Amd radeon hd 6900 1920 1080: AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series: Right Performance, Right Features, Right Price

AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series: Right Performance, Right Features, Right Price

Reviews

By Jason Cross

PCWorld Dec 14, 2010 9:01 pm PST

AMD is trying something new with its Radeon HD 6900 series of graphics cards. Instead of its usual tactic of addressing the higher end of the market with a graphics card containing two of the GPUs powering the Radeon HD 6870 (a chip code-named Barts), it is using a single, larger, more-powerful new GPU. Code-named Cayman, this new GPU doesn’t merely take the architecture of the Radeon HD 6800 series and scale it up; rather, it makes significant architectural changes. AMD has redesigned the shader units for improved efficiency, greatly enhanced geometry performance, and employed a whole new power-management system.

The results are mixed. The Radeon HD 6900 series cards are certainly fast, though the 6970 doesn’t always fare better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 570 against which it is priced to compete. Anyone hoping that AMD would reclaim the absolute speed crown from Nvidia will be disappointed. Both the Radeon HD 6970 and the Radeon HD 6950 are quite long, too, and won’t fit in smaller PCs (as is often the case with high-end enthusiast cards). Nevertheless, they offer good power efficiency for their class, as well as lots of other interesting features.

At almost 400 square millimeters, the GPU powering AMD’s new graphics cards is the largest the company has produced in a long time, but it’s still about 26 percent smaller than the GPU in Nvidia’s latest cards. It features a lot of texturing power and high clock speeds, but fewer render back-ends than Nvidia’s cards have. Note that the Radeon HD 6950 and 6970 feature 2GB of RAM, a step up from the 1GB we usually see on AMD cards; the extra RAM will help in intensive games running at high resolution.

Note, too, the discrepancy between the numbers of shader units for the AMD and Nvidia cards in the chart above; that discrepancy exists because the numbers are not directly comparable. Due to the different way the Nvidia and AMD chips are designed, a single shader unit from Nvidia is capable of doing more work than one in AMD’s chip. An Nvidia shader unit is also larger, and therefore not as many of them are present in the GPU.

Next: A new architecture from AMD

A New Architecture From AMD

The architecture of the Cayman GPU is fairly new, with quite a few changes from that of the Radeon HD 5000 series and Radeon HD 6800 series. The chip features two “front-end” graphics engines, with two thread dispatch processors, two geometry tessellation units, and two vertex processing engines. This design should dramatically improve performance in geometry-intensive applications, particularly those that have a lot of tessellation. (Tessellation is a DirectX 11 feature that breaks up large polygons into lots of smaller polygons, to add detail or to smooth the edges of 3D models.) Here’s a breakdown of some of the new features in the Cayman GPU found on the Radeon HD 6900 cards.

PowerTune technology: CPUs from Intel and AMD have a “turbo” feature that can crank up the clock speed a bit if the chip happens to be running beneath its rated thermal threshold. The new PowerTune feature of the Radeon HD 6900 cards sort of works like that, but in reverse: The core clock speed is set very high, and if the chip starts to run too hot, PowerTune lowers the clock speed in small steps until it’s back at a safe level. Most graphics cards have to set the clock speed conservatively for the worst-case scenario of an application that strains the GPU and makes it run especially hot. You’ll find a new slider in the Catalyst Control Center that lets you tweak the maximum thermal threshold at which PowerTune will kick in and slow down the card, from -20 percent to +20 percent. This will be an interesting function for overclocking enthusiasts to play with, but it has even bigger implications for the future, when this architecture eventually finds its way into AMD’s “APUs” (combination CPU and GPU).

New antialiasing modes: In the Radeon HD 6800 series, AMD introduced a new antialiasing mode called Morphological AA. This post-processing effect antialiases everything on the screen, but can make the image appear slightly softer as a result. In the 6900 series, AMD has added Enhanced Quality AA. It’s functionally similar to Nvidia’s “CSAA” modes in that it adds a set of coverage samples to the usual number of color samples. This type of antialiasing can improve image quality with a pretty small impact on performance.

New VLIW4 shader architecture: The last several generations of AMD graphics chips used a VLIW5 architecture (that is, a five-way Very Large Instruction Word vector unit in each stream processing unit). One of the vector units in each set of five could handle special functions such as transcendental operations. Now, each vector unit is a four-way unit, with no special-function unit; if a transcendental operation is called, it instead occupies three of the four units. If all that sounds like a bunch of gobbledygook to you, you’re not alone. The gist of it is that it should be easier for the GPU’s scheduling hardware to keep all the math-processing units busy, providing for better performance in the same GPU area.

Enhanced geometry features: The Radeon HD 6900 series cards feature two graphics engines (the front-end processing of the graphics pipeline). That means two tessellation units, two geometry and vertex processing units, and two rasterizers. To make a long story short, the chip should be able to process a lot more geometry than previous AMD GPUs could. We still think that the high-end cards based on Nvidia’s Fermi architecture, which also boast multiple geometry processing units, should offer somewhat higher overall geometry performance.

GPU computing enhancements: Along with reworking all those shader units from VLIW5 to VLIW4, AMD has made a number of other enhancements that should help with performance in applications that use the GPU for general computational tasks (such as physics, image post-processing, or video transcoding). The tweaks include improved flow control, dual direct memory access (DMA) units for faster memory reads and writes, and the coalescing of shader read operations. Most interesting is “asynchronous dispatch,” or the ability of the GPU to work on multiple compute kernels simultaneously. In other words, you could ask the GPU to do some graphics work, some physics work, and some video transcoding, and the chip could split up those loads to its various parts to work on simultaneously, instead of switching back and forth among them. This function has limited utility today, but could be important in the future as the GPU becomes more of a shared system resource.

Beyond those changes, the new Radeon HD 6900 cards share the improvements that AMD made in the 6800 series: the UVD3 video engine, DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 1.4a support, per-display color correction, and HD3D (AMD’s branding for 3D-display support).

Next: When the rubber hits the road

Performance: Synthetic Benchmarks

In our benchmarks, we compared AMD’s Radeon HD 6970 and 6950–its two fastest single-GPU graphics cards–against Nvidia’s two fastest single-GPU graphics cards, the GeForce GTX 570 and GeForce GTX 580. Note that the GTX 580 is a considerably more expensive card, at around $500. AMD says its competition for that product is the Radeon HD 5970, which is essentially two Radeon HD 5870 cards in CrossFire mode on a single, extralong card. The Radeon HD 6970 competes well against the GTX 570 (it should cost around $20 more than Nvidia’s new card), and the 6950 model comes in $50 cheaper, at around $300.

