ASUS EAH 6950 2GByte
Category : AMD
Published by Marc Büchel on 19.12.10
With the EAH 6950, ASUS presents its first AMD Radeon HD 6950 based graphics card which has been equipped with 2 GByte GDDR5 memory. The successor of the very successful Radeon HD 5850 lets us all hope for another superb graphics card with an excellent power to performance ratio. We'd like to thank ASUS for providing us with the testsample.
Almost a year ago AMD presented this cards predecessor the Radeon HD 5850. Back then this card was able to convice with its performance and especially with the energy efficiency. The new Radeon HD 6950 is being manufactured at TSMC using 40 nanometer process technology. The Cayman Pro GPU which is being built onto the HD 6950 consists of 2.64 billion transistors and consumes a maximum of 200 Watt. Furthermore the GPU can access 2 GByte of GDDR5 memory via a 256 Bit wide interface. AMD provided the HD 6950 with some really nice memory that does 5'000 MHz by default.
On the following pages we will show you the strenghts and weaknesses of the ASUS EAH 6950.
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Technical data / specifications
The ASUS EAH 6950 has been built according to AMDs reference design which features a massive dual slot cooler and a back plate to cover and protect the cards PCB. From an architectural point of view the biggest changes have been made regarding the Shader units. For several generations AMD made use of 5D shaders. With the new Radeon HD 6950 and Radeon HD 6970 AMD implemented 4D shaders for the first time. The maximum theoretical performance inpact this could have is 20 percent. Furhtermore the HD 6950 is able to make use of a total of 1'440 shader units. If we look at the maximum board power, we see that compared to the Radeon HD 5850 the Radeon HD 6950 needs 30 Watts more on paper. In absolute numbers this means that the Radeon HD 6950 can draw a total of 200 Watt from the power supply. Regarding the idle power also the HD 6950 uses only 20 Watts which is industry leading at this time. New is, that AMD nowadays also provides a number regarding "typical gaming power". They claim that the card needs about 140 Watt on average when playing video games on your comptuer.| ASUS EAH6950 | ASUS EAH6850 | ASUS EAH5870 | GTX 580 | |
| Chip | Cayman | RV940 | RV870 | GF110 |
| Process | 40 nm | 40 nm | 40 nm | 40 nm |
| Transistors | 2.64 billion | 1.7 billion | 2.15 billion | 3.0billion |
| GPU clock | 820 MHz | 790 MHz | 850 MHz | 772 MHz |
| Shader clock | 820 MHz | 790 MHz | 850 MHz | 1'544 MHz |
| Memory | 2'048 MB GDDR5 | 1'024 MB GDDR5 | 1'024 MB GDDR5 | 1'536 MB GDDR5 |
| Memory clock | 2'500 MHz | 1'000 MHz | 1'200 MHz | 1'002 MHz |
| Memory interface | 256 Bit | 256 Bit | 256 Bit | 384 Bit |
| Memory bandwidth | 160'000 MB/s | 128'000 MB/s | 153'600 MB/s | 192'400 MB/s |
| TMUs | 88 | 48 | 80 | 64 |
| TAUs | 88 | 48 | 80 | 64 |
| Shader Cores | 352 (4D) | 192 (5D) | 320 (5D) | 512 (1D) |
| ROPs | 32 ROP | 32 ROP | 32 ROP | 48 ROP |
| Shader model | SM 5 | SM 5 | SM 5 | SM 5 |
| Maximum board power | 200 Watt | 127 Watt | 188 Watt | 244 Watt |
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Preview / Delivery
For the EAH 6950 ASUS uses their standard box. Everything has its specific place and in the delivery you find an installation CD, a manual, a power adaptor and a CrossFire bridge. There really isn't a lot of stuff included and we think it would have been apropriate if there was at least a HDMI-Adaptor oder a game in the bundle.
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Overclocking
For our overclocking test we used the delivered software ASUS Smartdoctor. This tool allows you to adjust the core voltage and clock frequencies as well as the memory clock. The standard voltage regarding the GPU is 1.1 Volt. Using Smartdoctor you can rise the value all the way up to 1.5 Volt. Therefore we found the optimal voltage at 1.19 Volt. At this point it was possible for us to drive the GPU at 986 MHz and the memory at 5'764 MHz.
