Introducing AMD’s HD 6970 and HD 6950
Batman: Arkham Asylum (Game of the Year Edition)
Batman: Arkham Asylum is an action-adventure/stealth video game based on DC Comics’ Batman. Arkham Asylum is based directly on the long-running comic book’s Dark Knight character. The Joker devised an elaborate plot from inside Arkham Asylum that Batman is personally forced to put a stop to. The game’s primary characters are superbly voiced.
The game is played as an over-the-shoulder, third-person perspective action-adventure game with a primary focus on Batman’s combat abilities, stealth, detective skills and complete with an arsenal of gadgets that can be used in both combat and as exploring in “detective mode”. The game uses a “Freeflow” combat system as well as the ability to use Batarangs and the Bat-Claw. The player also has access to progressively stronger counter attacks as well as a special attack that can quickly take down a single foe. Stealth tactics includes silent takedowns by sneaking up on foes including dropping and/or gliding from overhead perches.
Batman: Arkham Asylum uses a highly modified version of the Unreal Engine 3. It does not support AA natively but must be added in and supported by the game’s developer. Unfortunately we cannot compare Batman: Arkham Asylum using our GeForce exactly against the Radeon with PhysX on; so all of our testing is with it off. We are using the Game of the Year Edition of Batman: Arkham Asylum which supports in-game AA settings for both Radeon and GeForce cards.
We begin testing at 2560×1600 with details maxed and with 8xAA applied in the game’s setting control panel (8xQ for Nvidia).
Let’s save our comments until after we test at 1920×1200:
In each case, except for our last generation GTX 280 and HD 4870 and the GTX 460-768MB card, the rest are able to offer similar playing experiences as the minimums are sufficiently high even at 2560×1600 with details maxed and with 8xAA applied. 1920×1200 can only be faster so that all of our cards can play Batman at 1920×1200 with 8xAA. The HD 6970 is fastest followed by the GTX 580 then HD 6950, and then a close grouping with the HD 5870, the GTX 480 and the GTX 570.
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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