We performed all our benchmarks on a system with an Intel Core i7 980X CPU, 6GB of RAM, and 64-bit Windows 7.

We started by taking a look at the Unigine Heaven benchmark, a synthetic test of a real DirectX 11 game engine, currently licensed by a number of smaller games. The test is rather strenuous and forward-looking, featuring high detail levels, dynamic lighting and shadows, and lots of tessellation. We run the test at the middle, “Normal” mode. In this tessellation- and geometry-heavy test, Nvidia used to dominate–but in this round, the Radeon HD 6970 outperformed the GTX 570. And at very high resolutions, the Radeon HD 6950 matched it.

FurMark is a synthetic OpenGL-based test that renders a torus covered in fur. It’s fairly simple, but no test we know of stresses a GPU as thoroughly. It’s a great way to see just how hot your graphics card will get and how much power it will use, but it isn’t very useful as a real performance benchmark. On this test, Nvidia’s power-draw safeguard kicked in and throttled down the GeForce GTX 580, seriously hindering its performance. The GTX 570–which draws less power and doesn’t trigger the power safeguard–was actually able to outperform it. AMD’s new cards ran this test very quickly, but it’s difficult to tell just how much of a factor the PowerTune technology was. After we turned the maximum thermals up by 10 percent in the AMD control panel, we saw far higher performance in FurMark when antialiasing was disabled, but the numbers with antialiasing enabled didn’t change at all.

New to our suite is 3DMark 11, a DirectX 11 test from FutureMark. It’s a strenuous test that makes even the fastest graphics cards chug along slowly. Although it isn’t indicative of current game performance, it may be a very forward-looking test that could clue us in on how these cards will perform in future games, relative to one another. In this test the Radeon HD 6970 was about as fast as the GeForce GTX 570 (slightly slower in the easier Performance mode, slightly speedier in the difficult Extreme mode). While the Radeon HD 6950 was about 12 percent slower than the 6970, it’s still quite fast for a $300 graphics card.

Though it’s getting a little long in the tooth, the DirectX 10 test 3DMark Vantage is still a common standard among synthetic graphics benchmarks. We present the 3DMark score with standard settings for the “High” and “Extreme” profiles. On this somewhat older test, AMD’s new cards couldn’t quite keep up with Nvidia’s, even when we compared the similarly priced Radeon HD 6970 and GeForce GTX 570.

Next: Real game performance

Performance: Games

Synthetic tests can be useful in how they evaluate features that will be common in tomorrow’s games, but performance in real games is far more important. We test with five current games that are all capable of pushing a modern graphics card to the limit.

Codemasters’ Formula 1 racer F1 2010 is a more strenuous DirectX 11 driving game than Dirt 2, so we’re moving forward with using it as a standard benchmark. We enable DirectX 11 and turn all the detail levels up to Ultra quality mode. AMD’s cards looked great here, with the Radeon HD 6970 easily outpacing the GTX 570, and even matching the GTX 580 at extremely high resolutions.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. is a graphically rich arcade flight game that utilizes DirectX 10.1 to enable features such as Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO), God Rays, and Soft Particles. Again, we turn all the detail levels up to the max here. Nvidia’s cards easily took the prize in this game, though we should mention that all four of the cards managed over 60 frames per second even at extremely high resolution with antialiasing enabled.

Although World in Conflict is aging a bit, it’s still a beautiful real-time strategy game with a DirectX 10-based graphics engine that can put a strain on all but the most powerful graphics cards when you maximize detail levels, as we do. The Radeon HD 6970 was roughly equal to the GeForce GTX 570 at the extreme resolution of 2560 by 1600, but Nvidia’s new card was a bit faster at 1920 by 1200.

The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series has always been on the bleeding edge of graphics technology. We use the demo benchmark for the Call of Pripyat sequel, with DirectX 11 lighting enabled and all detail settings maximized. The Radeon HD 6970 outpaced the GeForce GTX 570 by a small amount here–and at very high resolutions or with antialiasing enabled, the 6950 was just a step behind. Nothing could catch Nvidia’s $500 GeForce GTX 580, but AMD’s new cards came impressively close considering their lower price.

Last but not least, we have the excellent benchmark built into Just Cause 2. We maximize graphics settings and run the “Concrete Jungle” test, which is the most strenuous of benchmarks. We’re beginning to sound like a broken record, but the pattern is becoming clear. In this game Nvidia’s cards were definitely faster at 1920 by 1200, but AMD narrowed the gap considerably when we moved up to 2560 by 1600.

Next: Value and efficiency

Value and Efficiency

Looking over the performance of our test lineup, it’s important to keep prices in mind. At a starting price of $300, the Radeon HD 6950 doesn’t quite compete directly with the other cards in the group. The Radeon HD 6970 competes directly with the GeForce GTX 570; the two are separated in price by only $20. We included the GeForce GTX 580, priced at around $500, for reference–we thought it would be useful to compare AMD’s fastest single GPU against Nvidia’s fastest single GPU.

To find out which card offers the best value, we averaged the benchmark results for all our real-world game tests, and then divided by the price to arrive at a metric we call Dollars per Frames per Second. A lower number is better here; it means you have to spend less to get equivalent performance.

The GeForce GTX 570 looks to offer the best performance-to-dollars ratio at 1920 by 1200, but at the higher 2560 by 1600 resolution the Radeon HD 6950 provides value that is hard to beat. The Radeon HD 6970 doesn’t offer quite the same ratio as the GTX 570, but it’s still a far better deal than the GeForce GTX 580. Those $500 graphics cards are seldom good bargains; they’re for price-be-damned enthusiasts who simply need the fastest thing out there.

Here’s an impressive chart: total system power consumption. Although Nvidia greatly improved the power utilization of the Fermi architecture with the GTX 570 and 580, those cards still use a lot more power than the Radeon HD 6900 series cards do. In fact, the measured power came in well below the rated maximum power draw for both AMD cards; people who like to tinker with overclocking will probably find lots of headroom before things get too hot. Playing around with clock speeds and the new PowerTune slider in the control panel could yield impressive results, if these power readings are anything to go by.

By dividing the average frames per second of all our game tests by the power use under load from the previous chart, we arrive at a measure of Watts per Frames per Second. Instead of simply looking at how fast the cards are or how much power they use, this chart puts everything together to determine how power efficient they are. Here, again, lower numbers are better. At 1920 by 1200, AMD’s new cards are very similar to Nivida’s. Crank up the resolution to 2560 by 1600, and they hold a big advantage in performance per watt.

Next: Not a record breaker, but a good deal nonetheless

Not the Fastest Around, but a Great Total Package

The Radeon HD 6970 and 6950 are not record breakers. Fans of AMD’s graphics cards may have been hoping that the Cayman architecture would dethrone Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 580 for the single-GPU performance crown, but they’ll be disappointed. It’s not even close.

