Radeon hd 6970 power requirements: Power, Temperature, & Noise — AMD’s Radeon HD 6970 & Radeon HD 6950: Paving The Future For AMD

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IndexRefresher: The 6800 Series’ New FeaturesCayman: The Last 32nm CastawayVLIW4: Finding the Balance Between TLP, ILP, and Everything ElseCayman: The New Dawn of AMD GPU ComputingAdvancing Primitives: Dual Graphics Engines & New ROPsRedefining TDP With PowerTunePowerTune, ContTweaking PowerTuneAnother New Anti-Aliasing Mode: Enhanced Quality AAMeet the 6970 & 6950The TestCrysis: WarheadBattleForge: DX10Metro 2033HAWXCivilization VBattlefield: Bad Company 2STALKER: Call of PripyatDIRT 2Mass Effect 2WolfensteinCompute & TessellationPower, Temperature, & NoiseFinal Thoughts

Power, Temperature, & Noise

Last but not least as always is our look at the power consumption, temperatures, and acoustics of the Radeon HD 6900 series. This is an area where AMD has traditionally had an advantage, as their small die strategy leads to less power hungry and cooler products compared to their direct NVIDIA counterparts. However NVIDIA has made some real progress lately with the GTX 570, while Cayman is not a small die anymore.

AMD continues to use a single reference voltage for their cards, so the voltages we see here represent what we’ll see for all reference 6900 series cards. In this case voltage also plays a big part, as PowerTune’s TDP profile is calibrated around a specific voltage.

Radeon HD 6900 Series Load Voltage
Ref 6970	Ref 6950	6970 & 6950 Idle
1.175v	1. 100v	0.900v

As we discussed at the start of our look at these cards, AMD has been tweaking their designs to take advantage of TSMC’s more mature 40nm process. As a result they’ve been able to bring down idle power usage slightly, even though Cayman is a larger chip than Cypress. For this reason the 6970 and 6950 both can be found at the top of our charts, running into the efficiency limits of our 1200W PSU.

Under Crysis PowerTune is not a significant factor, as Crysis does not generate enough of a load to trigger it. Accordingly our results are rather straightforward, with the larger, more power hungry 6970 drawing around 30W more than the 5870. The 6950 meanwhile is rated 50W lower and draws almost 50W less on the dot. At 292W it’s 15W more than the 5850, or effectively tied with the GTX 460 1GB.

Between Cayman’s larger die and NVIDIA’s own improvements in power consumption, the 6970 doesn’t end up being very impressive here. True, it does draw 20W less, but with the 5000 series AMD’s higher power efficiency was much more pronounced.

It’s under FurMark that we finally see the complete ramifications of AMD’s PowerTune technology. The 6970, even with a TDP over 60W above the 5870, still ends up drawing less power than the 5870 due to PowerTune throttling. This puts our FurMark results at odds with our Crysis results which showed an increase in power usage, but as we’ve already covered PowerTune tightly clamps power usage to AMD’s TDP, keeping the 6900 series’ worst case scenario for power consumption far below the 5870. While we could increase the TDP to 300W we have no practical reason to, as even with PowerTune FurMark still accurately represents the worst case scenario for a 6900 series GPU.

Meanwhile at 320W the 6950 ends up drawing more power than its counterpart the 5850, but not by much. It’s CrossFire variant meanwhile is drawing 509W,only 19W over a single GTX 580, driving home the point that PowerTune significantly reduces power usage for high load programs such as FurMark.

At idle the 6900 series is in good company with a number of other lower power and well-built GPUs. 37-38C is typical for these cards solo, meanwhile our CrossFire numbers conveniently point out the fact that the 6900 series doesn’t do particularly well when its cards are stacked right next to each other.

When it comes to Crysis our 6900 series cards end up performing very similarly to our 5800 series cards, a tradeoff between the better vapor chamber cooler and the higher average power consumption when gaming. Ultimately it’s going to be noise that ties all of this together, but there’s certainly nothing objectionable about temperatures in the mid-to-upper 70s. Meanwhile our 6900 series CF cards approach the upper 80s, significantly worse than our 5800 series CF cards.

Faced once more with FurMark, we see the ramifications of PowerTune in action. For the 6970 this means a temperature of 83C, a few degrees better than the 5870 and 5C better than the GTX 570. Meanwhile the 6950 is at 82C in spite of the fact that it uses a similar cooler in a lower powered configuration; it’s not as amazing as the 5850, but it’s still quite reasonable.

