PowerColor estimates HD6970 speed

[Keysplayr]

More like Cayman Pro is 30% faster than 6870, and Cayman XT is 50% faster (or ~35-40% faster than 5870), in line with the old leaks on unoptimized drivers. No new info yet.

And whatever you're hearing is probably absolute best case scenario.

 

[RaistlinZ]

This reeks of desperation. It sounds like AMD has nothing but propaganda left to keep people from buying a GTX580 while they get their issues fixed with the 6900 series.

If their charts are true, then the 6990 will outpace a 580 by quite a bit... the 5970 is still a bit faster than a 580. So Nvidia will likely have a 595 ready to go the minute the 6990 is released.

 

[MangoX]

doubtful.

If powercolor said anything at all then you can bet amd gave them the greenlight. if they really do have decent performance in 6970 they'd better start an aggressive leak campaign soon before everyone just jumps on a 580.

I predict 10% slower than 580 but quieter/cooler and priced at $449. they might go to $399 if they have decent supply of them.

I surely hope it's not 10% slower and priced at $449. With that it will actually be a better deal to pony up the extra $50 for the 580 for the extra 10% more performance.

 

[Ares1214]

I surely hope it's not 10% slower and priced at $449. With that it will actually be a better deal to pony up the extra $50 for the 580 for the extra 10% more performance.

I personally disagree. For one, if the 6970 OC's anything like the 5870, it will be a better overclocker than the 580...which is as bad or worse than the 6870 in overclocking. Secondly, 10% really isnt much. However, id say the 2 will be +/- 5% of each other in performance, however if these rumors are true, it would give the lead to the 6970 a bit more.

 

[Hauk]

I'll preface with saying I've owned 58xx series [i[and[/i] GTX 4xx cards to say..

If AMD doesn't match or beat GTX 580 in terms of performance, thermals, and power consumption, I think all those who gave nVidia shit over the past year should offer concession. AMD has had plenty of time to design a next gen single GPU flagship. Upon first seeing GTX 480 architecture, they should have anticipated something GTX 580.

I don't say this to start crap, just my unbiased opinion.

 

[Ares1214]

I'll preface with saying I've owned 58xx series [i[and[/i] GTX 4xx cards to say..

If AMD doesn't match or beat GTX 580 in terms of performance, thermals, and power consumption, I think all those who gave nVidia shit over the past year should offer concession. AMD has had plenty of time to design a next gen single GPU flagship. Upon first seeing GTX 480 architecture, they should have anticipated something GTX 580.

I don't say this to start crap, just my unbiased opinion.

All they did was raise clocks, it was almost pure clock raising. I think only 3% more performance came from other things. So if people should have seen this coming, should we have seen just higher clocked versions of other cards?

 

[Keysplayr]

All they did was raise clocks, it was almost pure clock raising. I think only 3% more performance came from other things. So if people should have seen this coming, should we have seen just higher clocked versions of other cards?

Heh,

All they did was raise clocks, added another 32 shaders, another 4 TMU's, another polymorph engine, and anything else that came with enabling the 16th SM. All the while using less power.

Still think all they did was raise clocks? If you're going to have this conversation, at least keep it real. If you can't, then don't have it.

 

[Hauk]

All they did was raise clocks, it was almost pure clock raising. I think only 3% more performance came from other things. So if people should have seen this coming, should we have seen just higher clocked versions of other cards?

They did more than just raise clocks. The redesign addressed areas that experienced severe criticism (justified), while fully enabling the architecture.

 

[Will Robinson]

I'll preface with saying I've owned 58xx series [i[and[/i] GTX 4xx cards to say..

If AMD doesn't match or beat GTX 580 in terms of performance, thermals, and power consumption, I think all those who gave nVidia shit over the past year should offer concession. AMD has had plenty of time to design a next gen single GPU flagship. Upon first seeing GTX 480 architecture, they should have anticipated something GTX 580.

I don't say this to start crap, just my unbiased opinion.

If AMD position Cayman XT at a price well below GTX580 then all those points become moot.
NVDA pouted a bit when HD4870 came out as high mid range instead of going head to head with an open class chip.NVDA were forced to slash prices and it worked out great for consumers.
The strategy worked well then,I doubt many people here think that big, $500, single chip video cards are the way to go.
I hope they do it again, HD4850 and 5850 were pretty cheap and plenty powerful,Cayman Pro will be welcome if it follows that tradition.