A great graphics card, however, is about more than just the highest frames per second. It’s about delivering the right performance at the right price. Not everyone wants to pay $500 for a graphics card. For those willing to pay $350 or so, it’s a tight race between the GeForce GTX 570 and the Radeon HD 6970. The GTX 570 probably offers slightly better performance in most games, unless you’re using one of those big, 2560 by 1600, 30-inch monitors. On the other hand, the 6970 is more power efficient, and it features the ability to drive three monitors from a single card–a trick that Nvidia’s cards can’t pull off. It also offers a better array of display connectors, with two mini DisplayPort 1.2 plugs, two DVI connectors, and HDMI 1.4a.

So where does that leave the Radeon HD 6950? At $300, it may be our favorite card of the bunch. It’s about 12 percent slower than the 6970 model, but 19 percent cheaper. It’s about 15 percent slower than the GeForce GTX 570, as well as 15 percent cheaper, but it uses considerably less power and still has all those great display-connection features. Most of us are playing games on monitors with a resolution of 1680 by 1050, 1920 by 1080, or 1920 by 1200. At those resolutions, the Radeon HD 6950 offers enough performance to run today’s most demanding games at maximum detail, usually with antialiasing enabled.

The best deals may be yet to come. Though the Radeon HD 6970 and 6950 both have 2GB of RAM today, AMD tells us that some of its partners will sell 1GB versions of the cards in the near future. The lower price tags on those cards could make them the best bargains around for people who don’t have super-high-res monitors. If you have a monitor that’s smaller than 24 inches, you might wish to wait for the 1GB versions before you upgrade. Until then, AMD has delivered a pair of very good graphics cards at compelling prices. They’re not the fastest cards ever, but they’re still quite speedy for the price, and they provide impressive power efficiency and display connectivity.

AMD Radeon 6900 & 6800 Updated

Over time we find the need to update and renew benchmarks. In my initial review of the AMD Radeon HD 6800 and 6900 Series, we only had time to test the games that were already in our test stable from the Radeon HD 5000 series reviews and benchmarking. Unfortunately, many of these games were older, and ended up being CPU board and/or not fully showcasing the DX11 improvements in the Radeon HD 6900 series.

At the end of those reviews, I laid out plans to update benchmarks to include newer games. I began this new testing with my Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 benchmarking of 3×1 and 5×1 Eyefinity rigs. This article brings these new benchmarks to the Radeon HD 6800 and 6900 series. Additionally, I will also be updating all of my 5800 series benchmarks (on both new and old games) to utilize the current driver base and 16:9 monitors.

Article Type:

Review

System Specs

The Radeon HD 6900 and 6800 benchmarks were done on the 10.12 Driver Release. This is what initially brought the 5×1-Portrait and the new Catalyst UI. Since that time two driver updates have been released, but I’ve stayed at 10.12 for consistency.

Windows 7
EVGA X58 Tri-SLI Motherboard
Intel i7 920 at 4×2.67GHz
12GB G.Skill DDR3 RAM
2x Samsung 320GB T-Series HDD (one for the OS and games; one for swap file and FRAPS)
LG Super Multi Blu (HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Player)
Onboard audio
Corsair HX1000
My Open PC Doma Pro PCI Case
Logitch K340 Keyboard & Performance MX Mouse
Ergotech Heavy Duty Triple Desk Stand
5x Dell U2211H IPS 16:9 1920×1080 Displays

My test rig remains unchanged, except for a new case. For easier testing, I recently migrated to the Doma Pro PCI test bench from My Open PC (review on that coming soon).

Hardware Tested

I only have AMD hardware tested for comparison in this review. This is not for lack of wanting to test NVIDIA hardware in Surround, but NVIDIA has not yet decided to support the WSGF with hardware for review and benchmarking. Considering that the WSGF is a hobby that just supports itself, I cannot justify spending the money needed to test NVIDIA cards.

Most of my time is spent working on the site (or other projects), and much of my «play time» is spent benchmarking. Cards would basically only be used for testing, and I cannot reconcile purchasing cards that would only be used for testing. It’s simply not a good ROI.

Resolutions Tested

I tested both 1600×900 and 1920×1080 in widescreen, as well as 4800×900 and 5760×1080 in Eyefinity. This allows for comparison between panels in the 20″ and 23″ range, as well as performance improvements from dialing back the resolution on notch.

Games Tested

This benchmark update brings these games into my benchmark portfolio:

Aliens vs. Predator
F1 2010
Heaven v2
Just Cause 2
Mafia II

Previously I had used the Just Cause 2 demo for benchmark. The full game offers three new benchmarks, and replaces the one in the demo. I am still using the desert sunset benchmark, but the one found in the full game is more demanding.

Also, I had previously used the first version of the Heaven demo. This now brings us current with the new second version.

Notes on Testing

In many areas, I am hitting a CPU limit in widescreen. In several instances the widescreen performance is hitting a wall at 100fps+. In some of these instances older cards appear to be outperforming newer cards by a couple fps. These minor differences are well within a margin of error, and should be considered identical performance.

Since I originally tested the 5800 series (well over a year ago), my system has gathered a certain amount of cruft due to games being installed and removed, and the video drivers being updated on a regular basis. While Windows 7 certainly handles «aging» much better than WinXP or Vista, this alone could account for the few fps difference (considering the difference is only a few percent variation).

Future Testing

I will also be re-benchmarking the higher end cards in the 5000-series on the newer drivers and on the 16:9 1920×1080 panels. This will ensure completely accurate comparisons.

Article Type:

Review

Teaser Icon:

Aliens vs. Predator (AvP) is an FPS title from Rebellion Studios. It allows players to take on the role of either an Alien, a Predator or a human space marine. While the title received mixed reviews, it is a DX11 graphics powerhouse that can bring many machines to their knees.

The demo follows a number of Alien creatures, and makes extensive use of shaders and tessellation. Hitting 60fps in Eyefinity is not possible on a stock Core i7-920 (at max settings), even with a pair of AMD Radeon HD 6970’s in CFX. Dropping to 3x1600x900 produces a noticeable increase in fps.

Article Type:

Review

Teaser Icon:

F1 (Formula 1) is a new racing title from Codemasters. Like their previous title (DiRT 2), F1 makes extensive usage of DX11 technology with cloth, fluid dynamics and tessellation. The title is much more strenuous on both single screen and Eyefinity, compared to DiRT 2.

At max settings the title hits a CPU cap (with a stock Core i7-920) of ~70fps on a single widescreen, with any pair of 6800 or 6900 series cards in CFX. Single 6900 series cards max out at just under 70fps.