Futuremark Overclocking
| 3DMark 11 Total | Score | Percent |
| ASUS ENGTX 580 (GPU 966 MHz / Mem 2332 MHz) | 6'212 | 115.40 % |
| ASUS ENGTX 580 | 5'383 | 100.00 % |
| ASUS EAH6950 (GPU 986 MHz / Mem 5'764) | 4'733 | 87.92 % |
| ASUS EAH6950 | 4'606 | 85.57 % |
| more is better | ||
| 3DMark 11 GPU | Score | Percent |
| ASUS ENGTX 580 (GPU 966MHz / MEM 1166MHz) | 6'679 | 117.24 % |
| ASUS ENGTX 580 | 5'697 | 100.00 % |
| ASUS EAH6950 (GPU 986 MHz / Mem 5'764) | 4'641 | 81.46 % |
| ASUS EAH6950 | 4'108 | 72.11 % |
| more is better | ||
| 3DMark Vantage | Score | Percent |
| ASUS ENGTX 580 (936MHz / MEM 1140MHz) | 29'090 | 190.11 % |
| ASUS ENGTX 580 | 26'788 | 173.50 % |
| ASUS EAH6950 (GPU 986 MHz / Mem 5'764) | 17'873 | 116.81 % |
| ASUS EAH6950 | 17'485 | 125.81 % |
| ASUS EAH6850 DirectCU OC (GPU 1000MHz / MEM 1177MHz) | 15'439 | 100.90% |
| ASUS EAH6850 DirectCU | 15'301 | 100.00 % |
| more is better | ||
| 3DMark Vantage GPU | Score | Percent |
| ASUS ENGTX 580 (936MHz / MEM 1140MHz) | 25'188 | 169.43 % |
| ASUS ENGTX 580 | 23'628 | 158.93 % |
| ASUS EAH6950 (GPU 986 MHz / Mem 5'764) | 18'284 | 122.99 % |
| ASUS EAH6950 | 17'679 | 134.57 % |
| ASUS EAH6850 DirectCU OC (GPU 790MHz / MEM 1000MHz) | 16'672 | 112.14% |
| ASUS EAH6850 DirectCU | 14'866 | 100.00 % |
| more is better | ||
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Test conditions
Hardware
| OS and Drivers |
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| Mainboard |
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| CPUs |
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| Memory |
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| Graphic Cards |
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| HDD |
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| PSU |
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Software
Futuremark
- 3DMark 11
- Performance
- 3DMark Vantage
- Performance
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
| High | |
| API | DX11 |
| Stereo 3D | Disabled |
| Shaders | High |
| Tessellation | Extreme |
| Anisotropy | 16 |
| Anti-aliasing | 8x |
| Full Screen | Yes |
| Resolution | 1920x1080 |
Stone Giant
| High | |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Aspect | Auto |
| Tessellation | High |
| Window Mode | No |
World in Conflict
| High | |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Graphic Detail | very high |
| Antialiasing | 8x |
| Anisotropic Texture Filtering | 16x |
Resident Evil 5 DX10
| High | |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Anzeigen-Modus | Vollbild |
| Vertikalfrequenz | 60 Hz |
| Vertikal Sync | Nein |
| Bildwiederholrate | Variabel |
| Antialiasing | 8x |
| Anisotropic Texture Filtering | 16x |
| Motion Blur | Ja |
| Schatten Details | Hoch |
| Textur Details | Hoch |
| Gesamtqualität | Hoch |
Crysis DX10
| High | |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Quality Settings | very high |
| Antialiasing | 16xQ |
| Demo Loops | 3 |
| Time of day | 9 |
| Timedemo | benchmark_gpu |
| 64 bit | yes |
| DX10 | yes |
Call of Juarez
| High | |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Fullscreen | yes |
| Details | High |
| Shadowmap size | 2048x2048 |
| Shadows quality | High |
| Antialiasing | 4x SSAA |
| Audio | disabled |
Far Cry 2 DX10
| High | |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Antialiasing | 8x |
| Direct3D | 10 |
| Fire | very high |
| Physics | very high |
| Real Trees | very high |
| Overall Quality | custom |
| Vegetation | very high |
| Shading | ultra high |
| Terrain | ultra high |
| Geometry | ultra high |
| Post FX | high |
| Texture | ultra high |
| Ambient | high |
| HDR | yes |
| Shadow | ultra high |
| Bloom | yes |
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3DMark 11
3DMark 11 is Futuremarks latest benchmark for the entire graphical subsystem. The benchmark uses DirectX 11 and it supports all recent features which can possibly generate high load on a GPU. Therefore you find tessellation, compute shader calculations, divers lighting effects and different depth of filed animations. Following we publish values regarding the performance preset of 3DMark 11.
