AMD’s Radeon HD 6970M
We’re glad to see that even AMD is referring to its new mobile modules by the shorter “Radeon HD 6970M” moniker, as the original “Mobility Radeon HD 6970” naming scheme was terribly wordy. We’re even willing to overlook any similarities to the naming practices of its competitor, for the sake of brevity.
Speaking of similarities, Eurocom thought that Nvidia’s GTX 470M SLI would so closely-match the performance levels of AMD’s Radeon HD 6970M in CrossFire that it included a pair of each for today’s tests. If the performance is indeed similar, AMD will take the performance-value win with a colossal $219 price advantage.
A surprisingly-small die comes not from a shrink in die process, but the use of a less complex GPU. A closer look at the Radeon HD 6970M’s specs indicates that its “Blackcomb XT” is nothing more than an underclocked Radeon HD 6850 desktop part, indicating that it's based on the older VLIW5 architecture, and not the company's newer VLIW4 arrangement.
| Desktop vs Mobility Radeon Graphics | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Desktop Radeon HD 6970 | Desktop Radeon HD 6850 | Radeon HD 6970M | |
| Transistors | 2.64 billion | 1.7 billion | 1.7 billion |
| Engine Clock | 880 MHz | 775 MHz | 680 MHz |
| Shader (ALUs) | 1536 | 960 | 960 |
| Texture Units | 96 | 48 | 48 |
| ROP Units | 32 | 32 | 32 |
| Compute Performance | 2.7 TFLOPS | 1.49 TFLOPS | 1.3 TFLOPS |
| DRAM Type | GDDR5-5500 | GDDR5-4000 | GDDR5-3600 |
| DRAM Interface | 256-bits | 256-bits | 256-bits |
| Memory Bandwidth | 176 GB/s | 128 GB/s | 115.2 GB/s |
| TDP | 250 W | 127 W | 100 W |
AMD isn’t the only one still playing the horrid name game with its notebook parts, as Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 470M appears to be nothing more than an underclocked GeForce GTX 460 SE, priced around 3x higher, without the fancy heat sinks and brackets that a desktop card must include.
| Desktop vs Mobile GeForce Graphics | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Desktop GeForce GTX 470 | Desktop GeForce GTX 460 SE | GeForce GTX 470M | |
| Transistors | 3 billion | 1.95 billion | 1.95 billion |
| Engine Clock | 607 MHz | 650 MHz | 535 MHz |
| CUDA Cores | 448 | 288 | 288 |
| Texture Units | 56 | 48 | 48 |
| ROP Units | 40 | 32 | 24 |
| Compute Performance | 1.09 TFLOPS | 855 GFLOPS | 634 GFLOPS |
| DRAM Type | GDDR5-3348 | GDDR5-3400 | GDDR5-3000 |
| DRAM Interface | 320-bits | 256-bits | 192-bits |
| Memory Bandwidth | 133.9 GB/s | 108.8 GB/s | 72 GB/s |
| TDP | 215 W | 150 W | 50 W (GPU Only) |
Note that AMD lists TDP for a complete card, while Nvidia lists it for the GPU alone. We expect actual power consumption to be somewhat similar from the complete modules.
Related Stories :
- AMD's Mobility Radeon HD 6970 In CrossFire On Eurocom's Panther
- Eurocom Racer: Radeon HD 6990M In A Truly Mobile Form Factor
- Alienware's M17x: Mobility Radeon HD 5870 CrossFire Is A Go
- AVADirect's W860CU: Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Vs. GeForce GTX 285M
- ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5000 is DX11 on the Go
- ASI's IQ17-D2: Is Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2 Still Fast Enough?
- AMD Releases Radeon HD 8970M Mobile GPU
- AMD Radeon HD 8790M: Next-Gen Mobile Mainstream Graphics Preview
- Radeon HD 6990M is ''World's Fastest'' Mobile GPU
- Quick Take: PowerColor's Passively-Cooled Radeon HD 7850 SCS3
5292$... Are you kidding me!!
Yikes!