A 2GB card is required for Eyefinity at 3x1920x1080p. 2GB cards in CFX max out at ~45fps, at both 3x1600x900 and 3x1920x1080. 1GB cards are playable at 3x1600x900, with the 6870 crossing 30fps.

I really don’t understand why, but in a single widescreen 1920×1080 consistently outperformed 1600×900 by 1-2fps (at the CPU limit). I can’t explain it, but I can repeat it. Maybe F1 just doesn’t like an «odd» resolutions such as 1600×900. Maybe it is tuned for 1080p, and is having to do some sort of interpolation for 1600×900.

Article Type:

Review

The Unigine Heaven Demo is unique in that it is the only demo which allows for the following components in one package:

Synthetic Demo (i.e., a demo designed to «test» a system)
Comparable tests of DX9, DX10 and DX11
Is Hor+ (rather than limited to a few predefined aspect ratios)

The ability to compare DX9, DX10 and DX11 in the same environment allows for the unique ability to see how the different cards perform across these different comparable environments. Tessellation was set at Normal Mode.

The updated 2nd version of the Heaven demo offers more segments and more options. DX9 and DX10 runs are no match for any single 6800 or 6900 series card, with only the single 6800 series falling below 60fps. The DX11 run in more demanding in a single widescreen, requiring a 6900 series in CFX to pass 60fps (and pass it by a good margin). Single 6900 series cards also pass 30fps at either 1600×900 or 1920×1080.

Eyefinity is an obvious strain on any configuration. A 2GB card is required for Eyefinity in DX10 or DX11. No combination of cards will hit 60fps in DX9. Only the 6900 series will hit 30fps in DX10, and only a pair of 6970s will hit 30fps in DX11.

The Heaven v2 Demo continues to be a powerhouse in bringing graphics cards to their knees.

Article Type:

Review

Teaser Icon:

The Unigine Heaven Demo is unique in that it is the only demo which allows for the following components in one package:

Synthetic Demo (i.e., a demo designed to «test» a system)
Comparable tests of DX9, DX10 and DX11
Is Hor+ (rather than limited to a few predefined aspect ratios)

The Heaven v2 Demo continues to be a powerhouse in bringing graphics cards to their knees.

Article Type:

Review

Teaser Icon:

The Unigine Heaven Demo is unique in that it is the only demo which allows for the following components in one package:

Synthetic Demo (i. e., a demo designed to «test» a system)
Comparable tests of DX9, DX10 and DX11
Is Hor+ (rather than limited to a few predefined aspect ratios)

The Heaven v2 Demo continues to be a powerhouse in bringing graphics cards to their knees.

Article Type:

Review

Teaser Icon:

The Unigine Heaven Demo is unique in that it is the only demo which allows for the following components in one package:

Synthetic Demo (i.e., a demo designed to «test» a system)
Comparable tests of DX9, DX10 and DX11
Is Hor+ (rather than limited to a few predefined aspect ratios)

The Heaven v2 Demo continues to be a powerhouse in bringing graphics cards to their knees.

Article Type:

Review

Teaser Icon:

Just Cause 2 is the wildly popular sequal to the wildly popular Just Cause. You take control of protagonist Rico Rodriquez and rain down over the top destruction across a small desert island. The game is a free roaming title that offers literally limitless options to wreck havoc with your «hook shot» grapling device.

While the benchmark tool in the demo doesn’t offer anything in the way of explosions or destruction, it does offer some beautiful scenery that is still quite demanding on multi-monitor environments.

The CFX configurations max out at 120fps for single widescreens, and top out at 60fps for Eyefinity. Single cards easily hit 60fps for widescreen and 30fps for Eyefinity. It’s great to see a current, modern, and beautiful game performing this well across the whole range of cards and price points.

Article Type:

Review

Teaser Icon:

Mafia II is an open world «crime» title from 2K Games. It is the second game in the Mafia series. The demo comes with a built-in benchmark tool that offers both indoor and outdoor environments, various lighting effects and fire.

A single card won’t quite hit 60fps in Eyefinity, but a CFX setup blows past consistently and we see a CPU limit at about 70fps in widescreen. Mafia II proves to be quite a demanding benchmark for Eyefinity, as only CFX configurations can consistently cross 30fps.

Article Type:

Review

Conclusions

There are really no new conclusions over our previous benchmarks of the AMD Radeon HD 6800 and HD 6900 cards. Overall they perform well at extreme attractive price points, with great heat, power and noise profiles. While our earlier tests showed marginal improvements in many areas (especially with a single widescreen), these DX11-focused tests show greater improvements over the Radeon HD 5800 series.

Final Thoughts

In many of these tests (especially in single widescreen), the stock Intel Core i7-920 is becoming a bottleneck. While I think it will serve well enough through the upcoming «Antilles» Dual-GPU 6990 testing (whenever that is), the 2+ year old Nehalem chip will need to be replaced to show differentiation between the GPUs. I will probably upgrade to a Sandy Bridge platform later in the year.

If AMD follows its previous release cycle (new architecture each September), I will certainly need to upgrade CPUs before the 7000 series come along. And to think, we’re almost half way there…

Asymmetric CrossFireX from AMD Radeon HD 6950 + 6970 and AMD Radeon HD 6850 + 6870 GECID.

com.

::>Video cards
>2011
> IT —

21-04-2011

Testing of AMD 2-Way CrossFireX x16+x16 systems has been repeatedly described in our materials. This article will consider asymmetric solutions on AMD Radeon HD 6800 and 6900 series video cards currently available for sale. when purchasing a gaming computer, there is often a lack of funds for high-performance components. CrossFireX technology will help here. Having bought a computer with one video card, the user after a certain period of time can increase the speed of the graphics by installing another graphics adapter. Well, what if you bought a relatively inexpensive video card, and now you want to add a more productive and more expensive one to it? How justified is this approach? This is the question for video cards on AMD Radeon HD 6800 and AMD Radeon HD 6900 we are going to answer in this material.

Recall that for the CrossFireX technology to work, it is not necessary to have two completely identical graphics accelerators in the system, it is enough that they be from the same series. Thus, in theory, it is quite possible to use an asymmetric configuration, in which two accelerators on different GPUs will be combined, the younger one and the older one in the series. We decided to move from theory to practice in this matter and check the feasibility of such a CrossFireX configuration.

To test asymmetric 2-Way CrossFireX x16+x16, the following GPUs were used: Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 2 GB and AMD Radeon HD 6970 2 GB for the first build, ASUS Radeon HD 6870 and ASUS Radeon HD 6850 DirectCU for the second build.

