Crazyeyesreaper 6970 series review

System Configuration

6970 base system

AMD Phenom II 965BE @ stock
AMD 6970 single and crossfire
Mushkin 1333 Cl7 4gigs
Gigabyte 790fx UD5P

5850 xfire base system

AMD Phenom II 940BE @ 3.4ghz cpu 2200nb
ATi 5850s in crossfire
Gskill 800 CL 5
Asrock 790gx


Games and Benchmarks to be run in comparison to the 5850s

Crysis Warhead
Devil May Cry 4
The Last Remnant

Games and Apps to be testing in single and dual card 6970s

Metro 2033
Crysis Warhead
Devil May Cry 4
The Last Remnant
Dirt 2
Fallout New Vegas
Battlefield Bad Company 2
Just Cause 2
Left 4 Dead 2
Alien vs Predator Bench
Heaven Bench
Mecha Rampage Demo



6970 xfire vs 5850 xfire 1680x1050

Now it is obvious that at 1680x1050 the cpu limit is more evident and as other reviews have shown the higher the resolution the better the 6900s scale but since this is a direct comparison apples to apples of 5850 xfire vs 6970 xfire at release, those limitations will be ignored entirely

Crysis Warhead
1680x1050 Max Settings 4xAA



Devil May Cry 4<
DX9 1680x1050 8xAA

It would seem in DX9 the 6900 series offers almost no real improvement in this title untill you hit higher resolutions. This is a situation where an i7 is needed to break the deadlock or a heavily overclocked (4ghz+) Phenom II


The Last Remnant
DX9 1680x1050 Max Settings<




6970 Stock CPU + GPU Review

All games are run at 1920x1200 in this portion of the review unless otherwise noted.

Unigine Heaven Bench 2.1
Tessellation Moderate
Crossfire Scaling 75%





Tessellation Normal
Crossfire Scaling 86%




Tessellation Extreme
Crossfire Scaling 92%





Metro 2033
Max Settings
AA mode = AAA
DX11 Tessellation = On
DX11 DoF = off
Crossfire Scaling 69%




Metro 2033
Max Settings
AA mode = AAA
DX11 Tessellation = On
DX11 DoF = On
Crossfire Scaling 96%



Battlefield Bad Company 2

Max Settings 4xAA
Single player was tested in Mission 12
Single Gpu mode



Battlefield Bad Company 2
Max Settings 4xAA
Single player was tested in Mission 12
Dual Gpu mode

Crossfire Scaling 58% Single Player
Crossfire Scaling 18% Multiplayer



Dirt 2
Max Settings 4xAA
Crossfire Scaling 24%





Alien Vs Predator
Max Settings 4xAA
Crossfire Scaling 89%



Fallout New Vegas
Max Settings 4xAA

Crossfire Scaling 0%

Seems i have the bug where the Gamebryo engine is stuck with Vsync on even when disabled via CCC in game and via INI file settings



Just Cause 2
Max Settings 4xAA
Crossfire Scaling 33%




Left 4 Dead 2
Max Settings 4xAA
Crossfire Scaling 17%



Mecha Rampage Demo
Default settings 1920x1080
Crossfire Scaling 64%




Crysis Warhead
Enthusiast 4xAA Ambush bench
Crossfire Scaling 8%

It would seem a stock Phenom II heavily Bottlenecks the 6970s in dual gpu setup. I shall return to this bench once we reach the Overclocking portion of the review.



Devil May Cry 4

DX10 8xAA Super High
Crossfire Scaling Scene 1 92%</b><b>Crossfire Scaling Scene 2 84%
Crossfire Scaling Scene 3 44%</b><b>Crossfire Scaling Scene 4 73%

Crossfire Scaling Average of all Scenes 73%
Please note the bar graph below is set up as Single vs Dual per scene Devil May Cry 4 Bench has 4 major scenes each with there own score.
Grey, Red, Blue, Light Green are Single GPU

Black, Brown, Dark Blue, Dark Green are Dual GPU



The Last Remnant
Max Settings 1920x1200
Crossfire Scaling 63%


Overall the extra performance gained from Crossfire on a stock AMD rig is around 53% in terms of scaling if we remove the bugged Fallout New Vegas run its 57%. This is without a doubt better then the 5800 series scaling on this platform but the performance gain isnt what we would like to see. The next round of benches will focus on overclocking both the CPU and the GPU to see what gains can be had on an AMD gaming rig.


