Thoughts about AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series?

[andreiciulu]

Thoughts about AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series?

 

[damric]

HD 6970? Obsolete for gaming. Halfdecent for folding but inefficient. For HWBOT it would be worth the entertainment value for $50 to some people. Very niche card even when it was new.

 

[Yraggul666]

My first thought on the AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series is that the 69 in the name is very suggestive.
My second thought is that it's good card if you don't need RT.

 

[AusWolf]

For the whole HD 6000 series in general: they're very good cards up to DirectX 10, but they suffer an inexplicably bad performance hit in some DX 11 titles (e.g. The Witcher 3).

 

[xtreemchaos]

there a bit long in the tooth but if your doing a retro build and old games go for it bud.

 

[wNotyarD]

For the whole HD 6000 series in general: they're very good cards up to DirectX 10, but they suffer an inexplicably bad performance hit in some DX 11 titles (e.g. The Witcher 3).

I wouldn't call it inexplicable, as pre-GCN Radeons were notoriously bad with tesselation.

 

[pavle]

I have an old XFX HD 6950 1GB unlocked to HD 6970. Hardware-wise it's a really well made card I mean it has a dynamic clock and everything that HD 7970 doesn't but its machinery though using all 1536 shaders and 96 TMU's is surprisingly or perhaps not inefficient, it's around two thirds the speed of a HD 7850 with 1024 shaders and 64 TMU's. Quite sad actually. Nice old card, but also a bit power-hungry.
I wonder how a HD 5870 would compare, well a friend (@madness777) has it and it scored lower in some benchmarks than my HD 6950 (then).

 

[AsRock]

Be very poor to todays standards, i sold mine WOW a hell long time ago.

 

[AusWolf]

I have an old XFX HD 6950 1GB unlocked to HD 6970. Hardware-wise it's a really well made card I mean it has a dynamic clock and everything that HD 7970 doesn't but its machinery though using all 1536 shaders and 96 TMU's is surprisingly or perhaps not inefficient, it's around two thirds the speed of a HD 7850 with 1024 shaders and 64 TMU's. Quite sad actually. Nice old card, but also a bit power-hungry.
I wonder how a HD 5870 would compare, well a friend (@madness777) has it and it scored lower in some benchmarks than my HD 6950 (then).

That speed relative to the HD 7000 series depends on the game or benchmark app you're using. You may see two thirds of HD 7850 performance in DX10, but a completely unusable stutterfest in some DX11 cases. Unfortunately, driver support for pre-GCN cards was dropped pretty early, so there's no help from AMD, either.

 

[theFOoL]

I mean... I have a HD 4850 1GB which... Plays killing floor 1 nicely though other games haven't tried but 1080p/720 videos mostly is OK

 

[bobbybluz]

I have a HD 6950 I flashed to 6970 years ago stashed away somewhere. Decent GPU for it's day even though it's a rather large card for the time. I also had a 6990 that I eventually sold on Ebay. I may still have the stock AMD cooler for it in my basement.

I mean... I have a HD 4850 1GB which... Plays killing floor 1 nicely though other games haven't tried but 1080p/720 videos mostly is OK

I have a fully functional HIS HD 4850 I posted pictures of last year. HIS made great GPU's.

 

[Fouquin]

inexplicably bad performance hit in some DX 11 titles (e.g. The Witcher 3).

It's not inexplicable, it's the ROPs. Try this if you want to see what I mean: run Witcher III on a 6850, 6870, 6950, and 6970 at 1080p or higher. Exactly the same FPS across each card despite the difference in core configurations. The determining factor for that particular game is the 32 ROPs each card shares, and to a lesser extent VRAM bandwidth (noticeable below 1080p). I haven't been able to find many games that expose this particular weakness in TeraScale other than Witcher III and Crysis 2. If you compare the 6970 to a 7870 XT at the same clock (same overall core config but GCN1.0) you see that AMD solved a lot of the issues with GCN.

 

[Nater]

I have a 6970 that I bought brand new when it launched. Seems like it was around $400 or so? Used it for nearly 10 years. It finally got retired because the Q6600 rig it was in couldn't run Fortnite due to limitations imposed by Epic. (the 6970 was totally playable in Fortnite a few years ago in an i7 920 rig)

Probably going to do a retro rig with it eventually, or throw it back in the original box and ditch it on Facebook.

 

[AusWolf]

It's not inexplicable, it's the ROPs. Try this if you want to see what I mean: run Witcher III on a 6850, 6870, 6950, and 6970 at 1080p or higher. Exactly the same FPS across each card despite the difference in core configurations. The determining factor for that particular game is the 32 ROPs each card shares, and to a lesser extent VRAM bandwidth (noticeable below 1080p). I haven't been able to find many games that expose this particular weakness in TeraScale other than Witcher III and Crysis 2. If you compare the 6970 to a 7870 XT at the same clock (same overall core config but GCN1.0) you see that AMD solved a lot of the issues with GCN.

I didn't know that, thanks for clearing it up.

 

[pavle]

It's not inexplicable, it's the ROPs. Try this if you want to see what I mean: run Witcher III on a 6850, 6870, 6950, and 6970 at 1080p or higher. Exactly the same FPS across each card despite the difference in core configurations. The determining factor for that particular game is the 32 ROPs each card shares, and to a lesser extent VRAM bandwidth (noticeable below 1080p). I haven't been able to find many games that expose this particular weakness in TeraScale other than Witcher III and Crysis 2. If you compare the 6970 to a 7870 XT at the same clock (same overall core config but GCN1.0) you see that AMD solved a lot of the issues with GCN.

Really? Wow - well HD 7870 too has 32 ROP's - were there really such changes made with GCN from pre-GCN? Interesting.

 

[sLowEnd]

It's outdated. I would not use it unless you have no other choice, or are building some sort of period-correct early 2010s gaming PC.

 

[AnotherReader]

Really? Wow - well HD 7870 too has 32 ROP's - were there really such changes made with GCN from pre-GCN? Interesting.

I think it's a combination of AMD's VLIW compiler failing to extract enough ILP and inferior tessellation performance. If you read TechPowerUp's 7870 review, you notice that In most games, the 7870 is about 15 to 20 percent faster. The only exception is Crysis 2 where it's much faster than a 6970. Crysis 2 was notorious for pushing tessellation harder than any other game of its time.