Here’s an impressive offering from Powercolor, a new Radeon HD 6970 that sports an external “Red Button”. What does it do?
This card comes with a dual-bios switch (the red button) that allows to increase the GPU core clock up to 960MHz and the memory (2GB GDDR5) up to 1425MHz. Default clock speeds are 880MHz for the GPU and 1375MHz for the memory.
AMD is getting ready to launch their new Radeon HD6450, a budget card targeted at all those poor souls suffering through integrated Intel graphics chips. It’s not exactly ‘high-end’, but for most people it’ll be well beyond what they’re going to use it for, making it a great entry card for gaming.
Ultra high-framerates with cutting edge titles may not be in the cards for Radeon HD 6450 owners, but because the 6450 uses AMD’s tried and true Catalyst drivers and offers full DX11 support, game compatibility and rendering quality should be much better than Intel’s integrated graphics solutions. And the Radeon HD 6450 also handles multimedia and video playback very well. The video engine on the 6450 offers hardware acceleration of Flash video and DivX, Edge Enhancement and De-Noise filters, and a number of other features available as part of the UVD engine in other 6000-series Radeons.
AMD’s Shane Parfitt helps you set up AMD HD3D gaming in 60 seconds on an AMD Radeon graphics card.
Personally, I find these thins a bit disingenuous. If you have a 120 Hz 3-D TV that is HDMI 1.4a complaint, and if you have a suitable PC capable of supporting the Radeon card, and if you buy the TriDef software for $49.99, and if … well, you get the idea.
It is March 8th, and as we reported last week, the AMD Radeon HD 6990 is being released today. The Radeon HD 6990 has two Caymen GPUs. This is the same GPU found in the Radeon HD 6970. Essentially, the 6990 is running on-board CrossFire between the two GPUs. This gives it 3072 stream processors (2 x 1536), 192 texture units (2 x 96), and 4GB of GDDR5 (2 x 2 GB).
The 6990 will have a core speed of 830 MHz and an effective memory clock of 5.0 GHz. This makes the 6990 a tad slower than the single GPU 6970 which had clock speeds of 880 MHz on the core, and 5.5 GHz for the memory. Since this is the only difference between the 6990 and the 6970, one would expect that a 6990 would perform similarly to a pair of 6970′s in CrossFire.
The 6990 is very interesting in one respect. While the card idles at 37 Watts, when the graphics card is fully loaded, it consumes 375 Watts. This is outside the PCIe specifications. It makes the 6990 the most power hungry graphics card to date. To handle that heat, AMD has redesigned the heat sink. On the 6990, the fan is located in the middle of the graphics card, and each GPU on the 6990 has its own heat sink that is isolated from the other one. This allows the 6990 to dissipate over 450 Watts of thermal energy.
As mentioned, the 6990 is outside the PCIe specifications. It has two 8 pin power connectors, each of which can deliver 150 Watts. It can also draw up to 75 Watts from the PCIe connector. This means that it can, and will, draw 375 Watts. But that is not quite the whole story. Remember PowerTune? It allows AMD to control how much power the graphics card consumes. If the graphics card tries to draw too much power, PowerTune will throttle back the clock speeds to keep the card within specifications. In this case, PowerTune keeps the 6990 at 375 Watts. Most games will not be throttle back. However, there may be some games that are.
Did I mention that the 6990 is outside the PCIe specifications? To help the graphics card meet its energy budget, AMD is using cherry picked GPUs that run at a lower default clock voltage. Also to help reduce power consumption, AMD is using less expensive 5 GHz GDDR5 memory. This memory runs at a lower memory voltage than the 6 GHZ GDDR5 memory found on the 6970.
But who wants to run a stock 6990. Literally with the flick of a switch, you can run the 6990 at the same default clock speeds as the 6970. The 6990 comes with a physical switch that allows you to switch between the default BIOS that has a 830 MHz core speed, and a performance BIOS that comes at 880 MHz core speed. This will, of course, consume more power than 375 Watts. Fortunately the cooler can handle it. The question remains to whether or not the power supply in your system can handle it, as well as the increased thermal loads on the rest of the components in your system.