 

[Arkadrel]

This got me thinking... since the person that interviewed and got interveiwed both speak really badly english, what if what she really ment was:

69xx will be 30-50% faster than the 6870.

so:

6950 is ~30% faster than a 6870.
6970 is ~50% faster than a 6870.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Heh,

All they did was raise clocks, added another 32 shaders, another 4 TMU's, another polymorph engine, and anything else that came with enabling the 16th SM. All the while using less power.

Still think all they did was raise clocks? If you're going to have this conversation, at least keep it real. If you can't, then don't have it.

Part of me thinks AMD is going to pass up the GTX580 because this is the card they expected from Nvidia with the 480.

But realistically I have a feeling the 6970 will be close to 580 performance, maybe a hair behind. But depending on what features are added, power, noise, and of course price it may still be a winner... I don't think anyone would call the 4870 a bad card because it was slower than the GTX280. If I had to guess, I would say this would be like that but maybe a bit closer yet in performance between the 580 and 6970. But AMD has been pretty good at creating misinformation about upcoming products as of late.

If we are getting into December and still not hearing much from AMD or seeing benchmarks, then I think they might have a problem...

 

[Hauk]

If AMD position Cayman XT at a price well below GTX580 then all those points become moot.
NVDA pouted a bit when HD4870 came out as high mid range instead of going head to head with an open class chip.NVDA were forced to slash prices and it worked out great for consumers.
The strategy worked well then,I doubt many people here think that big, $500, single chip video cards are the way to go.
I hope they do it again, HD4850 and 5850 were pretty cheap and plenty powerful,Cayman Pro will be welcome if it follows that tradition.

Good points. To clarify mine, Cayman XT's transistor count, price & performance in relation to GTX 580.

 

[DominionSeraph]

The 5870 was priced at $379 and the 5850 was priced at $259 at launch. Pricing the 6970 at $449 is a large price increase over the comparable card from the previous generation.

Fermi was supposed to be a monster, though; and the 5000 series quickly shot up in price when Fermi was delayed, and stayed high when GF100 was shown to have a major downside in power use.

With the GTX 580 already out ATI can just price the 6970 in reference to it like they priced 6870/6850 in line with GTX 460.

 

[Skurge]

This got me thinking... since the person that interviewed and got interveiwed both speak really badly english, what if what she really ment was:

69xx will be 30-50% faster than the 6870.

so:

6950 is ~30% faster than a 6870.
6970 is ~50% faster than a 6870.

That actually seems more realistic that AMD would compare it to its own cards.

 

[MangoX]

I personally disagree. For one, if the 6970 OC's anything like the 5870, it will be a better overclocker than the 580...which is as bad or worse than the 6870 in overclocking. Secondly, 10% really isnt much. However, id say the 2 will be +/- 5% of each other in performance, however if these rumors are true, it would give the lead to the 6970 a bit more.

Having owned a 5870 I sure hope OC scaling has improved. My card was able to hit 1000 on the core but the performance doesn't increase linearly as you'd normally expect from clock increases. I hope AMD has fixed the scaling issue and that the 6970 will be clocked low enough for some overclocking headroom like we've seen with the 6850.

 

[RussianSensation]

I personally disagree. For one, if the 6970 OC's anything like the 5870, it will be a better overclocker than the 580...which is as bad or worse than the 6870 in overclocking.

What? GTX580s have hit 900mhz+ (that's at least at 17% overclock) and some got to 1000mhz on air cooling (30% overclock). In contrast, HD6970 barely goes to 1000 on air cooling. That's only an 11% overclock. Most HD5870s max out at 950-1000 as well (so also 18%). If anything, HD6870 is the worst overclocker. Plus Fermi scales exceptionally well with clock speed while HD5870 does not. So HD5870 is in no way a better overclocker than the 480/580 cards.

All they did was raise clocks, it was almost pure clock raising. I think only 3% more performance came from other things. So if people should have seen this coming, should we have seen just higher clocked versions of other cards?

And what's the difference between HD5850 @ HD5870 speeds, 2-3%? That doesn't make HD5870 a bad card. 580 met every target NV set out for it, lower power consumption, lower noise and 15% faster performance on average than the 480. That puts GTX580 about 35% faster than an HD5870.

GTX580 is not a new architercture. Why major changes did you expect?