Yikes!
What, you don't have a $180,000 car sitting in front of your $5m mansion?
This is even more absurd than the other recent power gaming notebook that was tested. You could save almost $500 by using Sandy Bridge instead of the old i7s, for the same performance. Even Falcon Mach V's usually don't get this expensive. This is absolutely ridiculous
This is even more absurd than the other recent power gaming notebook that was tested. You could save almost $500 by using Sandy Bridge instead of the old i7s, for the same performance. Even Falcon Mach V's usually don't get this expensive. This is absolutely ridiculous
No you couldn't. Because as of CES when these cards launched, nobody produced a dual-graphics module chassis for the Sandy Bridge.
There are the battery life graphs that I love! Thanks for adding those to the laptop review! My first laptop was a P4 Northwood that barely got 90 minutes of battery life. This one is insane!
Insane and impossible to get and pay in Mëxico
....
First of all,great review ! I was desperately waiting for 6970M review from Tom's.
The overall performance is quite good especially in single mode which it's faster than both GTX 470M/480M.I think if AMD pays more attention to mobile drivers, then 2 of this cards should perform better.
About the price,well not everyone configures the laptop with i7 980x.Websites usually test the high-end specs in order to reduce the bottleneck and let the laptop run at its full potential.
I've read that Sager will soon release a model with mobile Sandy bridge CPUs along with 1 6970M and it won't be very expensive I think.
What, you don't have a $180,000 car sitting in front of your $5m mansion?
Duh of course, we all do but i mean 32 bedrooms IS kinda small. On a serious note, wtf 5k seriously? I could build a desktop and hook it up to a small generator for 1.5k and get at least 4 hours of power than pay 5k for 20min Fuk that $hit.
Who is buying this? I bet it weights 50 lbs. Nice battery life of 22 minutes.
You know what really gets to me.. AMD really markets the whole 1.3 teraflops, and 2.7 teraflops.. but at the end of the day, nvidia, with a lot less flop, overpowers AMD's cards... so where does all of tha processing power go in AMD's cards?
Looks like AMD hit the sweet spot in their mobile graphics division...FINALLY. I'd like to know what the price difference is between the 6970m and the 460m. It probably won't change the 460m pricing, but I'm willing to bet Nvidia snapped their fingers and said, "Damn, we can't milk our mobile cards for 4 times what they're worth anymore."
Seriously, how could they charge 800 dollars or some such crap for half the power of their 600 dollar cards?
Who the Fu** would pay for this
This... is sad. I don't know why anyone would want this, especially for that price.
Looks like AMD hit the sweet spot in their mobile graphics division...FINALLY. I'd like to know what the price difference is between the 6970m and the 460m. It probably won't change the 460m pricing, but I'm willing to bet Nvidia snapped their fingers and said, "Damn, we can't milk our mobile cards for 4 times what they're worth anymore."Seriously, how could they charge 800 dollars or some such crap for half the power of their 600 dollar cards?
it does sound like they are screwing you, at first. but you have to think about it. with a full size card, they have how much space and cooling to work with? and how much space do they have with a notebook? pluss less people buy a notbook that high powered, so they have to recupe the costs of production somehow.
The cost is way out of my price range.
"These desktop replacement notebooks are designed to run primarily from a wall outlet anyway"
So all of your that cry about the battery life, the price, the weight.... its an elite desktop replacement. It was never meant to be power efficient, lightweight nor cheap. You don't buy this kinda stuff cause u need it - you buy it cause u don't.
Should be compared to GTX 485M. Remember 485M is around 40% faster than a 480M according to notebookcheck.
$5G for a high end gaming laptop is what you would expect to pay.
A bit of a written rule over the years for me is that you can build the best PC for $5000 (with all of the performance bits but ditch the teenage blinged up case) ... it still applies.
Crunch the numbers for yourself and include CF or SLI and you will see it works.
$5G in a laptop fors out the best "mobile" money can buy ... will this is about right ... unless you want a bigger SSD I guess.
Nice article crash.