2-Way Crossfirex on Radeon HD 6900

Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 2 GB

9000 AMD RADEON HD 697 AMD 6970025

2-Way CrossFireX Radeon HD 6800

ASUS EAH6870/2DI2S/1GD5 Radeon HD 6870

ASUS EAH6850 DC/2DIS/1GD5 Radeon HD 6850 with DirectCU

2-Way CrossFireX x16+x16 on Radeon HD 6900

performance from the placement of a faster video card from the tested 2-Way CrossFireX assembly in the first or second PCI-E x16 slot.

Test package

AMD Radeon HD 6970 + 6950 2GB GDDR5 CrossFireX x16+x16

AMD Radeon HD 6950 + 6970 2GB GDDR5 CrossFireX x16+x16

Productivity difference

, %

Futuremark 3DMark
Vantage

Performance
Score

33160

33282

+0.367913

GPU Score

31925

32087

+0.507439

Futuremark 3DMark 11

Performance
Score

8443

8466

+0. 272415

Call Of Juarez, DirectX 9.0c,
Maximum Quality,
AA4x/AF16x, fps

1680×1050

199.98

198.65

-0.66507

1920×1080

180.56

180.3

-0.144

Crysis Warhead, DirectX 10,
Maximum Quality, fps

1680×1050

110.74

111.43

+0.623081

1920×1080

104.32

104.72

+0. 383436

Crysis Warhead, DirectX 10,
Maximum Quality,
AA4x/AF16x, fps

1680×1050

108.96

109.2

+0.220264

1920×1080

102.09

101.51

-0.56813

Aliens vs. Predator DX11
Benchmark, Maximum Quality,
NO AA/AF, fps

1680×1050

134.4

134.5

+0.074405

1920×1080

118.6

120. 9

+1.939292

Aliens vs. Predator DX11
Benchmark, Maximum Quality,
AA4x/AF16x, fps

1680×1050

124.9

123

-1.52122

1920×1080

110.2

112.4

+1.99637

Colin McRae: DiRT 2,
DirectX 11, Maximum Quality,
NO AA/AF, fps

1680×1050

139.91

142.36

+1.751126

1920×1080

125. 03

130.61

+4.462929

Colin McRae: DiRT 2,
DirectX 10, Maximum Quality,
AA4x/AF16x, fps

1680×1050

132.18

138.24

+4.584657

1920×1080

117.05

118.32

+1.085006

Metro 2033 Benchmark,
DirectX 11, Maximum Quality,
NO AA / AF4x, fps

1680×1050

73

73.5

+0.684932

1920×1080

67

68

+1. 492537

Metro 2033 Benchmark,
DirectX 11, Maximum Quality,
AA4x/AF16x, fps

1680×1050

61.5

62.5

+1.626016

1920×1080

54

54.5

+0.925926

Performance difference for 2-Way CrossFireX systems with two video cards of different power when installing Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 2 GB in the first PCI-E x16 slot or installing AMD Radeon HD 6970 2 in this slot GB is quite insignificant 0.5-2% in favor of placing the junior model in the first slot. However, do not forget that there is still a possibility of application incompatibility with 2-Way CrossFireX technology, this was often found in older games. In this case, only one leading video card, the one installed in the first PCI-E x16 slot, will be occupied with graphics processing. As a result, taking into account all the features of the installation, we can conclude that the use of both the younger model and the older one from the AMD Radeon HD 69 series as the leading video card is equivalent.00.

Now let’s move on to comparing the performance of the asymmetric 2-Way CrossFireX x16+x16 with other actual graphics system configurations.

as a result the performance is only slightly different from the performance of the 2-Way CrossFireX x16+x16 build on two AMD Radeon HD 6970, which is slightly higher than that of a system with a pair of AMD Radeon HD 6950. Such results indicate the full use of the capacities of both video cards, which means that their total performance justifies the money invested in it. However, for fans of overclocking, the most optimal solution would still be to purchase two “reference” AMD Radeon HD 6950 models and their further “rework” into AMD Radeon HD 6970.50 and AMD Radeon HD 6970″. It is this approach that provides the most advantageous combination of performance and price. However, it is worth noting that unlocking and overclocking is always a matter of luck, and may require manual optimization of parameters for maximum system stability.

Combined in a 2-Way CrossFireX x16+x16 configuration, the Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 and AMD Radeon HD 6970 video cards provided performance that significantly exceeds the capabilities of the single-chip flagship ASUS GeForce GTX 580. True, the current price of the latter is lower than the cost of the two accelerators we tested, but the cost ratio quite corresponds to the speed difference.

An SLI-system of two NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti can be called an equal competitor of the tested asymmetric configuration. Note that the latter will cost about $50 less than the purchase of two Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 and AMD Radeon HD 6970 video cards.

overclocking capabilities, and without it. Such a purchase definitely wins in terms of price with comparable performance with a couple of solutions based on NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti.

2-Way CrossFireX x16+x16 on Radeon HD 6800

First, let’s find out whether the overall performance depends on the placement of a faster video card in the first or second PCI-E x16 slot.

