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AMD Radeon HD 6970 & HD 6950 - Cayman Arrives!

By Kenny Yeo - 15 Dec 2010

Test Setup

Test Setup

To evaluate the Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6850, we’ll be using our X58 system which has the following specifications:

  • Intel Core i7-975 (3.33GHz)
  • Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P motherboard
  • 3 x 1GB DDR3-1333 G.Skill memory in triple channel mode
  • Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive
  • Windows 7 Ultimate

Obviously, we are expecting the new Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6950 to beat the older HD 5870, but we are also interested to see if it’ll come close to the dual-GPU Radeon HD 5970. Also, we are interested to see how the new Radeons will match up against NVIDIA’s new super-quick GeForce GTX 580 and GTX 570.

Here is the full list of cards tested and driver versions used:

  • AMD Radeon HD 6970 2GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 10.11)
  • AMD Radeon HD 6950 2GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 10.11)
  • ATI Radeon HD 5970 2GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 10.9)
  • AMD Radeon HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 10.10)
  • ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 10.9)
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 1560MB GDDR5 (ForceWare 262.99)
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 1280MB GDDR5 (ForceWare 263.09)
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 1560MB GDDR5 (ForceWare 260.89)
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 1280MB GDDR5 (ForceWare 263.09)

The list of benchmarks used are as follows:

  • Futuremark 3DMark 11
  • Futuremark 3DMark Vantage
  • Crysis Warhead
  • Far Cry 2
  • Warhammer: Dawn of War 2
  • Battlefield Bad Company 2
  • “Heaven" from Unigine v2.1
  • S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat
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