Asus EAH6970 Overclock Edition
Asus has done a couple of interesting
things with the EAH6970 Overclock
Edition. The EAH6970 OE is
based on the AMD reference design,
but Asus has tweaked the GPU clock
by 10MHz and integrated a thin, aluminum
cover over the fan shroud, in
lieu of a basic decal. Asus claims the
aluminum cover helps dissipate heat
more evenly, but since it’s affixed to
a thick plastic shroud, the effects on
temperatures are minimal.
In an atypical move for Asus, the
company’s EAH6970 Overclock Edition
ships with a standard accessory
bundle. Accompanying the card,
users will find only a driver/utility
disc, a basic installation guide, Cross-
Fire bridge connector, and a single
power adapter that converts a pair of
6-pin PCI-E connectors into a single
8-pin connector. We should point
out, however, that the utility CD does
include a copy of Asus’ proprietary
Smart Doctor tool, which gives users
the ability to tweak voltages and
further overclock their card.
At $379.99, the Asus EAH6970
OE is only $10 more than the stock
VisionTek and XFX cards, yet it offers
a factory overclock, manufacturersanctioned
voltage tweaks, and a
slightly modded cooler. We wish the
bundle had a few more accoutrements,
but we can’t really complain in light of
the competition.
things with the EAH6970 Overclock
Edition. The EAH6970 OE is
based on the AMD reference design,
but Asus has tweaked the GPU clock
by 10MHz and integrated a thin, aluminum
cover over the fan shroud, in
lieu of a basic decal. Asus claims the
aluminum cover helps dissipate heat
more evenly, but since it’s affixed to
a thick plastic shroud, the effects on
temperatures are minimal.
In an atypical move for Asus, the
company’s EAH6970 Overclock Edition
ships with a standard accessory
bundle. Accompanying the card,
users will find only a driver/utility
disc, a basic installation guide, Cross-
Fire bridge connector, and a single
power adapter that converts a pair of
6-pin PCI-E connectors into a single
8-pin connector. We should point
out, however, that the utility CD does
include a copy of Asus’ proprietary
Smart Doctor tool, which gives users
the ability to tweak voltages and
further overclock their card.
At $379.99, the Asus EAH6970
OE is only $10 more than the stock
VisionTek and XFX cards, yet it offers
a factory overclock, manufacturersanctioned
voltage tweaks, and a
slightly modded cooler. We wish the
bundle had a few more accoutrements,
but we can’t really complain in light of
the competition.
 |
| EAH6970 Overclock Edition $379.99 ASUS Add to Cart |
Sapphire HD6950
Short of its Sapphire branding
and custom fan shroud decal, there’s
nothing to separate Sapphire’s Radeon
HD 6950 from a straight-up reference
card: It adheres to AMD’s reference
specifications in every way. Sapphire,
however, goes the extra mile with
the accessory bundle in an attempt
to differentiate its card from competing
offerings.
Sapphire bundles a nice assortment
of goodies with its Radeon HD
6950. In the box are a user’s manual
and driver and utility disc, a case
badge, and a coupon for the
Sapphire Select Club,
which grants members
access to five
free promotional
downloads per year,
automatic RMA
registration, and
entries into Sapphire’s
contests and giveaways.
Along with the aforementioned
items, an HDMI cable, mini-DP-to-DP
dongle, DVI-to-VGA adapter, dual PCI-E
power adapters (6-pin), and CrossFire
bridge connector are included, too.
There’s also a copy of Sapphire’s TriXX
tweaking utility bundled with the card,
for some easy overclocking.
For just under $300, the Sapphire
HD6950 is a solid graphics card.
 |
| Sapphire Technology HD6950 $283.99 Customer Review Add to Card |
Our Tour Of The Northern Islands
Looking over the results of our battery
of benchmarks, there are some
interesting aspects of performance
to consider. The most obvious is the
relatively large performance delta
separating the Radeon HD 6970 from
the 6950. Although both cards offer
strong performance, the additional
stream processors, texture units, and
higher clocks of the Radeon HD 6970
give it significant edge over the more
affordable 6950.
What’s also immediately evident
are the gains offered by the small
overclocks of the Asus, HIS, and MSI
cards. The HIS Radeon HD 6970
Fan Turbo was technically the fastest
card of the group due to its GPU and
memory frequency advantages over
the other 6970 cards, but its margins
of victory were correspondingly small.
The same can be said for the MSI
R6950 Twin Frozr II/OC. The MSI
card’s 10MHz edge in GPU frequency
over the Sapphire Radeon HD 6950
technically helped the MSI card to
outperform the Sapphire card across
the board, but the deltas separating the
two cards are tiny.
If you’re the type of user who doesn’t
like to manually overclock his graphics
card, we understand the appeal of a
factory-overclocked model, but the
takeaway from these results is that the
current crop of factory overclocked
cards simply doesn’t offer the kind of
performance improvements to warrant
the additional investment. Saving your
money and manually overclocking a
Radeon HD 6900 series card might
be the way to go. But then again, if
history teaches us anything, it’s that
these vendors will eventually introduce
Cayman-based cards with exceptional
overclocks, and those should be worth
waiting for.
Specs & Scores
XFX Radeon HIS Radeon HD VisionTek Radeon Asus EAH6970 Sapphire
HD 6970 6970 Fan Turbo HD6970 HD 6970 HD6950
Overclock Edition
Price $389.99 $399.99 $369.99 $379.99 $299.99
Core Clock
880MHz 900MHz 880MHz 890MHz 800MHz
Memory Clock
1,375MHz 1,400MHz 1,375MHz 1,375MHz 1,250MHz
Memory Interface
256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit
Memory
2GB GDDR5 2GB GDDR5 2GB GDDR5 2GB GDDR5 2GB GDDR5
3DMark11 (1,920x1,080, Extreme Preset)
OverallScore
1810 1814 1809 1811 1610
GPUScore
1625 1628 1626 1627 1441
Unigine Heaven v2.1
FPS 27.1 27.3 27.1 27.2 23.8
Score 683 684 682 683 600
Games 1,920 x 1,200
Left 4 Dead 2 (4XAA, 16XAF)
140.92 143.21 140.16 142.49 120.16
Just Cause 2 (4XAA, 16XAF)
72.29 72.97 72.1 72.43 65.12
Aliens vs. Predator (4XAA)
40.1 40.3 40.1 40.2 35.5
Games 2,560 x 1,600
Left 4 Dead 2 (4XAA, 16XAF)
100.36 103.1 99.97 102.64 83.41
Just Cause 2 (4XAA, 16XAF)
51.52 52.74 51.49 52.27 44.68
Aliens vs. Predator (4XAA)
25.1 25.2 25.1 25.1 22.3
Total System Power Consumption (watts)
Idle 156 157 156 158 154
Load 337 354 338 341 299
Tessellation and DoF enabled for Aliens vs. Predator tests. Bokeh Filter and GPU Water Simulation not available on AMD-based cards in Just Cause 2.
Article By Computer Power User Magazine
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