Test package

AMD Radeon HD 6850 + 6870 1GB GDDR5 CrossFireX x16+x16

AMD Radeon HD 6870 + 6850 1GB GDDR5 CrossFireX x16+x16

Productivity difference

, %

Futuremark 3DMark Vantage

Performance
Score

26837

26844

+0. 026083

GPU Score

24483

24474

-0.03676

Futuremark 3DMark 11

Performance
Score

6691

6697

+0.089673

Call Of Juarez, DirectX 9.0c,
Maximum Quality,
AA4x/AF16x, fps

1680×1050

141.7

141.77

+0.0494

1920×1080

126.56

126.54

-0. 0158

Crysis Warhead, DirectX 10,
Maximum Quality, fps

1680×1050

85.91

86.3

+0.453963

1920×1080

78.69

78.67

-0.02542

Crysis Warhead, DirectX 10,
Maximum Quality,
AA4x/AF16x, fps

1680×1050

80.81

80.91

+0.123747

1920×1080

73.67

73.83

+0. 217185

Aliens vs. Predator DX11
Benchmark,
Maximum Quality,
NO AA/AF, fps

1680×1050

96.6

96.6

0

1920×1080

86.3

86.8

+0.579374

Aliens vs. Predator DX11
Benchmark,
Maximum Quality,
AA4x/AF16x, fps

1680×1050

87

87.2

+0.229885

1920×1080

77.7

77. 9

+0.2574

Colin McRae: DiRT 2,
DirectX 11,
Maximum Quality,
NO AA/AF, fps

1680×1050

126.87

127.12

+0.197052

1920×1080

115.29

115.67

+0.329604

Colin McRae: DiRT 2,
DirectX 10, Maximum Quality, AA4x/AF16x, fps

1680×1050

118.19

119.61

+1.201455

1920×1080

108. 34

110.76

+2.233709

Metro 2033 Benchmark,
DirectX 11, Maximum Quality,
NO AA / AF4x, fps

1680×1050

55.5

55

-0.9009

1920×1080

50.5

50

-0.9901

Metro 2033 Benchmark,
DirectX 11, Maximum Quality,
AA4x/AF16x, fps

1680×1050

41

40.5

-1.21951

1920×1080

35. 5

35.5

0

Analysis of the configuration for 2-Way CrossFireX x16+x16 based on different solutions of the Radeon HD 6800 series, in contrast to 2-Way CrossFireX x16+x16 on the Radeon HD 6900, showed slightly different results. The dependence of performance fluctuations on installing a more efficient graphics accelerator in the first or second PCI-E x16 slot ranged from -1 to 1%. Such results clearly indicate the same average performance for these two installations. However, as already mentioned, there is a small possibility of application incompatibility with 2-Way CrossFireX technology. It is the latter reason that makes us recommend installing a more efficient video card in the first PCI-E x16 slot, which will help make the system as versatile as possible.

RADICA HADEN 6800 has become full performance equality for two Radeon HD 6850 and for Radeon HD 6850 + 6870. This result indicates the inexpediency of buying a graphics accelerator on the Radeon HD 6870 to add to the Radeon HD 6850. The performance of such a system will remain equal to CrossFireX on two Radeon HD 6850.

Due to the equality of the total performance of two Radeon HD 6850s with the performance of the 2-Way CrossFireX x16+x16 assembly on the Radeon HD 6850 + 6870, it makes no sense to further consider the total price of the configuration. For this reason, we will refer further to the cost of a «tandem» of two Radeon HD 6850s.

Compared to the performance of 2-Way CrossFireX on the Radeon HD 6870, the asymmetric system on the Radeon HD 6850 + 6870 is slightly inferior in performance. Such a slight decrease in performance is compensated by a lower price. Two Radeon HD 6870s cost $70 more than two Radeon HD 6850s, which are equal in performance to the Radeon HD 6850 + 6870.

The 2-Way CrossFireX x16+x16 system on the Radeon HD 6850 + 6870 and the equivalent performance of 2-Way CrossFireX x16+x16 on the Radeon HD 6850 can be compared with a single-chip graphics accelerator on the GeForce GTX 570. However, it shows lower performance, and its cost is on average $30-40 more than that of two Radeon HD 6850s. This ratio unconditionally speaks in favor of buying two video cards from AMD.

Results

In conclusion, I would like to note the most favorable ratio of performance and price for the graphics system of the two solutions based on the Radeon HD 6950. Reference models of these video cards can be converted to Radeon HD 6970 graphics accelerators, which will provide them with a significant increase in performance. Assembly from asynchronous 2-Way CrossFireX x16+x16 on Radeon HD 6950 + Radeon HD 6970 is also fully functional and justified, but still not as profitable as the previous configuration.

But buying a second video card based on the Radeon HD 6870 in addition to the one already available on the Radeon HD 6850 is not justified, although this configuration works without any problems. The performance of 2-Way CrossFireX x16+x16 on the Radeon HD 6850 + Radeon HD 6870 is equivalent to that of 2-Way CrossFireX x16+x16 on the Radeon HD 6850. it is higher than that of a single-chip accelerator on the GeForce GTX 570. Summing up, in terms of price and performance among the solutions of the Radeon HD 6800 series, the 2-Way CrossFireX system on the Radeon HD 6850 should become the best purchase.0003

Review and testing of the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is the flagship graphics adapter based on the RDNA 2 microarchitecture and, according to the manufacturer’s own estimates, should compete with another flagship Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090. At first glance, the most powerful graphics card from AMD seems the most interesting product among the graphics adapters of the «red manufacturer» on the RDNA 2 architecture, but is this really the case, let’s try to find out from this review. To begin with, let’s take a closer look at the technical characteristics of the novelty.

So, AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT (Big Navi GPU) is manufactured by AMD at 7nm at TSMC facilities. The number of transistors is 26.8 billion, the chip area is 519. 8 mm2. In the case of the Radeon RX 6900 XT, all 80 CUs are active, something gives 5.120 stream processors running at clock speeds of at least 2250 MHz. The RX 6900 XT GPU is equipped with a 256-bit memory interface. It is connected to 16 GB of GDDR6 memory, the memory chips operate at a frequency of 2000 MHz, which gives a bandwidth of 512 GB / s. The TDP of the video card remained within 300 W, despite the larger chip expansion option. What we see, and we see this, RX 6900 XT is identical in its characteristics to the RX 6800 XT, all the differences are reduced only to the number of shader ALUs and texture mapping units (TMUs), the top solution RX 6900 XT receives a complete set of 80 Compute Units versus 72 in the RX 6800 XT, and that’s it, the differences between them end. But is this really possible and have we missed something and there are still some differences between these two video cards, after all, the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is still an absolute top class, but not everything is right, the differences between the RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 XT only in the amount of Compute Unit. Another point, AMD, in order to justify the high cost of the video card, which is almost $1000 versus $350 for the RX 6800 XT, does not offer almost any other specifications available for premium video cards, such as increased memory or a special PCB design. Video card RX 6900 XT is built on the same board as the RX 6800 XT and RX 6800, but with some minor differences. Actually, as for its own video memory, its volume and standard are the same as for the Radeon RX 6800 XT, we have the same 16 GB GDDR 6 standard as the representatives of the series — RX 6800.

Navi 21, also known as Big Navi, is based on the RDNA 2 architecture, which was designed to be as energy efficient as possible, as well as to implement missing functionality that the competitor has and is included in the DirectX 12 Ultimate specifications. At the beginning of the Navi 21 chain are command processors for shaders and general-purpose calculations, a geometry processor and a hardware scheduler, which Windows has recently learned to use.

