Newegg Listings: HD 6970: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=hd+6970&x=0&y=0 HD 6950: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=hd+6950&x=0&y=0
Hardocp review up! http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/12/14/amd_radeon_hd_6970_6950_video_card_review/1 Shit looks DAMMMMMMMNNNNNN good for the price. Even the 6950 did better than I thought it would. Gonna buy two 6970s this Friday when I get paid for sure.
Side note looks like a good number of people didn't like the results and went for 580s cause ALL of them are now sold out on newegg lol: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-_-na-_-na&AID=10521304&PID=3891137&SID=194r0 ALSO! Tomshardware Review is up with multi-card scaling benches! http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-6970-radeon-hd-6950-cayman,2818.html AND! 6950 Crossfire benchmarks for Unreal Engine 3! (psst you Tera waiters) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/Radeon_HD_6950_CrossFire/16.html
There is a little snatch with the UT3 CF benchmarks as they are done without any Anti-Aliasing. However, if you look at these : http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/Radeon_HD_6950_CrossFire/16.html And these : http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_6850_CrossFire/17.html You notice that, @ 1920*1200 resolution, a 6850 CF setup is within 10% the performance of a 6950 CF one, for much less money : $380 vs. $600. And the 6850 CF is itself 10% above a single 6970 at the same price overall. 6950 CF @ 231 FPS = $600 6850 CF @ 212 FPS = $380 6970 @190 FPS = $380 All this need to be confirmed on Jan 11th with a real test of the Korean OB client (with 4xAA). Triple screen tests would be nice too.
You missed the part of "One major drawback of the way the engine is designed is that there is no support for Anti-Aliasing". You have to force the AA inside the Control Center of your gpu which is what I did on TERA. Yea, I know 6950 CF is a waste for the boost you get for something like Unreal Engine but it was the only article of someone doing a bench with it so far on the new cards. The 6970 on most games has been showing a 180-210% boost in performance when crossfired. I had no problem running Tera in 1080p with everything at max on my low end card. So really anything that's 58xx/4xx or higher is overkill on TERA for doing max settings. I'm going to pick up two of the 6970s and test out eyefinity for Tera on the OBT.
I wonder why the article writer did not force the AA like you did ? I am no AA extremist, but knowing the FPS for 4xAA or 2xAA at least is important for a lot of gamers. It would have been interesting to know the CF scaling with AA forced. As for triple screen setup, a single 68xx or 69xx should be enough ? No need for 2 two cards ? (except better FPS of course) I am currently running on AMD integrated graphics (HD 4290 from a 890GX Motherboard), so I'll definitely need a new card for TERA. On a side note, I discovered that nVidia simply eradicated my graphic card from all their drivers, and have been doing so for 2 or 3 years. nVidia acts like the 7800GT never existed. Drivers do support the 7 series Geforce, the 7800 GTX yes, the 7800 GS yes, but go screw yourself if you bought a 7800GT. And of course, even 3 year old drivers fail to support it when running win server 2003 64bits. BTW did anyone run a TERA FGT with server 2003 64bits ? Back to 6850 CF vs. 6970 : 6970 may be more interesting for the reduced power consumption compared to the CF, and it has 2GB RAM instead of the 1GB 6850.
Dangit, I have been looking over forums for the past weeks waiting for this release, and the one day I'm off work it pops up. Good thing I got some reading to do at work now when I go back tomorrow! Edit: Here's the Tom's Article that I normally read: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-6970-radeon-hd-6950-cayman,2818.html Naming scheme still throwing me off - but that's why one should READ! : )
It depends on how large of a screen you are on whether or not you need AA. Larger screen = larger pixels. If you game on a 22" 1080p monitor, you may or may not need AA. Higher than 1080p resolution you dont need to use AA as the pixels are so close you wont notice the jagged lines. If you go up to like a 27" 1080p display you probably need a bit of AA. Those 30" 2560x1600 displays definitely dont need AA
Yea I was reading about that on Hardforum yesterday. Nice way to save yourself $70 and get pretty much equal performance.
I was pondering about getting one myself. Guess I'll wait until character selection opens to place my order. I'll have my former PC back by then. AMD sucks balls as they intentionally break their driver installer to refuse installing on windows server versions. I don't feel like wasting my time and temper on trying to make them work on my server machine. I'll just use a second PC and win 7-32 for playing TERA.