AMD barely did anything with HD6850/70 chip as well. All they did was take Cypress, remove excess shaders that were bottlenecked, upped the ROP clocks, added mini-DP 1.2 support, revised the tessellation engine and called it a day. Overall, if you clock a 13-months old HD5850 to HD5870 speeds, an HD6870 still can't beat it even with overclocking.

In reality both HD6870 and GTX580 should have been called HD5860 and GTX485.

If AMD position Cayman XT at a price well below GTX580 then all those points become moot. The strategy worked well then,I doubt many people here think that big, $500, single chip video cards are the way to go.

Agreed. If for some reason an HD6970 is at most equal to a GTX480 in performance but costs $349-379, it will be very successful.

 

[Ares1214]

What? GTX580s have hit 900mhz+ (that's at least at 17% overclock) and some got to 1000mhz on air cooling (30% overclock). In contrast, HD6970 barely goes to 1000 on air cooling. That's only an 11% overclock. Most HD5870s max out at 950-1000 as well (so also 18%). If anything, HD6870 is the worst overclocker. Plus Fermi scales exceptionally well with clock speed while HD5870 does not. So HD5870 is in no way a better overclocker than the 480/580 cards.



And what's the difference between HD5850 @ HD5870 speeds, 2-3%? That doesn't make HD5870 a bad card. 580 met every target NV set out for it, lower power consumption, lower noise and 15% faster performance on average than the 480. That puts GTX580 about 35% faster than an HD5870.

GTX580 is not a new architercture. Why major changes did you expect?

AMD barely did anything with HD6850/70 chip as well. All they did was take Cypress, remove excess shaders that were bottlenecked, upped the ROP clocks, added mini-DP 1.2 support, revised the tessellation engine and called it a day. Overall, if you clock a 13-months old HD5850 to HD5870 speeds, an HD6870 still can't beat it even with overclocking.

In reality both HD6870 and GTX580 should have been called HD5860 and GTX485.



Agreed. If for some reason an HD6970 is at most equal to a GTX480 in performance but costs $349-379, it will be very successful.

Most reviews ive seen havent gotten the 580 above 850 stable, and around 880 semi stable. Proof? And take a 580 clocked at 480 speeds, and they perform almost identically, so id say most of it was clocks.

 

[RussianSensation]

Most reviews ive seen havent gotten the 580 above 850 stable, and around 880 semi stable. Proof? And take a 580 clocked at 480 speeds, and they perform almost identically, so id say most of it was clocks.

910mhz right here.

Also GTX580 improved performance in certain texture sets and Z-culling. Obviously FP16 is not used in all games so you aren't going to see improvement from this in every game.

 

[WelshBloke]

They did more than just raise clocks. The redesign addressed areas that experienced severe criticism (justified), while fully enabling the architecture.

Yep, apart from bundling them with free topless models I cant see what else they could have done to improve them really. :awe:

 

[Ares1214]

910mhz right here.

Also GTX580 improved performance in certain texture sets and Z-culling. Obviously FP16 is not used in all games so you aren't going to see improvement from this in every game.

Synthetics are nice and all, but its not really seen in games. BTW, thats with a voltage increase, i meant without. If i wasnt clear on that, then you had a point, but i mean stock voltage, its pretty poor.

 

[RussianSensation]

Synthetics are nice and all, but its not really seen in games. BTW, thats with a voltage increase, i meant without. If i wasnt clear on that, then you had a point, but i mean stock voltage, its pretty poor.

OH my bad I missed that. Ya, on stock voltage it probably won't get above 850mhz.

 

[ModestGamer]

Synthetics are nice and all, but its not really seen in games. BTW, thats with a voltage increase, i meant without. If i wasnt clear on that, then you had a point, but i mean stock voltage, its pretty poor.

More voltage, more wattage, more power, more heat.That siad the gtx580 is a potent performer. My thought it that AMD will price the new cards where they can make a good margin. I really don't know that Nvidia products are a huge part of the newish AMD strategy. If AMD can place a card with 95-100% of the performance of their competitor at a nice cozy profit margin and keep it competitive in term of price. Thats what AMD will do.

I ersonally don't worry to much about all this blather. They both build good cards and the gtx580 is a nice piece of hardware and it certainly adressed many of the shortcomming of the previous generation. It seems in the redesign they fixed many efficiency issues which was sorely needed.

Good for nvidia.

Lets see what AMD offer in the same price or lower/higher segements and then decide for yourself what you like.