Anandtech has posted an in-depth review of the 6990. Here is what they thought of it:
Dual-GPU cards have always been a niche product, but the 6990 really takes this and runs with it. There’s no significant power/noise savings to be found by consolidating 2 GPUs on to a single card, and as we said earlier with the dual-exhaust cooler the 6990 is effectively 2 video cards on one PCB. This isn’t a bad thing – the 6990 is the world’s fastest video card after all – but it drives the card in to some very specific niches. If you fall in to these niches, then the 6990 is certainly the card for you.
The launch price for the 6990 is $699. This is going to be one expensive graphics card.
via : AMD’s Radeon HD 6990: The New Single Card King @ Anandtech
SweClockers.com has posted a video of the new MSI Radeon HD 6990. It is kind of fun to listen to the video and see what words I do understand, even though I do not speak Swedish. However, thanks to Google, we can translate what they wrote:
The upcoming super-hot video card Radeon HD 6990 makes an appearance at Cebit 2011
Never mind. We already knew that. What we did not know was the GPU core speed and memory speeds. Those have been recently revealed by Hexus.net. Hexus.net says that the AMD Radeon HD 6990 will have a core speed of 800 MHz and an effective memory clock of 4.5 GHz. However, Fudzilla is reporting the 6990 will have a core speed of 830 MHz and an effective memory clock of 5.0 GHz. Perhaps the difference is that someone is wrong, or perhaps the difference is that some board makers will be selling an overclocked version of the card. Until it is released, you can treat it as rumors.
The AMD Radeon HD 6970 currently has a core speed of 880 MHz and an effective memory clock of 5.5 GHz. This makes the dual GPU AMD Radeon HD 6990 slower than the 6970, but that is to be expected since they need to limit the amount of power that it uses, as well as limit the amount of heat that it generates. Since the 6990 does have two GPUs, one could expect that it would have 3072 stream processors, 192 texture units, and 4GB of GDDR5. Of course, that is just simply doubling the specs of the 6970. The rumored release date for the 6990 is March 8th.
We have posted in the past that AMD will be coming out with the Radeon HD 6990 in the first quarter of 2011. The Radeon HD 6990, also known by the code name Antilles, will have two Cayman chips on board. Essentially this will be CrossFire on a single graphics card. [H]ard|OCP has the AMD Radeon HD 6990 in-house and played Dragon Age II.
Unfortunately, they were not able to give out any performance numbers, as in frames-per-second. But then again, that is not how [H]ard|OCP like to do things. Instead, they like to compare graphics cards at the highest playable settings. For the Radeon HD 6990 they played the game using Eyefinity set at 5760×1200, 4X Anti-aliasing, 2X anisotropic filtering, High quality in-game settings and screen space ambient occlusion. In comparison, the Radeon HD 6970 was played at 5760×1200, 2X Anti-aliasing, no anisotropic filtering, High quality in-game settings and no screen space ambient occlusion.
We cannot tell you specifications or performance experienced with the Radeon HD 6990 today. What we can tell you is that the video card works and is in complete form. We were able to use it without any issues and play Dragon Age II demo in the DX11 rendering path. There was a distinct gameplay experience difference between the Radeon HD 6970 and Radeon HD 6990 which is encouraging.
Rumor has it that this card will be available on March 8th. Rumor also has it that the dual-GPU NVIDIA GeForce 590 is expected real soon now.