The CF cards on the other hand are up to 91C and 92C despite the fact that PowerTune is active. This is within the cards’ thermal range, but we’re ready to blame the cards’ boxy design for the poor CF cooling performance. You really, really want to separate these cards if you can.

At idle both the 6970 and 6950 are on the verge of running in to our noise floor. With today’s idle power techniques there’s no reason a card needs to have high idle power usage, or the louder fan that often leads to.

Last but not least we have our look at load noise. Both cards end up doing quite well here, once more thanks to PowerTune. As is the case with power consumption, we’re looking at a true worst case scenario for noise, and both cards do very well. At 50. 5db and 54.6db neither card is whisper quiet, but for the gaming performance they provide it’s a very good tradeoff and quieter than a number of slower cards. As for our CrossFire cards, the poor ventilation pours over in to our noise tests. Once more, if you can separate your cards you should do so for greatly improved temperature and noise performance.

Compute & Tessellation
Final Thoughts
IndexRefresher: The 6800 Series’ New FeaturesCayman: The Last 32nm CastawayVLIW4: Finding the Balance Between TLP, ILP, and Everything ElseCayman: The New Dawn of AMD GPU ComputingAdvancing Primitives: Dual Graphics Engines & New ROPsRedefining TDP With PowerTunePowerTune, ContTweaking PowerTuneAnother New Anti-Aliasing Mode: Enhanced Quality AAMeet the 6970 & 6950The TestCrysis: WarheadBattleForge: DX10Metro 2033HAWXCivilization VBattlefield: Bad Company 2STALKER: Call of PripyatDIRT 2Mass Effect 2WolfensteinCompute & TessellationPower, Temperature, & NoiseFinal Thoughts

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Video card AMD Radeon HD 6970, specifications and benchmarks

Comparison, specifications and characteristics of the video card

A brief overview of the video card AMD Radeon HD 6970 from the company AMD. Card release date 13-12-2010 year.
This is the Discrete video card, the codename of the architecture is TeraScale 3, DirectX is 11,
developed using 40 nm technology, it has 2 Gb of GDDR5 memory installed at 1375 MHz,
and together with the 256 Bit interface, this creates a bandwidth of 176.000 GB/sec.
The power consumption (TDP) is 250 W, the maximum temperature at which the video card AMD Radeon HD 6970 can work is No data available.
The outputs for the display include: 1x HDMI, 2x DVI, 2x DisplayPort. AMD Radeon HD 6970 connects to the rest of the system via the PCIe 2.0 x16 interface.

Comparison criteria *General informationGraphics processorClock speedsMemoryRendering ConfigurationTheoretical performanceGraphics FeaturesCompatibility and dimensions Show hints
General information	AMD Radeon HD 6970
Developer	Amd
Release year:	2010
Series	Northern Islands
Interface	PCIe 2. 0 x16
Board number:	C200-47
Maximum resolution:	2560 x 1600
Recommended resolution	No data available
Production	Discontinued
Starting price	369 $
Graphics processor	AMD Radeon HD 6970
GPU name	Cayman
GPU variant	Cayman XT (215-0807007)
Chip quantity	1
Architecture	TeraScale 3
Manufacturer	TSMC
Technological process	40 nm
Transistors	2640 mln
Die Size	389 mm²
Clock speeds	AMD Radeon HD 6970
Core frequency:	880 MHz
Frequency in Boost mode	Does not support
Memory frequency	1375 MHz
Effective memory speed:	5. 5 Gbps effective
Memory	AMD Radeon HD 6970
Memory capacity	2048 Mb
Memory type	General system
Memory bus width	256 bit
Bandwidth	176.000 GB/s
Rendering Configuration	AMD Radeon HD 6970
Shader blocks:	1536
TMUs units:	96
Texture blocks:	32
SM Count:	No data available
SMM Count:	No data available
Tensor cores:	No data available
RT cores:	No data available
L1 Cache:	8 KB (per CU)
L2 Cache:	512 KB
Theoretical performance	AMD Radeon HD 6970
Pixel fill rate:	28. 160 GPixel/s
Texture fill rate:	84.480 GTexel/s
FP16 (half) performance:	No data available
FP32 (float) performance:	2.703 TFLOPS
FP64 (double) performance:	675.8 GFLOPS
Graphics Features	AMD Radeon HD 6970
DirectX:	11.2 (Feature Level 11_0)
OpenGL:	4. 4
OpenCL:	1.2
Vulkan:	No data available
CUDA:	No data available
Shader Model:	5.0
Technologies and instructions:	ATI Eyefinity HDCP AMD HD3D AMD PowerPlay
Compatibility and dimensions	AMD Radeon HD 6970
Graphics card category:	Desktop computer
Type of video card:	Discrete
SLI/CrossFireX:	CrossFireX
Slot width:	Two-slot
Length:	286 mm 11. 3 inches
Width:	126 mm 5 inches
Height:	42 mm 1.7 inches
Power Consumption (TDP):	250 W
Power supply requirements (PSU):	600 W
Max. allowable temperature:	No data available
Power connectors:	1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin
Outputs:	1x HDMI 2x DVI 2x DisplayPort
* Specifications are subject to change by the manufacturer without notice