| 3DMark 11 Total | Score | Percent |
| ASUS ENGTX 580 | 5'383 | 150.49 % |
| ASUS EAH6950 | 4'606 | 128.77 % |
| Gigabyte GTX460 | 3'754 | 104.95 % |
| ASUS EAH6850 | 3'577 | 100.00 % |
| more is better | ||
| 3DMark 11 GPU | Score | Percent |
| ASUS ENGTX 580 | 5'697 | 170.82 % |
| ASUS EAH6950 | 4'108 | 123.18 % |
| Gigabyte GTX460 | 3'562 | 106.81 % |
| ASUS EAH6850 | 3'335 | 100.00 % |
| more is better | ||
3DMark Vantage
3DMark Vantage is able to squeeze nearly everything out of a recent system. Therefore the feature liste is also pretty long: DirectX10, FP16-HDR, motion blur, parallax occlusion mapping, GPU-physics simulation and different shader effects are being used to even make recent high-end systems struggle.| 3DMark Vantage | Score | Percent |
| ASUS ENGTX 580 | 26'788 | 192.74 % |
| ASUS ARES 5870X2 2DIS 4GD5 | 22'496 | 161.86 % |
| ZOTAC GTX 285 SLI | 19'441 | 139.88 % |
| ASUS EAH5970 | 18'895 | 135.95 % |
| Gigabyte HD5870 Super Overclock | 18'244 | 131.27 % |
| MSI HD 5870 Lightning | 17'732 | 127.58 % |
| ASUS EAH6950 | 17'485 | 125.81 % |
| ASUS GTX 470 | 16'730 | 120.37 % |
| ASUS EAH5870 | 16'056 | 115.52 % |
| ASUS EAH6850 DirectCU | 15'301 | 110.09 % |
| ASUS EAH5850 | 13'898 | 100.00 % |
| ASUS GTX285 Matrix | 13'047 | 93.87 % |
| MSI GTX 275 Lightning | 12'323 | 88.09 % |
| more is better | ||
| 3DMark Vantage GPU | Score | Percent |
| ASUS ARES 5870X2 2DIS 4GD5 | 25'544 | 194.44 % |
| ASUS ENGTX 580 | 23'628 | 179.85 % |
| ZOTAC GTX 285 SLI | 20'715 | 157.68 % |
| ASUS EAH5970 | 19'789 | 150.63 % |
| Gigabyte HD5870 Super Overclock | 18'745 | 142.68 % |
| MSI HD 5870 Lightning | 18'095 | 137.74 % |
| ASUS EAH6950 | 17'679 | 134.57 % |
| ASUS EAH5870 | 15'858 | 120.71 % |
| ASUS EAH6850 DirectCU | 14'866 | 113.16 % |
| ASUS GTX 470 | 13'753 | 104.68 % |
| ASUS EAH5850 | 13'137 | 100.00 % |
| ASUS GTX285 Matrix | 12'156 | 92.53 % |
| MSI GTX 275 Lightning | 11'337 | 86.29 % |
| more is better | ||
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Unigine Heaven
| Unigine Heaven | Score | Percent |
| ASUS ENGTX 580 | 812 | 230.03 % |
| ASUS EAH6950 | 583 | 165.16 % |
| ASUS EAH6850 | 353 | 100.00 % |
| more is better | ||
| Unigine Heaven | Average | Percent |
| ASUS ENGTX 580 | 32.2 fps | 230.00 % |
| ASUS EAH6950 | 23.1 fps | 165.00 % |
| ASUS EAH6850 | 14.0 fps | 100.00 % |
| more is better | ||
Stone Giant
| Stone Giant | Average | Percent |
| ASUS ENGTX 580 | 86 fps | 277.42 % |
| ASUS EAH6950 | 44 fps | 141.94 % |
| ASUS EAH6850 | 31 fps | 100.00 % |
| more is better | ||
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World in Conflict
| World in Conflict, 1920 x 1080, high details, 8xAA 16xAF | Average | Percent |
| ASUS ARES 5870X2 2DIS 4GD5 | 106 fps | 179.66 % |
| ASUS EAH5970 | 77 fps | 130.50 % |
| ASUS ENGTX 580 | 77 fps | 130.50 % |
| ASUS GTX 470 | 76 fps | 128.80 % |
| Gigabyte HD5870 Super Overclock | 72 fps | 122.03 % |
| MSI HD 5870 Lightning | 69 fps | 116.94 % |
| ZOTAC GTX 285 SLI | 69 fps | 116.94 % |
| ASUS EAH6950 | 61 fps | 103.39 % |
