ATI Radeon HD 6970 2GB Review

Conclusion

It’s been ATI’s strategy over the past few years to produce relatively small, efficient GPUs that are more straightforward to manufacture. This approach leaves the company a little short at the high end of the market, but ATI's plan is to fill this gap by producing dual-GPU cards. It’s therefore not that surprising that ATI is claiming that the HD 6970 2GB’s main competitor is the GeForce GTX 570 1.3GB, not the imperious GeForce GTX 580 1.5GB.

Despite this though, we can’t help but feel a little let down by the HD 6970; frankly we were expecting more from ATI’s fastest ever GPU, especially with its new-fangled dual Front-End Engines, redesigned stream processors and its ROP optimizations. Maybe we’ve been spoilt with Nvidia’s recent releases, but we’re accustomed to seeing benchmark records broken when a new flagship GPU is released.


Still, we can’t judge a product based on what we hoped it would be, only on what it actually is, so does it compete effectively with the GTX 570 1.3GB? The two cards traded blows all the way through our games testing suite, with neither being able to pull out a commanding lead.

The GTX 570 1.3GB has superior AA performance in its favour, which is a massive boon as if you’re paying this kind of price for a graphics card, you’re going to expect to be able to turn all the settings up to 11. In its defence, the HD 6970 2GB did make up ground on its rival at higher resolutions such as 1,920 x 1,200, which are the kind of resolutions these cards are likely to be used at.

As a result, whether or not to buy the HD 6970 2GB or the GTX 570 1.3GB comes down to price and features. At time of writing our sources indicate that the HD 6970 2GB will sell for around £310. This price is obviously a problem for ATI, as a GTX 570 1.3GB can currently be had for as little as £280 (though this was the cheapest card we could find - most retail for £300), undercutting the HD 6970 2GB by a not insignificant £30.


While the HD 6970 2GB is undoubtedly a good graphics card for around £300, unless you really want EyeFinity support, the GTX 570 is a better bet. The GTX 570 1.3GB handles AA significantly better in the majority of games, and for high-end graphics cards, this matters, and it's also cheaper.

We have heard that at launch XFX will have HD 6970 2GB cards selling at £280 inc VAT through Scan, which we're told will be the the cheapest card. Meanwhile, HIS told us that Overclockers UK will have its HD 6970 2GB card for £289 inc VAT. While the XFX card at £280 looks tempting, it's still only £10 cheaper than the GTX 570 1.3GB, which handles AA better. As such, the GTX 570 1.3GB is still our recommended graphics card in this price range.

• Performance
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• 9/10

• Features
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• 9/10

• Value
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• 7/10

• Overall
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• 8/10

Score Guide