HD 6970 Review Introduction
It’s finally here! AMD rolled out its latest high-end GPU, codenamed “Cayman”, which tops the Northern Islands, AMD’s second-generation DirectX 11 compliant GPU family. Using this, AMD is initially carving out two enthusiast-grade products: the AMD Radeon HD 6970 (reviewed here), and the Radeon HD 6950, both released today. There’s also scope for a dual-HD 6970-GPU product in the near future, called HD 6990. AMD’s Radeon HD 6970 “Cayman” GPU faced quite a few hiccups en route today’s launch. It was slated for mid-November, but was delayed by a month due to component shortage. Meanwhile, NVIDIA went ahead with a hard-launch of its GeForce GTX 580 graphics processor, and subsequently, the GeForce GTX 570, to counter the HD 6970.
With Cayman and the HD 6970, AMD is introducing its biggest design change for the GPU’s SIMD processing area since Radeon HD 2900 series, it’s also introducing a greater amount of parallelism to the graphics engine, and doubling the standard memory amount from 1 GB in the previous generation Radeon HD 5870 and Radeon HD 5850, to 2 GB on both Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6950. As a brief lesson on AMD’s naming scheme with this generation, Radeon HD 6950 and HD 6970 represent high-end single GPU SKUs, successors to HD 5800 series, while the recently introduced HD 6800 series are in a segment of their own with no definitive predecessors.
The Radeon HD 6970 from HIS we’re reviewing today, sticks to AMD’s reference board design, including adherence to reference clock speeds. With HD 6900 series, AMD made sure that users of all HD 6900, including those which are factory-overclocked, have access to reference clock speeds at the turn of a switch (detailed later down the review). The Radeon HD 6970 features 2 GB of GDDR5 memory, carries clock speeds of 880 MHz core and 1375 MHz (5500 MHz GDDR5 effective); and display outputs including two DVI, one HDMI 1.4a, and two mini DisplayPort 1.2.
Product Positioning
This slide from AMD instantly tells you the amount of damage the surprise hard-launch of NVIDIA GeForce 580 and GTX 570 caused to the HD 6970 and HD 6950 positioning. Take those two out of the equation, and we’re actually seeing the GTX 480 (which has roughly the same performance as GTX 570) being edged past by HD 6970, and HD 6950 way ahead of whatever else is down there from NVIDIA (GTX 470, GTX 460 1 GB).
AMD is still banking on the previous-generation HD 5970 dual-GPU graphics card to hold the performance leadership (which it is loosely holding on to, with the potential of losing it to the GTX 580 with one good GeForce driver snatching that leadership); HD 6970 to be a notch lower in price but somewhere between GTX 570 and GTX 580 in terms of performance.
|
Radeon
HD 6850 |
Radeon
HD 5850 |
GeForce
GTX 470 |
Radeon
HD 6870 |
Radeon
HD 5870 |
Radeon
HD 6950 |
GeForce
GTX 570 |
GeForce
GTX 480 |
Radeon
HD 6970 |
GeForce
GTX 580 |
Radeon
HD 5970 |
| Shader units |
960 |
1440 |
448 |
1120 |
1600 |
1408 |
480 |
480 |
1536 |
512 |
2x 1600 |
| ROPs |
32 |
32 |
40 |
32 |
32 |
32 |
40 |
48 |
32 |
48 |
2x 32 |
| GPU |
Barts |
Cypress |
GF100 |
Barts |
Cypress |
Cayman |
GF110 |
GF100 |
Cayman |
GF110 |
2x Cypress |
| Transistors |
1700M |
2154M |
3200M |
1700M |
2154M |
2640M |
3000M |
3200M |
2640M |
3000M |
2x 2154M |
| Memory Size |
1024 MB |
1024 MB |
1280 MB |
1024 MB |
1024 MB |
2048 MB |
1280 MB |
1536 MB |
2048 MB |
1536 MB |
2x 1024 MB |
| Memory Bus Width |
256 bit |
256 bit |
320 bit |
256 bit |
256 bit |
256 bit |
320 bit |
384 bit |
256 bit |
384 bit |
2x 256 bit |
| Core Clock |
775 MHz |
725 MHz |
607 MHz |
900 MHz |
850 MHz |
800 MHz |
732 MHz |
700 MHz |
880 MHz |
772 MHz |
725 MHz |
| Memory Clock |
1000 MHz |
1000 MHz |
837 MHz |
1050 MHz |
1200 MHz |
1250 MHz |
950 MHz |
924 MHz |
1375 MHz |
1002 MHz |
1000 MHz |
| Price |
$180 |
$260 |
$260 |
$240 |
$360 |
$300 |
$330 |
$450 |
$370 |
$500 |
$580 |
Architecture
Cayman, named after the lovely Cayman islands in the Caribbean, is AMD’s new high-end GPU. It succeeds Cypress, on which were based Radeon HD 5800 series and the dual-GPU HD 5970. Cayman is built on existing 40 nm process at TSMC. Apart from the processor most of the components inside are the same as the ones found in the previous generation GPUs, except that the hierarchy of components is changed to add a degree of parallelism that goes a step ahead of even Barts. The SIMD cores are completely restructured, too.
