Introducing AMD’s HD 6970 and HD 6950
Metro 2033
Metro 2033 is the “Crysis” of 2010. It is a very demanding game on any PC with the very latest DX11 visuals. Metro 2033 is an action-oriented video game with a combination of survival horror, and first-person shooter elements. The game is based on the novel “Metro 2033” by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. It was developed by 4A Games in Ukraine and released in March 2010. The game utilizes multi-platform 4A Engine and there is some doubt if the games engine is related to the original XRay engine used in S.T.A.L.K.E.R..
The Metro 2033 story takes place mostly in post-apocalyptic Moscow’s metro system but occasionally the player has to go above ground on some missions and to search for valuables. Metro 2033‘s locations reflect the dark atmosphere of real metro tunnels but in a much more dangerous and lethal manner. Strange phenomena and noises are frequent, and mostly the player has to rely only on their flashlight to find their way around in otherwise total darkness. Even more deadly is the surface as it is severely irradiated and a gas mask must be worn at all times due to the toxic air.
THQ has released an official benchmark for Metro 2033 that is available when Steam updates the game and it includes a quality benchmark that provides minimum/maximum/average framerates, and you can adjust many graphics settings including PhysX, AA, DOF and tessellation, and the number of runs. Our presets are set to maximum (very high) with 1xAA and no PhysX nor DOF enabled.
Here is our first chart at 1920×1200 as 2560×1600 proves too demanding without turning off most of the visuals that make this game really impressive. We test at Very High settings with AA and DOF off.
Let’s test at the same settings, now at 1680×1050.
All of our cards struggle with Metro 2033 at 1920×1200 with the aggressive settings that we used except for the GTX 580. However, both of our HD 69x0s are faster than the GTX 570 which is in turn faster than the GTX 480 and they both lead the HD 5870. Metro 2033 is tessellation-heavy and it appears to take advantage of GF100/GF110 tessellators better than the HD 5870’s single one; we definitely see tessellation performance improvement with HD 69×0 series even over HD 68×0.
Thanks for such an extensive and thorough review, great job! Really enjoyed it. Personally, I feel a little disappointed with 6970 performance, I guess I was expecting a match to GTX580, or better. I have a feeling a lot of people had similar expectations. Oh, well… can’t blame 580 for being a stronger card. But considering the super-competitive pricing point of the new AMD flagship (which also came as a big surprise) it’s safe to say that HD6970 is also a winner in it’s own weight category and will make a lot of gamers very happy.
I’m a bit disappointed, too. The GTX 570 currently has the better performance/price ratio but the 6900 series still offers great ratio…just not as good as GTX 570.
Many people will be pleased nonetheless
The settings pic on the GTA 4 page is missing.
Thank-you. There are still a few images that are still going to be uploaded.
The settings for GTA-IV are all at “high” and 100%.
Apologies for the delay; we had issues with our under-NDA images that stopped us from uploading any further images after the evaluation was published; the permissions were just fixed yesterday.
FIXED.
u should turn on the a.i catalyst to quality as its the default graphic settings for ati graphic cards.
No PC gamer should buy an expensive graphics card to run its IQ settings at less than High Quality.
We test Nvidia vs AMD *both* at High Quality settings. You can always lower the settings yourself and gain a bit more performance if you like.
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