4Gamer.net has posted pictures of the AMD Radeon 6990, which is codenamed Antilles. Matt Skynner, AMD’s Corporate VP and General Manager of its GPU division, revealed the AMD Radeon 6990 at the AMD Asia Pacific Fusion Tech Day. Inside the AMD Radeon 6990 are two Cayman GPUs. Power is supplied to the card with a 6-pin connector, and an 8-pin connector. The 6990 has a single DVI output and four mini DisplayPorts. The card is estimated to be just shy of 12 inches long. The 6990 is scheduled to ship in the first quarter of this year.
via : 4Gamer.net
The latest video cards have been launched by AMD in an attempt to spoil the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti launch. These include the Radeon Radeon HD 6950 1GB and the Radeon HD 6870. The Radeon 6950 1 GB has 1408 unified shaders, 88 texture units, 32 Render Output Units (ROP), and a core clock of 800 MHz. It comes with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit memory bus running at 1.25 GHz.
The price for the card is expected to be $259, which you can find on this
SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6950 1GB Video Card, which is very similar to the price for the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti. Anandtech has posted a new review of the AMD Radeon HD 6950 1GB video card.
In practice the 1GB 6950 is just as fast as the 2GB 6950 at 1920×1200 and 1680×1050 – the essential resolutions for a $260 card. It’s only at 2560×1600 and Eyefinity resolutions that the 2GB card makes a difference with most games at this time. This is likely to change in the near future, but for the time being –and as you’ll see – there’s little disadvantage to a 1GB 6950 right now.
via : AMD’s GTX 560 Ti Counter-Offensive: Radeon HD 6950 1GB & XFX’s Radeon HD 6870 Black Edition
One of the disappointing things about today’s launch of the AMD Radeon 6970 is that it is not as fast, or faster than, the NVIDIA GTX 580. Remember that AMD was the first to launch a DirectX 11 GPU last year, the Radeon 5870. Meanwhile NVIDIA took another six months to bring out anything that was close in speed to the 5870. AMD had a huge lead, which they have now lost. Perhaps they lost the lead because TSMC canceled the 32 nm manufacturing process, which the Radeon 6970 was supposed to use.
Fortunately, all is not lost. AMD is slated to launch Antilles in the first quarter of 2011. What is Antilles? It is simply the AMD Radeon 6990. Rumor has it that this graphics card will have two Cayman chips on board. Essentially this will be CrossFire on a single graphics card. One thing to note, there are purported leaked slides showing the specifications for the Radeon 6990. These slides are known to be faked, so do not fall for them.
The latest video cards have been launched by AMD. These include the Radeon 6970 and the Radeon 6950. The Radeon 6970 has 1536 unified shaders, 96 texture units, 32 Render Output Units (ROP), and a core clock of 880 MHz. It comes with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit memory bus running at 1.375 GHz. This gives it a memory bandwidth of 176 GB/sec. The pixel fill rate is 28.2 Gigapixels/sec, and the texture fillrate is 70.4 Gigatexels/sec. The 6970 consumes 250 Watts of power at load, and 20 Watts at idle.
The Radeon 6950 has 1408 unified shaders, 88 texture units, 32 Render Output Units (ROP), and a core clock of 800 MHz. It comes with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit memory bus running at 1.25 GHz. The 6950 consumes 200 Watts of power at load, and 20 Watts at idle.
Both graphics cards comes with two DVI ports, two mini-DisplayPorts, and one HDMI 1.4 port. One of the DVI ports is a single link port. That means that you cannot drive two 2560×1600 monitors using the DVI ports. Both have 2.64 Billion transistors and are manufactured on TSMC’s 40 nm process.
What about performance? The Radeon 6970 performs similarly to a NVIDIA GTX 570 or GTX 480. That means it is not the fastest graphics card. That title is still held by the GTX 580. The Radeon 6950 performs slightly better than a NVIDIA GTX 470 and slightly worse than a NVIDIA GTX 570. The 6970 will cost $379, while the 6950 will cost $299.
One interesting feature on the new graphics cards is a new switch near the CrossFire connectors. These graphics cards come with two BIOSes. Should you flash the card with a BIOS and it goes horribly wrong, you can then literally flip this switch, boot off the good BIOS, and recover nicely.
via : AMD’s Radeon HD 6970 & Radeon HD 6950: Paving The Future For AMD @ Anandtech
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