[crazyeyesreaper]

and yet none of this matters its simply the 5850 vs 5870 debate all over again after all 6900 or 5800 the gpu was the same just shader lock.

That said my max overclock on my 6970 is far higher then the 6950 in your system but overclocking is basically well a crap shoot some cards oc others dont, really is a game of chance, but i can hit 1000 core stable so if we compare, 40mhz jumps giving 3 %

means i gain an extra 6% from clock speed memory speed didnt do to much but 2% overall brings me 8% higher but cant deny the fact the 6950 is the better buy overall granted id still take a 2gb card over a 1 gb any day since the price difference is a $20 spot.

and i can tell you right now ive more then a few games in my possesion that use more then 1gb of Vram depending on the settings


Metro will easily hit 1400+ mb at 1920x1200
My modded oblivion install will hit 1.1-1.2gb rather easily,

2gb will be needed this year not 3 years from now, If i can take a 5 year old title and hit 1.2gb of vram usage with just shadow tweaks and a texture upgrade to 2048, Newer titles will easily surpass that,

Tessellation can hit nearly 200-300mb of usage alone and Direct Compute itself can use a large chunk of memory, i think the blur filter for metro uses a sizable chunk for instance, cant really test it for certain but if i remember right DX10 mode vs DX11 mode was a near 300-500mb jump depending on location and settings. Really i think its gonna come down to games that get released this holiday season aka Battlefield 3 and the like the new games that roll out will be hitting the 1gb barrier and then some, rather quickly.