experience, smooth throughout.

Heaven Benchmark

Heaven Benchmark 2.1 definitely puts cards to the test. The default settings were only changed in two ways – Tessellation was increased to “Extreme” and Anti-Aliasing was changed to “4x”.

The GTX 470 is very competitive here when overclocked. Remember though, it had the advantage of voltage when overclocked. At stock the 6970 beats the stock 470 and overclocked with no voltage assistance, it beat the 470. It’s a solid advantage that will only get better with a bit of voltage.

Synthetic Benchmarks

3DMark01

Now what you’re all waiting for – benchmarks! As usual, we start with tweaker favorite 3DMark01.

Well, this was a surprise. It did better than almost every card, except the 5870 SOC. I honestly don’t know what to make of that. Thankfully it came out above all of the others, so we don’t have to stress it too much.

3DMark03

Even 3DMark03 didn’t faze the non-volt-assisted overclock.

This card just tears up 03, putting up over 96,000 points. Stick a couple of these in crossfire and I see some benchers with HWBot globals in their eyes.

3DMark06

More of a combined bench, 06 takes advantage of CPU and GPU, with both adding to the score.

Stock, the 6970 just beats out the overclocked 470 and then walks away a bit more when some clocks are added.

3DMark Vantage

Also taking into account CPU & GPU, Vantage is tough on some overclocks. More emphasis is on the GPU in this bench relative to the others, but CPU clocks influence the score as well.

A strong showing here, beating the competition handily. Stock numbers throughout this review are very stout and show how much potential this card does when we’re able to really overclock it.

3DMark11

Futuremark’s newest entry into the benchmark game, 3DMark 11 is a great bench for newer GPUs. After playing around with it on a couple systems, it’s safe to say this is very much a GPU-bound bench.

Unfortunately the only competition here is the 6870 and that’s pretty obviously going to lose here. Still, the marks are impressive for a single card and the gain from the overclock is solid.

Aquamark3

Definitely CPU bound, Aquamark still takes advantage of fast GPU processing.

The 6870 wowed with its numbers and the 6970 certainly doesn’t disappoint either. I think some Aquamark globals may be in play as well.

Pushing the Overclock

While there isn’t much room without voltage, it’s always good to see the absolute top you can get with a new card. In this case, I tried with 3DMark 11 and 3DMark Vantage, which we’ll see first.

Wow, while it’s only 20 MHz, Vantage shows how much potential exists in this card. 20 MHz on the GPU and 10 MHz on the memory translated to a 300 point score increase.

Almost. Try as I would, it just wouldn’t crack the 6000 barrier but was ever so close. A few more MHz on even the CPU would have gotten it there, but this is a GPU review, not a ‘what can my system squeeze out’ review.

With no voltage increase and clocking by sheer force of will, this is a very solid showing; with a full 100 MHz over stock GPU clocks, greater than 1000 MHz should be well within reach.

Final Thoughts & Conclusion

Well, I have to say this was a fun ride. While the 6970 isn’t going to take the ‘top single-GPU card on the market’ crown, it does very well for itself. Based on this column at benchmark reviews, it does well against the GTX 570 as AMD says it should.

One thing is missing – price. Does AMD live up to its price-to-performance name? How does $369 sound? Based on these numbers and its competitiveness with the GTX 570, it’s music to our ears!

Competitive price? Check. Solid performance at said price? Check. Add strong overclocking ability, with voltage control surely to come and you have one very impressive card.

– Jeremy Vaughan (hokiealumnus)