specs and benchmarks in 10 games and 3 benchmarks

AMD started selling the Radeon HD 6970 on December 14, 2010 for a suggested retail price of $369. This is a desktop video card based on the TeraScale 3 architecture with a 40 nm process technology. It has 2 GB of GDDR5 memory with a frequency of 1375 MHz, a 256-bit bus, which provides a bandwidth of 5.5 Gb / s.

The card occupies 2 slots, connected via PCIe 2.0 x16 interface. The reference version is 286mm long, 126mm wide and 42mm high. The card requires one 6-pin and one 8-pin auxiliary power cables, the claimed maximum power consumption is 250 watts.

Specifications

GPU

GPU option

Cayman XT (215-0807007)

Architecture

TeraScale 3

Manufacturer

TSMC

Process

40 nm

Number of transistors

2640 million

Crystal area

389 mm²

Graphic card

Release date

December 14, 2010

Generation

Northern Islands (HD 6900)

Predecessor

Evergreen

Descendant

Southern Islands

Launch price

$369

Market price

$299

Data bus interface

PCIe 2. 0 x16

Frequencies

GPU Clock

880 MHz

Memory frequency

1375 MHz

Memory

Memory capacity

2 GB

Memory type

GDDR5

Memory bus

256 bit

Memory speed

5.5 Gb/s

Memory bandwidth

176 GB/s

Render configuration

Shader units

1536

Compute modules

24

Texture blocks

96

Screen blocks

32

L1 cache

8 KB

L2 cache

512 KB

Rated output

Pixel fill rate

28. 16 GP/s

Texture Fill Rate

84.48 GT/s

Performance FP32

2.703 Tflops

Performance FP64

675.8 GFlops

Graphics

DirectX

11.2 (11_0)

OpenGL

4.4

OpenCL

1.2

Shader model

5

Video card design

Occupied slots

2

Length

286 mm

Width

126 mm

Height

42 mm

Heat dissipation requirements

250 W

Recommended PSU power

600 W

Outlets

2x DVI 1x HDMI 2x mini-DisplayPort

Power supply

1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin

Board number

C200-47

Maximum temperature

84 °C

Maximum noise

54. 4 dB

Game FPS

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

(2020)

Better than AMD Radeon HD 7970M, but worse than NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Mobile.

Valorant

(2020)

Better than AMD Radeon R9 M380, but worse than AMD Radeon HD 7970M.

Death Stranding

(2020)

Better than AMD Radeon R9 M380, but worse than AMD Radeon HD 7970M.

Cyberpunk 2077

(2020)

Better than AMD Radeon R9 M380, but worse than AMD Radeon HD 7970M.

Apex Legends

(2019)

Better than NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti, but worse than AMD Radeon HD 7950.

Metro Exodus

(2019)

Better than AMD Radeon R9 M380, but worse than AMD Radeon HD 7970M.

Red Dead Redemption 2

(2019)

Better than AMD Radeon R9 M380, but worse than AMD Radeon HD 7970M.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

(2012)

Better than AMD Radeon R9 M380, but worse than AMD Radeon HD 7970M.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

(2011)

Better than AMD Radeon HD 7850, but worse than AMD Radeon HD 7950.

League of Legends

(2019)

Better than AMD Radeon R9 M380, but worse than AMD Radeon HD 7970M.

Benchmark tests

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics: 3470 Better than NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti but worse than NVIDIA GeForce MX150.

3DMark06: 24035 Better than NVIDIA GeForce MX350 but worse than NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030.

Passmark: 2877 Better than NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770M, but worse than AMD Radeon HD 6990.

Comparison with other graphics cards

Map 1:

Map 2:

Video reviews and tests

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