6970 Crossfire Stock vs Overclocked Review

CPU @ 3800mhz NB @ 2600mhz
GPU @ 950 core 1400 memory
RAM @ 1333mhz 7-7-7-20-1T

Crysis Warhead
Enthusiast 4xAA Ambush bench




Alien Vs Predator
Max Settings 4xAA



Metro 2033
Max Settings
AA mode = AAA
DX11 Tessellation = On
DX11 DoF = On






It seems even when Overclocked to 3800mhz CPU 2600NB the AMD Phenom II 965BE just isnt enough to push these gpus especially when overclocked. Crysis Warhead was particularly bad with GPU utilization on the AM3 platform at a dismal 45% per GPU or less. Where as Metro 2033 and Alien vs Predator show a GPU usage of 90-99%. Overall the 6970s in crossfire are a potent combination but there something that should be avoided on an AMD platform. Bulldozer might change things in 2011 but for now a full AMD platform just dosent make sense. I am fairly disappointed that crossfire scaling while good is severely hampered on the AMD cpu compared to almost every Core I series cpu. After comparing with reviews around the web, in many other games that ive not listed here the AMD cpus results in a near 30% reduction in performance in some cases, this i feel is unacceptable the AMD driver team needs to seriously pick up the pace and optimize there drivers for there own platforms, a 965BE overclocked with dual gpus is in comparison to the Core i5 750 @ stock slower in almost every test, and while I am impressed with the GPUs themselves GPU usage due to a cpu bottleneck is nothing short of tragic, games like crysis sitting at 30-40% usage per gpu means theres alot of untapped potential. Then theres games like Bad Company 2 that GPU usage also suffers with the average usage being around 50-55% per GPU again this greatly hinders performance. There is still much work and optimizations that need doing but so far the 6970s in crossfire come in at $260 cheaper then a GTX 580 SLI setup and perform only 5-8% slower while being faster then GTX 570 sli, thats extreme performance for your dollar, Lets just hope for those AMD diehards that they can improve there Crossfire performance on there own CPUs, as it really is a shame that right now Intel is the only game in town when it comes to being able to push a multi gpu system. And with bulldozer still months away the potential cure all it may or may not offer is still nowhere in sight. Till next time everyone happy gaming overclocking folding and crunching.

alright Battlefield Bad Company 2 is up please note cpu is at stock overclocking results of both cpu and gpus will come later

yea seems xfire scaling is comparable at stock to my system at 4ghz 2800nb was on 2x 5850s so my guess is at least in BC2 ill see a 15% gain once i up cpu clocks gpus are still sitting at stock for the time being as is everything else till i finish the base review

i can say 1 thing tho compared to my 5850s the minim fps scaling in BC2 in single player is down right amazing in terms of a direct comparison

single card wise in single player my avg fps went up by over 20fps minimum is up by 15fps as well
single card multi player min is up 30fps avg is up 25fps

also should be noted the single player BC2 bench was done on Mission 12 which is in my opinion one of he more stressful lvls in game and the benchmarks in that lvl are easily replicated.

added X Fire scaling to the first 3 games tested on AMD platform at stock clocks

yea im adding Xfire scaling as i go in BC2 and Dirt 2 i am entirely limited by the CPU in terms of clock performance which is why you probably wont see awesome scaling compared to say i7 but the 95% in AvP gives me some hope so lets keep pushing forward theres also CPU overclocking and GPU overclocking to look into when the base results are done

as stated in another post im willing to bet a good cpu clock and nb clock boost will net me about 10% overall and im hoping the xfire numbers should increase by around 10-15%

cant TPU has its own software of w.e for graphs thats not for public use and its fairly simple just read the shit on the right side of the graph

Single player min

Multi player min = min fps in both game modes with a color that corresponds for the bar graph if you cant read this no offense go back to 1st Grade.

The above posts seperate between

1st post 5850xfire vs 6970 xfire
2nd post 6970 single gpu and dual gpu edited so its easier for ppl to apparently understand

Just Cause 2 xfire is done doing single gpu runs right now

Left 4 Dead 2 up next

L4D will be the last 6 bench runs of the night ill continue where i left off tomorrow

okay so i Lied Metro 2033 benchmarks Incoming

next up

Metro 2033 with all eyecandy on that means Depth of Field Via Direct Compute among the regular goodies that comes from DX11

everythings stock right now overclocked cpu and gpu review will come later probably just after Xmass as im still working full time and of course have to take some time out for the family. That said this is more a test to see just how far a full AMD platform can go and so far at stock clocks AMD cpus are not strong enough for dual cards past the 6870 mark but ill pull out all the stops i can and see what happens so far PSU hasnt broke a sweat

im just finishing these benchs at stock so i can then directly compare to my 5850 launch #s to show the performance difference between 5k and 6k high end cards at there respective launch times

my samsung T260hd is a TV monitor hybrid and im running DVI / Dvi to VGA converter for the Acer monitor no issues to report also Metro Maxxed settings are almost done only got Dual Gpu Runs to go so stay tuned new Graph with results will be up in 10mins

im using the newest 10.12 RC3 drivers from off of AMDs site so far 0 issues with the cards all games ive tested run silky smooth with no stutter or issues

i can say this much 2x 6970s is enough to Max Metro 2033 with Depth of Field Tessellation etc all turned on with AAA 4xAA ive yet to test but the AAA vs 4xAA is marginal difference at best with DoF turned on the difference between AA modes is un noticeable

no most of TPU as Red Machine has a the same cpu and ram timings as me with a GTX 580, so ill be adding that as well hopefully. There is also the 5850 benchs i ran in 1680x1050 last year at launch. Among other things to finish up with such as Crossfire scaling difference between 6900 and 5800 series. I also need to overclock my CPU and Northbridge as well as the GPUs for overclock comparisons... still so much work to be done

i can say in a few games xfire scaling is phenomenal

AvP and Metro 2033 come to mind the rest of the games and bench tools will have to wait till tomorrow its midnight im tired and i gotta work 6am. I can forget to mail out Jlewis's 5850 tomorrow either.

I also think its time to ask any GTX 580 users out there who happen to be running sli or 480 sli to give metro 2033 a try at Max settings DX11 with DoF and Tessellation on but AA mode set to AAA and see what you get at 1920x1200 i ask this because most reviews do 4xAA but wont run Depth of Field via the DX11 options