Average Performance Analysis
The single Radeon HD 6950 looks fairly weak in average 1680x1050 performance, but superior dual-GPU scaling allows it to nearly catch the GeForce GTX 570. That scaling advantage goes away when three cards are installed, yet even Nvidia’s winning third card is almost useless at this medium resolution.
The scaling results we saw at 1680x1050 are repeated at 1920x1200. AMD’s card is far cheaper than Nvidia’s, so value seekers who game at this resolution will get their best value with a pair of Radeon HD 6950s.
Any Radeon HD 6950 CrossFire solution beats any GeForce GTX 570 SLI configuration at 2560x1600, regardless of whether two or three cards are used. This is probably the only resolution in today’s test that really matters, since a single card will pass most tests at anything less. Additionally, 2560x1600 has a similar pixel count as three 1280x1024 displays, so this is “just the beginning” for anyone planning to run in Eyefinity or Surround mode.
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wow even though a 6950 is weaker than a 570 it dominates at higher resolutions eyefinity here i come.
Impressive and unexpected results. Speculations that crossfire scaling is worse than SLI can finally be put into rest.
Impressive and unexpected results. Speculations that crossfire scaling is worse than SLI can finally be put into rest.
Not true, I would have liked to see more games on the test. The choices were too limited for my taste. For example, everyone knows that Crysis is heavily Nvidia favored, so it's not surprising to see those results in the least.
Here's another article on the 68xx series in Xfire
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/v [...] html#sect0
Xfire scaling was found to be 100% on 10 or the 19 games they tested, and remaining very high on the others. Nvidia and ATi seems to trade blows at different games tested, but it is evident that Ati has stepped up their Xfire drivers int he 6xxx series.
Impressive and unexpected results. Speculations that crossfire scaling is worse than SLI can finally be put into rest.
I misunderstood what you meant. But yes, xfire/sli scaling has improved alot this generation
Now im thinking if i should even spend on a now older 5850 to crossfire on my X58.
Its really cool to see amd stepping up their game. Multigpu scaling used to be only good on nvidia, but now amd is beating them. Though i feel that more games should be tested before a firm conclusion should be drawn.
I would get two HD 6870 for a mobile crossfirex gaming rig !
No! Don't buy a 5000-series card to crossfire. The 6000 series cards are essentially all better at crossfire scaling than their predecessors. This performance advantage will likely only increase with additional driver revisions and better 6000-series optimization support than for older products.
Great review ! It's good to see AMD did a lot of work on CF scaling.
I wish you Tom's would have done a 6970 trifire comparison instead. It's on average cheaper than the 570 on the Egg right now. I guess i get the memo, with showing that a cheaper solution is outperforming a more expensive option, but there would have been a good deal of performance increase across the board with the clock speed differences and opened shaders that is the 6970. Those differences come more alive in scaling especially with 3 cards.
You can see that AMD knows multicard setups are the future. Now i really want to get my 6950
@Thomas:
You can test eyefinity resolutions on single monitor IF that monitor has 3 inputs. Can you give this a try please?
Holy crap! After reading this review, I decided to look into the 6950 cards again.
If you're in Canada, you can get an XFX 6950 1Gb card for $215.99 (after rebate)right now from NCIX! That's a stupidly amazing deal!!! Think I'll grab one!
http://www.ncix.com/products/index [...] omoid=1293
Loved the idea of the article. Very disappointed with the display setup. It should go up to 5760x1200.
Loved the idea of the article. Very disappointed with the display setup. It should go up to 5760x1200.
Asus' 25" 1920x1200 display is still well priced, but I don't expect to see them around much longer. You should tell Chris to order three of these for every editor, before that bargain price vanishes!
why not test the 6970 and the 570? they are the same price point, the 6950 is one tier lower.
"The closest competitor is Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 570" Wrong !
The closest competitor is the Nvidia`s GTX 560Ti price vs price. At least in my country.