Monday, December 13th 2010
PowerColor Radeon HD 6970 Pictured
With its launch not too far, AMD partners are busy sending their Radeon HD 6970 samples to reviews. It is inevitable then, that some would actually post pictures of those on the web ahead of launch. Some such pictures made it to HardwareLuxx.de, which shows PowerColor Radeon HD 6970 in fresh out of its retail box. The card, and the box itself, reveal quite a bit about the HD 6970. To begin with, Radeon HD 6970 (and HD 6950), are high-end single GPU graphics cards based on AMD's new "Cayman" high-end GPU. The HD 6970 is about as long as a Radeon HD 5870 (which it's intended to replace), and retains product design carried forward from the HD 6800 series graphics cards.
The HD 6970 from PowerColor sports 2 GB of GDDR5 memory, perhaps some of the memory chips are located on the reverse side of the PCB, which is why a back-plate is used to cool them. The top side of the card reveals the power connectors: one 8-pin, and a 6-pin PCI-E power; two CrossFire bridge fingers, and a tiny switch. It is rumored that this switch lets users select between two BIOS ROM chips present on the cards; one chip is programmable, and partners can store an overclocked profile, while the other is not programmable, and stores the AMD reference profile. It gives users a nice fallback in case they brick the card with a bad BIOS.
Another revelation is that HD 6970 supports an updated AMD Eyefinity feature set that lets users connect four displays to the card (instead of three on the previous generation non-Eyefinity6 cards). Display connectivity includes two DVI, one HDMI 1.4a, and two DisplayPort 1.2. PowerColor's HD 6970 should be out by mid-December (in this week).
Source:
HardwareLuxx.de
The HD 6970 from PowerColor sports 2 GB of GDDR5 memory, perhaps some of the memory chips are located on the reverse side of the PCB, which is why a back-plate is used to cool them. The top side of the card reveals the power connectors: one 8-pin, and a 6-pin PCI-E power; two CrossFire bridge fingers, and a tiny switch. It is rumored that this switch lets users select between two BIOS ROM chips present on the cards; one chip is programmable, and partners can store an overclocked profile, while the other is not programmable, and stores the AMD reference profile. It gives users a nice fallback in case they brick the card with a bad BIOS.
125 Comments on PowerColor Radeon HD 6970 Pictured
All that said, I wanted something to replace my 5850's and it's looking more and more likely it'll be NV as an overclocked 580 gets close/beats a 5970.
Though since i changed my case my 5850's stay cooler and quieter when flat out. Maybe i should wait.....
And it's not a 'fail' if it achieves AMD's goal. It's only us idiots that have hyped things so much we lose track of what good value and performance 'most' consumers want.
Also, the 4870 was over 2x the speed of the 3870 and the 5870 was damn close to 2x the 4870. If the 6970 is too far off the generational improvement will be much smaller. It looks like a 30% increase on average over the 5870, which nixes any leadership that AMD worked so hard to gain...
nV has the fastest single GPU but AMD owns perf/$ and perf/W.
And I think AMD being able to tweak Cypress -> Cayman and gain such boosts with minimal die size increase is actually an impressive feat compared to nV jury-riggin' GF100 -> GF110.
Lets give up the Nvidia VS Ati trash for one thread maybe?
Last I checked the title didn't say 6970 vs 580 benchmarks!
Why are people so f***ing stupid? doesn't anyone READ?
1. 6900's series is not a f***ing new generation, it's the SAME 40nm!!!, don't dream with 80% leaps!! IT'S A REFRESH!
2. FAIL????......omfg......FYI AMD/ATI every new iteration, closes the gap to nvidia!
HD3850 < HD3870 < 8800GT < 8800GTX
HD4850 < GTX260 = HD4870 < GTX280
HD5850 < GTX470 < HD5870 < GTX480
HD6950 <= GTX570 < HD6970 <= GTX580 (acording to leaks)
GET IT??
PD: 1536 shaders and almost equal perf than GTX580!! Bravo AMD!
PD2: could it mean they plan to release a 1920sp refresh part? who knows!, maybe it beats GTX580!!, maybe nv has a refresh planned aswell! (maybe overclocked because fermi's max shaders are 512)
And yes, they probably will not see a huge performance difference, just some baseline design tweaks, which are indeed helpful.
Lastly considering the release date of the GTX580, a refresh will not be coming for at least 6-12 months, if they even do one, by then ATI will most likely be ready with their next either refresh or design.
even if its only a dual GF104, that's going to be one frikken potent card. also very keen to see what AMD pull out in the way of a dual cayman.
Also, what everyone fails to see is that the jump from hd5870 to hd6970 is bigger than gtx480 to gtx580, again, acording to benchmark leaks.
Can't everyone just wait until the official reviews before saying how crappy and fail the 69xx cards are, I'm not saying they won't be but it would be nice for people to give exact examples of why they are so bad :laugh:
And you can cry 40nm all you want, the 6870 with a lot less SPs than a 5870 is almost on par with it, 40nm didn't hold that back.
MAYBE a 1920sp refresh part will beat the gtx580, but i don't think nv won't do anything about it.