With Cypress, there was only one graphics engine (that which computes preliminary data and instructions, and passes them on for low-level processing to the SIMD cores), and one dispatch processor that funneled data and instructions down to the two SIMD engine blocks. Barts introduced a degree of parallelism by giving each SIMD engine block its own dispatch processor, instruction and constant caches. Cayman is taking that a step further, by splitting even the graphics engines between the two SIMD engine blocks. This gives dedicated rasterizers, geometry assemblers to each block, but more importantly, doubles the number of tessellation units, with each graphics engine having one.
As mentioned earlier, AMD brought about a radical change in the stream processor design. Compared to the older VLIW5 design in which an SIMD core consisted of four simple and one complex stream processors with some common resources, the new design, dubbed VLIW4, combines four equally-capable complex stream processors, with two of the four getting special functions. Overall, with a stream processor count of 1536, the Radeon HD 6970 clocked at 880 MHz, is able to churn out a single-precision floating point (IEEE754-SP) performance of 2.7 TFLOPs, and double-precision performance (IEEE754-DP) of 675 GFLOPs. The VLIW4 architecture, hence is aimed to increase performance per mm² of die-area. The render back-ends, have also been redesigned to facilitate 2 times faster 16-bit integer and 32-bit floating-point operations.
In a nutshell, the Cayman die measures 389 mm², holding 2.64 billion transistors. It is built on the 40 nm TSMC process. It has 24 SIMD engines spread across two SIMD engine blocks. There are 1536 stream processors in all. There are 96 texture memory units (TMUs), and 32 raster operation processors (ROPs). New, faster memory controllers allow use of new 5.5 Gbps memory chips. The memory bus width is 256-bit, with which the GPU connects to eight 2 Gbit memory chips to archive 2 GB of total memory.
Packaging
HIS uses their standard package design for the Radeon HD 6970.
Contents
You will receive:
- Graphics card
- Driver CD + Documentation
- DVI adapter
- PCI-Express power cables
The Card
The HIS Radeon HD 6970 is a complete reference design implementation, with the only difference being the sticker on the cooler. Also the card uses the same cooler and PCB as the HD 6950 reference design.
HD 6970 requires two slots in your system.
The card has two DVI ports, two mini-DisplayPorts and one HDMI port. AMD’s display output logic is clearly superior to what NVIDIA has to offer at this time. Vendors are free to combine six TMDS links into any output configuration they want (dual-link DVI consuming two links) – and use them all at the same time. AMD has also introduced DisplayPort 1.2 support with their new cards which allows the use of a DisplayPort hub to connect multiple monitors, or daisy chain them together.
An HDMI sound device is also included in the GPU. The HDMI interface is HDMI 1.4a compatible which includes Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, AC-3, DTS and up to 7.1 channel audio with 192 kHz / 24-bit output. The new revision also brings support for Blu-ray 3D movies which will become important later this year when we will see first Blu-ray 3D titles shipping.
You may combine up to four HD 6950 and HD 6970 cards in CrossFire for increased performance or improved image quality settings.
Here are the front and the back of the card, high-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc, please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.
A Closer Look
The first piece to come off the card is the backplate. It serves no special purpose other than to protect the card from physical damage and spread the heat around a bit. Since there are no memory chips or other important circuitry on this side of the card, there is no need for a backplate to cool them.
The AMD reference cooler uses a big vapor chamber base to transfer heat away quickly from the GPU. In addition to the GPU, you can also see cooling pads for memory and voltage regulation circuitry.
The Radeon HD 6970 uses a 6+8 power input configuration.
AMD has added a small switch near the card that lets you toggle between two VGA BIOSes. The first one is the normal one and can be flashed. The second one acts as backup and is write-protected, so you can not “destroy” it in case of a bad flash. Should you flash your card with the wrong BIOS, you can switch to the backup BIOS to boot the card, then change the switch to the normal BIOS before flashing. This looks like a good system, but I wonder if it’s worth the added cost.
The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Hynix, and carry the model number H5GQ2H24MFR-R0C. They are specified to run at 1500 MHz (6000 MHz GDDR5 effective).