There is also a DMA block for direct access to GPU memory over the PCI Express bus as part of the collaboration of several accelerators, as well as certain innovative features of Navi 21: Smart Access Memory on the Ryzen 5000 platform and support for DirectStorage. However, the main change in the GPU front-end on a qualitative level is still related to how Navi 21 handles geometry processing. For hardware acceleration of ray tracing, RDNA 2 introduced specialized Ray Accelerator blocks. This is very important as tracing appears in more and more games, some console games and AMD supported projects (Godfall and Dirt 5) also have it. But these blocks in Big Navi, although hardware and dedicated, are somewhat simpler than RT cores in Nvidia’s Ampere and Turing family graphics processors, and in general they are slower to do their job, especially in the case of a large number of incoherent beams, since separate MIMD cores specifically for tracing fit better. Therefore, with complex and numerous effects using ray tracing, AMD video cards lose significantly more performance than Nvidia video cards, and this applies to comparisons with both Ampere and Turing. The most important innovation of the RDNA 2 architecture is the local memory stack, which includes a huge third-level cache. All other storages closest to the shader ALUs have undergone almost no changes compared to what was already done in the first generation Navi chips. This cache is called Infinity Cache, its capacity is 128 MB, this approach to cache organization can be called an innovation in many ways, since we get another level of caching that has not previously been seen on the GPU in this form. To make Infinity Cache work as optimally as possible. 128 MB of cache are connected over 16 channels, each provides a transfer of 64 bytes per clock. Infinity Fabric is running on 1.94 GHz, which gives a throughput of 0.9933 Tbps. As a result, AMD has been able to not only increase effective bandwidth, but also reduce power consumption.

Design

From the outside, the Radeon RX 6900 XT does not differ from the Radeon RX 6800 XT, the video cards are identical in design and dimensions. The flagship Big Navi graphics card is also 267mm long and 120mm high. The casing of the video card is made of dark gray silver plastic. From the end of the video card, you can see the illuminated Radeon logo, the backlight of which can be adjusted using a special utility. At the back, AMD has installed a solid metal plate, this part helps dissipate heat and gives rigidity to the entire structure. Under the casing is a cooling system consisting of a radiator and an evaporation chamber. Radiator RX 6900 XT is blown by three 80mm fans. In order to focus the air flow in the axial direction, the blades of each fan are caught in a ring. When the load on the GPU is low, the fans stop rotating and the device cools passively. The main radiator, judging by the weight, is made of a copper alloy (and painted). On one side it is soldered to the evaporation chamber, the other is in contact with the casing. The ribs are made in the transverse direction, so hot air is blown out through the long ends of the video card up from it and down onto the motherboard. The evaporation chamber is in direct contact with the GPU and with a large frame (through a thermal interface), which already has its own areas for cooling memory chips and VRM power converters. The back plate is purely protective (although it is metal, not plastic). Note that a graphite thermal interface is used for the GPU — again, this is in the tradition of AMD, because for evaporation chambers it is better to have an interface thicker than a layer of liquid thermal paste. We did not find any special surprises on the slot cover. There are two DisplayPort 1.4 ports, one HDMI 2.1 output and one Type C output. The configuration is identical to the Radeon RX 6800 XT. The video card is assembled on the same board as the two younger representatives of the 6000 series, but unlike the Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT, the top model is fully equipped with VRM components. To power the GPU, 13 phases are allocated, and under the control of a single PWM controller — an expensive 16-phase Infineon XDPE132G5D chip. They also did not save on the power stages of the regulator, choosing International Rectifier TDA21472 assemblies with a rated current of 70 A. Three-phase power supply for GDDR6 chips is organized using the common International Rectifier IR35217 PWM controller. Interestingly, all memory chips were placed on the front side of the board, which made it possible to simplify the cooling system for the back side of the video card. The card has 16 GB of GDDR6 SDRAM placed in 8 chips of 16 Gb each on the front side of the PCB. Thermal Pack Radeon RX 6900XT is 300W. Therefore, two 8-pin plugs are more than enough.

Specifications

Processor

Navi 21 XTX(Big Navi)

Microarchitecture

RDNA 2

Process

7 Nm

GPU clock

2015 — 2250 MHz

Shading Units

5120

TMUs

320

Raster Operation Pipelines (ROPs)

128

Tensor cores

—

Core RT

80

Memory type

GDDR6

Memory bus width

256 Bit

Memory size

16GB

Memory frequency

2000 MHz

DirectX

12

Interfaces

1×HDMI 2. 1, 2×DisplayPort 1.4a, 1×USB Type-C (USB 3.2 Gen2)

Power consumption (TDP)

300W

Optional

128 MB Infinity Cache

Testing

CPU power-saving technologies are disabled in all tests. Video card performance testing was carried out in a closed case of the system unit on the system of the following configuration:

Test configuration

Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-10700K

Motherboard: MSI MPG Z490 GAMING CARBON (Wi-Fi)

RAM: 4 x 16GB HyperX Predator RGB DDR4-3200

Storage: SSD 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus

OS: Windows 64 bit

3DMark

3DMark Fire Strike is a beautiful and popular DirectX 11 API-enabled application for testing computers with high-end gaming graphics cards in a Windows environment. The 3DMark Fire Strike results help evaluate the relative performance of the graphics card and its suitability for the most demanding PC games.

3DMark Fire Strike Ultra — Graphics

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

13450

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

12376

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

12033

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080

10667

AMD Radeon RX 6800

10272

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070

8485

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

8117

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080

6505

AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT

6060

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super

6028

Literally, FPS stands for «Frame per second», or frames per second. Accordingly, the larger this number, the smoother the picture on the display will be during the game. How many FPS is needed for a comfortable game? It is difficult to unequivocally answer this question, if only because in different game engines with the same number of frames per second, the image quality can be different. However, there is a widespread belief that 30 FPS will be enough for a smooth game.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt kings.» The final part of the trilogy. According to the developers, the third part of the series will combine a non-linear story and a multi-regional open game world that will be thirty times larger than the world of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. For movement, it will be possible to use various vehicles, such as a horse or a ship. The passage of the main storyline will take about 50 hours of play. Side quests will take about the same amount. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was developed on the RedEngine 3 game engine, which is aimed at next generation platforms and will ultimately break the boundaries between game graphics and CGI cutscenes. The fundamental difference between RedEngine 3 and its predecessor is that REDengine 3 is designed to support open world games. RED Engine 3 focuses not only on graphics and physics, but also on building a non-linear quest system, allowing you to make the gameplay even closer to real life. RED Engine supports dynamic shadows, normal mapping and parallax. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has both basic and advanced graphics settings. Any user will be able to customize the game at their discretion, based on the performance of the existing system.

