AMD's Mobility Radeon HD 6970 In CrossFire On Eurocom's Panther
Features
By
Thomas Soderstrom
Published
AMD’s Mobility Radeon HD 6970 in CrossFire mode forges ahead in mobile gaming with stunning “Full HD” 3D performance. But can it stand up to Nvidia’s high-end GeForce GTX 470M and 480M in SLI? Eurocom's 17.3” Panther 2.0 gives us its answer.
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Benchmark Settings
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| Test System Configuration | |
|---|---|
| Common CPU | Intel Core i7-980X LGA 1366, 3.33-3.60 GHz, 12 MB L3 Cache |
| Common RAM | 3 x 4 GB DDR3-1333 CAS 9-9-9-24, 12 GB Total |
| Radeon HD 6970M Graphics | Clevo Radeon HD 6970M 2 GB 680 MHz GPU Core, GDDR5-3600 Mobile Driver Version 8.810.0 |
| GeForce GTX 480M Graphics | Clevo GeForce GTX 480M 2 GB 425 MHz GPU Core, GDDR5-2400 Mobile Driver Version 259.51 |
| GeForce GTX 470M Graphics | Clevo GeForce GTX 470M 1.5 GB 535 MHz GPU Core, GDDR5-3000 Mobile Driver Version 266.35 |
| 480M System Hard Drives | 2 x Intel X25-M 80 GB SSD, 160 GB (Striped), SATA 3Gb/s |
| Eurocom Hard Drive | Seagate ST95005620AS Hybrid, 500 GB +4 GB SLC, 32 MB cache, SATA 3Gb/s |
| Sound | Integrated HD Audio |
| Network | Integrated Gigabit Networking |
| Software | |
| OS | Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit |
We wanted to see how the GeForce GTX 480M compared to the Radeon HD 6970M and GeForce GTX 470M of today’s comparison, yet all of our GTX 480M-based notebooks have already been returned to the suppliers. The closest previously-tested GTX 480M match to today’s build differs in its hard drive configuration and graphics driver revision, which are points to remember in our benchmark results discussion.
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| Benchmark Configuration | |
|---|---|
| 3D Games | |
| Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 | Campaign, Act III, Second Sun (45 sec. FRAPS) Test Set 1: Highest Settings, No AA Test Set 2: Highest Settings, 4x AA |
| Crysis | Patch 1.2.1, DirectX 10, 64-bit executable, benchmark tool Test Set 1: High Quality, No AA Test Set 2: Very High Quality, 4x AA |
| DiRT 2 | Run with -benchmark example_benchmark.xml Test Set 1: High Quality Preset, No AA Test Set 2: Ultra Quality Preset, 4x AA |
| S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call Of Pripyat | Call Of Pripyat Benchmark version Test Set 1: High Preset, DX11 EFDL, No AA Test Set 2: Ultra Preset, DX11 EFDL, 4x MSAA |
| Audio/Video Encoding | |
| iTunes | Version:9.0.2.25 x64 Audio CD (Terminator II SE), 53 min Default format AAC |
| Handbrake 0.9.4 | Version 0.9.4, convert first .vob file from The Last Samurai (1 GB) to .mp4, High Profile |
| TMPEGEnc 4.0 XPress | Version: 4.7.3.292 Import File: Terminator 2 SE DVD (5 Minutes) Resolution: 720x576 (PAL) 16:9 |
| DivX Codec 6.9.1 | Encoding mode: Insane Quality Enhanced multithreading enabled using SSE4 Quarter-pixel search |
| XviD 1.2.2 | Display encoding status = off |
| MainConcept Reference 1.6.1 | MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 (H.264), MainConcept H.264/AVC Codec, 28 sec HDTV 1920x1080 (MPEG-2), Audio: MPEG-2 (44.1 KHz, 2-Channel, 16-Bit, 224 Kb/s), Mode: PAL (25 FPS) |
| Productivity | |
| Adobe Photoshop CS4 | Version: 11.0 x64, Filter 15.7 MB TIF Image Radial Blur, Shape Blur, Median, Polar Coordinates |
| Autodesk 3ds Max 2010 | Version: 11.0 x64, Rendering Dragon Image at 1920x1080 (HDTV) |
| WinRAR 3.90 | Version x64 3.90, Dictionary = 4,096 KB, Benchmark: THG-Workload (334 MB) |
| 7-Zip | Version 4.65: Format=Zip, Compression=Ultra, Method=Deflate, Dictionary Size=32 KB, Word Size=128, Threads=8 Benchmark: THG-Workload (334 MB) |
| Synthetic Benchmarks and Settings | |
| 3DMark Vantage | Version: 1.0.2, System scores |
| PCMark Vantage | Version: 1.0.1.0 x64, System, Productivity, Hard Disk Drive benchmarks |
| SiSoftware Sandra 2011 | Version 2011.1.17.25, CPU Test = CPU Arithmetic / MultiMedia, Memory Test = Bandwidth Benchmark |
Fortunately, most of our benchmark scores won’t be affected by differences in drive configuration, though PCMark certainly will.
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Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
42 Comments
Comment from the forums
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Crashman dogman_1234Yikes!What, you don't have a $180,000 car sitting in front of your $5m mansion?Reply -
fstrthnu 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 ridiculousReply -
Crashman fstrthnuThis 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 ridiculousNo you couldn't. Because as of CES when these cards launched, nobody produced a dual-graphics module chassis for the Sandy Bridge.Reply
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one-shot 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!Reply -
Maziar First of all,great review ! I was desperately waiting for 6970M review from Tom's.Reply
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. -
tacoslave CrashmanWhat, you don't have a $180,000 car sitting in front of your $5m mansion?Reply
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.