The Radeon HD 6900 Series are the first graphics cards to use the Volterra VT1556. It offers extensive voltage control and monitoring via I2C. At this time no software supports this controller yet, but I am sure this will change in the weeks to come.
AMD’s new Cayman graphics processor is made on a 40 nm process at TSMC Taiwan. It uses approximately 2.64 billion transistors on a die area of 389 mm².
Test System
| Test System – VGA Rev. 12 |
| CPU: |
Intel Core i7 920 @ 3.8 GHz
(Bloomfield, 8192 KB Cache) |
| Motherboard: |
Gigabyte X58 Extreme
Intel X58 & ICH10R |
| Memory: |
3x 2048 MB Mushkin Redline XP3-12800 DDR3
@ 1520 MHz 8-7-7-16 |
| Harddisk: |
WD Caviar Black 6401AALS 640 GB |
| Power Supply: |
akasa 1200W |
| Software: |
Windows 7 64-bit |
| Drivers: |
GTX 570 & 580: 263.09
NVIDIA: 260.99
HD 6900: 8.79.6.2 RC2
ATI: Catalyst 10.11 |
| Display: |
LG Flatron W3000H 30″ 2560×1600
 |
Benchmark scores in other reviews are only comparable when this exact same configuration is used.
- All video card results were obtained on this exact system with the exact same configuration.
- All games were set to their highest quality setting
Each benchmark was tested at the following settings and resolution:
- 1024 x 768, No Anti-aliasing. This is a standard resolution without demanding display settings.
- 1280 x 1024, 2x Anti-aliasing. Common resolution for most smaller flatscreens today (17″ – 19″). A bit of eye candy turned on in the drivers.
- 1680 x 1050, 4x Anti-aliasing. Most common widescreen resolution on larger displays (19″ – 22″). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
- 1920 x 1200, 4x Anti-aliasing. Typical widescreen resolution for large displays (22″ – 26″). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
- 2560 x 1600, 4x Anti-aliasing. Highest possible resolution for commonly available displays (30″). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
BattleForge
BattleForge, a card based RTS, is developed by the German EA Phenomic Studio. A few months after launch the game was transformed into a Play 4 Free branded game. That move and the fact that it was included as game bundle with a large number of ATI cards made it one of the more well known RTS games of 2009. You as a player assemble your deck before game to select the units that will be available. Your choice can be from forces of Fire, Frost, Nature and Shadow to complement each other.
The BattleForge engine has full support for DX 9, DX 10 and DX 10.1, we used the internal benchmark tool in DirectX 11 mode to acquire our results.
Call of Duty 4
Call of Duty 4 is a first-person shooter that is built on the award winning Call of Duty Series. It is the first version to play in modern times. In a near-future conflict between the United States, Europe and Russia you get to play as a United States Marine and a British SAS operative. The engine is Infinity Ward’s own creation and has true dynamic lighting, depth of field, dynamic shadows and HDR. Even though the game plot is scripted you will find yourself in intense battles, often working together with computer controlled team mates.
Crysis
After the tremendous success of Far Cry, the German game studio Crytek released their latest shooter Crysis in 2007. The game was by far the most hyped and anticipated game in 2007, the forums were full of “Can my system run Crysis?” threads because of the high hardware requirements of this game. Just like in Far Cry the plot evolves on a small island with a thick and richly detailed jungle world. A lot of attention has been given to small details like correct physics. For example when you fire on a tree trunk, it will shatter and the tree will fall over leaving a stump behind. Enemies in a car can be stopped by shooting the tire of the car. The game graphics are by far the best ever seen in a PC game so far, yet the game still runs well on most computers.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II by Relic Entertainment is an RTS game based on the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Unlike other Dawn of War titles there is no base-building element in the game, you simply command units on the battlefield. Due to the non-linear mission design, the choices which mission and objective you pick to pursue have considerable impact on game play and mission difficulty. A “hero” unit concept adds RPG elements to the game, allowing you to advance the unit in terms of levels and abilities. Dawn of War 2 uses the Essence Engine 2.0, version 1.0 was used in the Company of Heroes Series.
Far Cry 2
Four years after the success of Far Cry, Ubisoft has published the sequel called Far Cry 2. While the first part was set on an island, Far Cry 2 takes you deep into Africa with game play that resembles Grand Theft Auto much more than the original Far Cry, which was a classical 3D shooter. Ubisoft engineered a completely new 3D engine called “Dunia” which offers a large amount of popular features like DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 support, destructible environments, physics and non-scripted AI while not being as much of a resource hog as Crytek’s CryEngine. We tested the Ranch Medium level at DirectX 10 with highest details.
Chipset:
4.5
5.0
3.5
4.0
1.0
2.8
Hardware Info - Dika's Favorite 