Introducing AMD’s HD 6970 and HD 6950

Test Configuration

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i7 920 reference 2.66 GHz and overclocked to 3.8 GHz); Turbo is off.
• Gigabyte EX58-UD3R (Intel X58 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 2.0 specification; CrossFire/SLI 16x+16x).
• 6 GB OCZ DDR3 PC 1800 Kingston RAM (3×2 GB, tri-channel at PC 1600 speeds; 2×2 GB supplied by Kingston)
• GeForce GTX 580, 1.5 GB reference design and clocks (772/2004 MHz), supplied by Nvidia
• GeForce GTX 480, 1.5 GB reference design and clocks (700/1401 MHz), supplied by Nvidia
• GeForce GTX 570, 1.3 GB reference design and clocks (732/1900 MHz), supplied by Nvidia and further overclocked to 815/2000 MHz.
• EVGA GTX 460 FTW; 1 GB, overclocked version (850/2000 MHz) supplied by Nvidia/EVGA
• Galaxy GTX 460 SOC; 1GB overclocked version at reference clocks (675/1800 MHz), supplied by Galaxy
• Galaxy GTX 460- 768 MB overclocked version at reference clocks (675/1800 MHz), supplied by Galaxy
• BFG GTX 280 – 1GB, reference clocks (602/1107 MHz)

• Radeon HD 6970 (2GB, reference clocks, 880/1375 MHz) supplied by AMD
• Radeon HD 6950 (2GB, reference clocks, 800/1325 MHz) supplied by AMD

• Radeon HD 5870 (1GB, overclocked clocks, 850/1200 MHz) by Diamond
• Radeon HD 6870 (1GB, reference clocks, 900/1050 MHz) supplied by AMD
• Radeon HD 6850 (1GB, reference clocks, 775/900 MHz) supplied by AMD
• Radeon HD 4870 (1GB, reference clocks), by MSI
• Onboard Realtek Audio
• Two identical 250 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 hard drives configured and set up identically from drive image; one partition for Nvidia GeForce drivers and one for ATI Catalyst drivers
• Thermaltake ToughPower 775 W power supply unit supplied by Thermaltake
• Thermaltake Element G Case supplied by Thermaltake
• Noctua NH-U12P SE2 CPU cooler, supplied by Noctua
• Philips DVD SATA writer
• HP LP3065 2560×1600 thirty inch LCD

Test Configuration – Software

• ATi Catalyst 10-12; highest quality mip-mapping set in the driver, Catalyst AI set to “Standard”; surface performance optimizations are off (only HD 6850 was tested with Catalyst 10-10)
• NVIDIA GeForce 263.09 release drivers for GTX 480/GTX 570/GTX 580; 262.99 WHQL for GTX 460; and 260.99 WHQL for GTX 280. High Quality
• Windows 7 64-bit; very latest updates
• DirectX July 2010
• All games are patched to their latest versions.
• vsync is off in the control panel and is never set in-game.
• Varying AA enabled as noted in games and “forced” in Catalyst Control Center for UT3 and Batman: Arkham Asylum; all in-game settings are specified with 16xAF always applied; 16xAF forced in control panel for Crysis.
• All results show average, minimum and maximum frame rates except as noted.
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
• Windows 7 64, all DX10 titles were run under DX10 render paths; DX11 titles under DX11 render paths.

The Benchmarks

• Vantage
• F.E.A.R.
• X3:Terran Conflict
• Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
• Call of Duty 4
• Unreal Tournament 3
• Batman: Arkham Asylum
• Grand Theft Auto IV
• Serious Sam, Second Encounter HD (2010)
• Mafia II
• Call of Juarez
• Crysis
• Lost Planet
• Far Cry 2
• Just Cause 2
• H.A.W.X.
• Resident Evil 5
• Alien vs. Predator
• Battleforge
• STALKER, Call of Pripyat
• Dirt 2
• Metro 2033
• Lost Planet 2
• H.A.W.X. 2
• Heaven 2

New AMD Catalyst A.I. Performance Optimizations

With the introduction of the AMD Radeon HD 6900 series and its new hardware texture capabilities, the AMD Catalyst A.I. user interface in AMD Catalyst Control Center has also been updated to allow direct user control over performance optimizations that affects image quality. The new AMD Catalyst A.I. options can be found by opening the 3D settings page and selecting the “All” tab and scrolling down.

The Texture Filtering Quality slider has three settings – High Quality, Quality (default), and Performance. The High Quality setting disables all texture optimizations. The Quality setting enables a trilinear optimization as well as an anisotropic sample optimization, which are designed to have no visible impact on image quality while offering improved performance. The Performance setting enables more aggressive versions of these optimizations that offer further performance improvement, but may have an impact on image quality.  The AMD Radeon HD 6900 series continues to support fully angle invariant anisotropic filtering, and incorporates further improvements in LOD precision relative to the ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series. These image quality benefits come with no additional performance cost and remain enabled at all Texture Filtering Quality settings.

When comparing performance and image quality against Nvidia video cards, we use the same High Quality Texture Filtering Quality setting in the Nvidia Control Panel as we do in CCC.   This ensures the most direct and fair comparison.  The Surface Format Optimization checkbox allows improved performance in selected games that use 16-bit floating point surfaces for HDR rendering. It is designed to have no discernible effect on image quality, but we disabled it.

One important note about settings must be made here. AMD has listened to enthusiasts and they have finally given us a way to shut off performance optimizations in Catalyst Control Center beginning with Catalyst 10-10 for HD 68×0. AMD insists that their optimizations never impact image quality (IQ). However, we have decided to test with them ‘off’ and hold AMD’s new cards to the very highest IQ standards.