Conclusion

General		+	-
Writing a good conclusion regarding the Radeon HD 6950 really isn't simple. Generally we would have expected to see a bigger performance increase compared to its predecessor. But one really shouldn't wait for a miracle with the HD 6950. Although ASUS has already overclocked their EAH 6950 it has surprisingly a lot of problems to clearly outperform a HD 5870. And then there also is another thing: if you're willing to spend about CHF 70.- (est. EUR 50.-) more you could buy a GTX570 which is more powerful by quite a margin and even show better image quality. As a conclusion we can say that if you own a HD 5870 you are very lucky and you shouldn't consider replacing it with a HD 6950.		- 2D-Very silent
Delivery		+	-
The delivery of the ASUS EAH 6950 is quite poor. In the box you find everything you need to setup the card appropriately. What you would be looking for in vain is a HDMI adaptor or a game. There is just, a power adaptor cable, a manual, a installation CD and a CrossFire bridge.			- No game included - No adaptor included
Performance		+	-
If we first look at the theoretical benchmarks in our selection we see, that the Radeon HD 6950 is able to outperform the HD 5850 as well as the 5870 be quite a margin. But with the game benchmarks thing wont be that clear anymore. In Far Cry 2 the HD 6950 performs really well but on the other hand in World in Conflict there is almost no performance gain. Overall the Radeon HD 9650 reaches about the performance level of a HD 5870.		- Futuremark
Overclocking		+	-
Included in the bundle you get the software ASUS Smartdoctor, using which you can adjust the GPU voltage as well as gpu and memory frequency. It has been possible to run 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark 11 with 986 MHz on the GPU and 5'764 MHz on the memory. Therefore overclockig this card really was fun. Especially the memory is remarkable.		- Overclocking GPU 986 MHz / Mem 5'764 MHz
Recommendation		+	-
A recommendation regarding this card is quite difficult. On one hand the tessellation performance as well as the graphical memory which is 2 GByte in size are pluspoints. On the other hand there is the fact that mainly playing games at a very high 2560 x 1600 resolution will benefit. But customers who usually play their games using such a high resolution buy top of the range products. It seems that one has to consider the cards pricing. From this point of view we can say that at the moment NVIDIA doesn't have an offer regarding this price segment. This means that if you want something more than just mid-range the HD 6950 might be a good choice for you.		- Upper Midrange-Gamer

The ASUS EAH9650 can be bought at Digitec to a price of CHF 339.- (est. EUR 242.-).



Author: Marc Voser, m.voser@ocaholic.ch Copy edited by: Marc Büchel, m.buechel@ocaholic.ch & Christian Ney, c.ney@ocaholic.ch

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 6 - Futuremark
Page 2 - Specifications	Page 7 - Unigine Heaven / Stone Giant
Page 3 - Preview	Page 8 - World in Conflict / Resident Evil 5
Page 4 - Overclocking	Page 9 - Call of Juarez / Far Cry 2
Page 5 - Testing conditions	Page 10 - Conclusion

To the comments