| ASUS EAH5870 | 59 fps | 100.00 % |
| ASUS EAH5850 | 59 fps | 100.00 % |
| ASUS EAH6850 DirectCU | 57 fps | 96.61 % |
| ASUS GTX285 Matrix | 56 fps | 94.91 % |
| MSI GTX 275 Lightning | 50 fps | 84.74 % |
| more is better | ||
Resident Evil 5
Resident Evil uses nearly every modern rendering technology: HDR, Hemisphere Lighting, Soft Shadows, Soft Particles, Field- und Motion-Blur oder auch Alpha to Coverage and static Ambient Occlusion. Furthermore Resident Evil 5 has been optimized for multicore architectures and already comes DirectX11 ready. By using the DirectX9 as well as the DirectX10 benchmark we can again show you CPU-scaling with low resolutions and the compared to the CPU overproportional influence of the graphics card at high resolutions.| Resident Evil 5, 1920 x 1080, high details, 8xAA 16xAF | Average | Percent |
| ASUS ARES 5870X2 2DIS 4GD5 | 123.20 fps | 128.60 % |
| ASUS EAH5970 | 119.50 fps | 124.73 % |
| ZOTAC GTX 285 SLI | 108.60 fps | 113.36 % |
| ASUS ENGTX 580 | 107.30 fps | 112.00 % |
| ASUS EAH6950 | 105.70 fps | 110.33 % |
| Gigabyte HD5870 Super Overclock | 105.00 fps | 109.60 % |
| MSI HD 5870 Lightning | 104.30 fps | 108.87 % |
| ASUS EAH5870 | 97.20 fps | 101.46 % |
| ASUS EAH5850 | 95.80 fps | 100.00 % |
| ASUS EAH6850 DirectCU | 93.30 fps | 97.39 % |
| ASUS GTX 470 | 90.30 fps | 94.25 % |
| ASUS GTX285 Matrix | 75.00 fps | 78.28 % |
| MSI GTX 275 Lightning | 62.40 fps | 65.13 % |
| more is better | ||
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Call of Juarez
| Call of Juarez, 1920 x 1080, high details, 4xSSAA | Average | Percent |
| ASUS ARES 5870X2 2DIS 4GD5 | 72.80 fps | 182.91 % |
| ASUS EAH5970 | 53.60 fps | 134.67 % |
| ASUS ENGTX 580 | 52.40 fps | 131.65 % |
| Gigabyte HD5870 Super Overclock | 43.20 fps | 108.54 % |
| MSI HD 5870 Lightning | 42.50 fps | 106.78 % |
| ASUS EAH5870 | 41.90 fps | 105.27 % |
| ASUS EAH5850 | 39.80 fps | 100.00 % |
| ASUS EAH6950 | 39.50 fps | 99.25 % |
| ASUS EAH6850 DirectCU | 32.10 fps | 80.65 % |
| ZOTAC GTX 285 SLI | 38.80 fps | 97.48 % |
| ASUS GTX285 Matrix | 34.60 fps | 86.93 % |
| ASUS GTX 470 | 34.20 fps | 85.92 % |
| MSI GTX 275 Lightning | 28.50 fps | 71.60 % |
| more is better | ||
Far Cry 2
| Far Cry 2, 1920 x 1080, high details, 8xAA | Average | Percent |
| ASUS ENGTX 580 | 98.36 fps | 185.86 % |
| ASUS ARES 5870X2 2DIS 4GD5 | 91.87 fps | 173.60 % |
| ZOTAC GTX 285 SLI | 84.49 fps | 159.65 % |
| ASUS EAH5970 | 80.35 fps | 153.48 % |
| ASUS EAH6950 | 71.40 fps | 134.92 % |
| ASUS GTX 470 | 64.51 fps | 121.90 % |
| Gigabyte HD5870 Super Overclock | 59.21 fps | 111.88 % |
| MSI HD 5870 Lightning | 55.66 fps | 105.17 % |
| ASUS EAH5870 | 54.99 fps | 103.91 % |
| ASUS EAH6850 DirectCU | 54.14 fps | 102.30 % |
| ASUS EAH5850 | 52.92 fps | 100.00 % |
| ASUS GTX285 Matrix | 49.69 fps | 93.89 % |
| MSI GTX 275 Lightning | 42.31 fps | 79.95 % |
| more is better | ||
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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
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