AMD Radeon HD 6950 & 6970 CrossFire Video Card Reviews

Legit Video Card Reviews

Manufacturer:	AMD
Product:	Legit Reviews 2010 Stocking Stuffer Guide
Date:	Tue, Dec 14, 2010 - 11:00 PM
Written By:	Nathan Kirsch -
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FurMark 1.8.2

FurMark is a very intensive OpenGL benchmark that uses fur rendering algorithms to measure the performance of the graphics card. Fur rendering is especially adapted to overheat the GPU and that's why FurMark is also a perfect stability and stress test tool (also called GPU burner) for the graphics card.

The benchmark was rendered in full screen mode with no AA enabled on both video cards.

Furmark Benchmark Results

Benchmark Results: Furmark doesn't play nicely on the AMD Radeon HD 6900 series as the benchmark hits the cards' max TDP and AMD PowerTune kicks in and tones the core clocks back to reduce the power draw/temperature on the GPU. Both AMD's Radeon HD 6900 series and NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 500 series have new power management features to help product consumers and their board partners from failed graphics cards. It looks like one too many users killed their video cards running Furmark or OCCT, and to help reduce the number of RMA's both companies have fixes in place to keep these programs from burning up a card. You can see in the chart above that the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 and GTX 570 were performing poorly as the GTX580's new power monitoring hardware kicked on and slowed the card's performance down. We did find it interesting that the GeForce GTX 570 performed better than the GTX 580 in this benchmark, but it is likely that the GTX 580 has a more aggressive power profile. NVIDIA said the new GF110 core used on both of these video cards dynamically adjusts performance in certain applications (Furmark and OCCT) in order to keep the power within their specifications.

AMD says that their PowerTune solution impacts less than 1% of the games and benchmarks on the market today.

Next Page - Temperature & Noise Testing

Review Index

Page 1 - AMD Radeon HD 6970 & 6950 - 40nm Cayman
Page 2 - The Cayman GPU Architecture
Page 3 - A Closer Look At The Radeon HD 6970 & 6950
Page 4 - AMD PowerTune Technology
Page 5 - Test Setup
Page 6 - Aliens vs. Predator
Page 7 - Batman: Arkham Asylum GOTY
Page 8 - Just Cause 2
Page 9 - Metro 2033
Page 10 - StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty
Page 11 - S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat
Page 12 - H.A.W.X. 2 Benchmark
Page 13 - 3DMark Vantage
Page 14 - 3DMark 11
Page 15 - Unigine 'Heaven' DX11
Page 16 - FurMark 1.8.2
Page 17 - Temperature & Noise Testing
Page 18 - Power Consumption
Page 19 - Radeon 6970 & 6950 GPU Overclocking
Page 20 - Final Thoughts and Conclusions

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