Review AMD Radeon HD 6950 – The Feature-rich, High-end Performer

Author

Oik Yusuf Araya

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Graphics Card

December 17, 2010

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Conclusions

Not only do the Radeon HD 6900 series cards perform better than the ones included in the HD 6800 series (according to our tests, assuming that the HD 6970 is faster than the HD 6950, which is something rather obvious), they also come with some handy new features. We like the AMD PowerTune Technology and Dual BIOS features in particular. The former allows users to fine-tune power consumption to suit their needs, while the double-BIOS provide additional safety mechanism in case of BIOS failure during modification attempts. On the other hand, the Enhanced Quality Anti-aliasing allows users to enjoy improved image quality without experiencing too much performance hits.

Speaking of performance, Radeon HD 6950 proves itself to be a worthy successor of AMD’s previous flagship, the Radeon HD 5870. In some applications, the two are not so far apart, but when it comes to DirectX 11 rendering – most notably tessellation- the HD 6950 leaves HD 5870 in the dust. Of course the HD 6950 is also way faster compared to the either one of the HD 6800 cards.

The HD 6950 is roughly equal to NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 470 in terms of performance. In some cases, it even matches the speed of the higher-end GTX 480 and GTX 570, two products that are positioned a step or two above the HD 6950.

According to our observation in several websites, HD 6950’s starting price should be somewhere around US$ 299. This price point is significantly lower than previous estimations, which expected the HD 6950 to be priced at above US$ 349, or more expensive compared to the GTX 570. The US$ 299 price tag makes the HD 6950 more appealing for consumers because it offers better DirectX 11 performance and is equipped with more features than the similarly-priced HD 5870.

The suggested US$ 299 retail price puts Radeon HD 6950 directly against the GTX 470. The Radeon has a slight advantage though, since it can sometimes compete with the pricier GTX 570 and GTX 480. In addition, its extra features could be a life saver.