AMD Radeon RX 6800

138

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

136

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070

134

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super

116

Settings: display resolution 3840 x2160 pixels, Ultra detail, DirectX 11

FPS — average frames per second

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

122

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

104

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080

108

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

97

AMD Radeon RX 6800

85

NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2080 Ti

82

NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3070 2 80

NVIDIA GEFORCE RTXE RTX0050

69

Cyberpunk 2077 is an action-adventure RPG set in the metropolis of Night City, where power, luxury, and body modifications are valued above all else. You play as V, a mercenary in search of a device that allows you to gain immortality. Cyberpunk 2077 received the fourth version of the REDengine game engine, which is an improved and improved version of the «native» engine of CD Projekt RED. The improved engine actually allows the game to render amazing facial detail, slightly outperforming that sort of thing in Horizon Zero Dawn. Thoughtful original design and high attention to small details are the two pillars of the visual beauty of Cyberpunk 2077. Importantly, CD Projekt did not pursue new heights of polygonal detailing of objects or the introduction of some fundamentally new graphic technologies, as Crytek likes to do, but focused on painstaking and creative elaboration of time-tested old elements, raising them to a fundamentally new level. 9AMD Radeon RX 6800

60

NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2080 Ti

63

NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3070 2 59

NVIDIA GEFORCE RTORCE RTORCE RTORCE RTORCE RTORCE RTORCE RTORCE RTORCE RTORCE RTORCE RTORCE RTORCE RTORCE RTORCE RTORCE RTORCE RTORCE RTORCE RTORCE RTORS

Settings: display resolution 3840 x2160 pixels, Ultra detail, DirectX 11

FPS — average frames per second 9 0049 Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

49

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

38

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080

40

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

34

AMD Radeon RX 6800

31

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 TI

31

NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3070

30,0002 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 9 SUPER

92

AMD Radeon RX 6800

80

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

63

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070

64

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super

60

Settings: display resolution 3840 x2160 pixels, Ultra detail, DirectX 11

FPS — average frames per second

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

60

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

63

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080

51

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

59

AMD Radeon RX 6800 0050

28

Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Shadow of the Tomb Raider takes place after the events depicted in RISE OF THE TOMB RAIDER. This time, Miss Croft travels to Latin America, where she travels through the ruins of an ancient civilization (including the Mayan and Aztec pyramids), discovers the mysteries of the Order of the Trinity, and learns more about the research done by her father. The story is more mature than previous games. To portray Lara as a more advanced adventurer, the developers intended to have her face the consequences of the decisions she made. For Rise of the Shadow of the Tomb Raider uses a new game engine called the Foundation Engine. Shadow of the Tomb Raider includes improved subsurface scattering on Lara, volumetric lighting, and beams of light through foliage. Also, the new game uses advanced anti-aliasing — TAA, instead of SMAA. In addition, the effects of water have improved and the waves from the movement now have a three-dimensional shape, and in general the interaction with water is better. Tessellation is present in both games, but is used for different purposes.

AMD Radeon RX 6800

149

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

130

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070

131

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super

114

Settings: display resolution 3840 x2160 pixels, Ultra detail, DirectX 11

FPS — average frames per second

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

100

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

96

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080

91

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

89

AMD Radeon RX 6800

78

NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2080 Ti

68

NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3070

68

NVIDIA GEFORCE RTXI0050

57

Battlefield V is a first-person shooter in which gamers will visit different parts of the globe during World War II. The gameplay is extremely diverse and interesting, in connection with which this game is loved by millions of people. The game is based on the Frostbite Engine 3.5. Frostbite Engine is a game engine developed by EA Digital Illusions CE; used both in their own developments and projects of other branches of Electronic Arts. In terms of visuals, Battlefield V sets a new standard in visual quality for a shooter based on the improved Frostbite engine. You can hardly find another such a beautiful military shooter, no matter how trite it sounds. The single-player campaign also stands out nicely, as EA and DICE chose a compromise between performance and looks for multiplayer. This is not to say that the picture is much worse, but still the developers focused on performance. The only negative point concerns the level of detail depending on the viewing distance. Regardless of the selected graphics quality level, objects are always drawn at a certain distance — although they could appear much earlier / farther.

84

AMD Radeon RX 6800

73

NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2080 Ti

65

NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3070 9000 9000 9000 73

22222222222222222

Settings: display resolution 3840 x2160 pixels, detailing Ultra, Raytracing ON, DLSS Off

900 Gador0050

64

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080

55

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

32

AMD Radeon RX 6800

28

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

38

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070

40

Metro: EXODUS is a first-person shooter developed by 4A Engine based on the novel by Dmitry Glukhovsky, most likely the last part and likely finale of the Metro 2033 franchise series. the Moscow metro and try to survive under the onslaught of attacks by vicious mutant predators, as well as warring factions. 4A Engine is a game engine developed by the Ukrainian company 4A Games for use in their computer game Metro 2033, published by THQ on March 16, 2010. The game does not contain preset image detail modes, although they are in the utility that launches the built-in benchmark — from low to ultra-high. Among the individual settings, you can only adjust the overall “quality” of the image, the pixel sample size for anisotropic filtering, the intensity of blurring moving objects, and the depth of tessellation of geometric primitives. As the main method of full-screen anti-aliasing, the game uses its own kind of temporal algorithm (TAA — Temporal Anti-Aliasing) — it cannot be disabled, but, judging by information from NVIDIA, TAA works very gently here and probably has little effect on overall performance. As with most games of the caliber of Metro Exodus, the engine allows for a wide range of image quality scaling, and the difference between low, medium, and ultra-fine detail profiles is extremely pronounced.

AMD Radeon RX 6800

125

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

119

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070

115

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super

100

Settings: display resolution 3840 x2160 pixels, Ultra detail, DirectX 12

FPS — average frames per second

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

106

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

93

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080

96

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

86

AMD Radeon RX 6800

74

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

72

NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3070 2 9000 71

NVIDIA GEFORCE RTXE RTORS0050

63

Red Dead Redemption 2 is an open-world action-adventure and third-person shooter video game developed and published by Rockstar Games. The action of Red Dead Redemption 2, designed in the spirit of a Western, takes place in 1899 in the Wild West, on the territory of several fictional US states. The plot of the game is built around the adventures of Dutch Van der Linde’s gang; under the control of the player is Arthur Morgan, one of the members of the gang. After a failed ferry robbery, the bandits are forced to hide in the wilderness from federal agents and bounty hunters. Red Dead Redemption 2 uses the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine at its core. «Rockstar Advanced Game Engine» is a full-featured game engine that contains a graphics engine, physics engine, sound engine, animation engine, game artificial intelligence, networking, scripting language and other components. Since the engine was geared towards use in games that have an «open seamless world», the main advantage of the engine is its ability to handle large game spaces efficiently. AMD Radeon RX 6800

79

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

71

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070

73

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super

63

Settings: display resolution 3840 x2160 pixels, Maximum detail, DirectX 12

FPS — average frames per second
0002 Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

72

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

63

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080

65

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

63

AMD Radeon RX 6800

54

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 TI

49

NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3070

50

NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2080 SUPER 980 SUPER SUPER SUPER SUPER0050

42

Conclusion

The release of the Radeon RX 6900 XT for AMD is primarily a demonstration of the new RDNA 2 architecture and the Navi 21 GPU in all its glory.