AMD Radeon HD 6970: specs and benchmarks

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Summary

AMD started Radeon HD 6970 sales 14 December 2010 at a recommended price of $369 . This is a desktop graphics card based on a Terascale 2 architecture and made with 40 nm manufacturing process. It is primarily aimed at gamer market. 2 GB of DDR5 memory clocked at 1.38 GHz are supplied, and together with 256 Bit memory interface this creates a bandwidth of .

Compatibility-wise, this is dual-slot card attached via PCIe 2.0 x16 interface. Its manufacturer default version has a length of 267 mm. One 6-pin and one 8-pin connectors are required, and power consumption is at 550 Watt.

It provides poor gaming and benchmark performance at 7.32% of a leader's which is NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.

RTX 4090GeForce RTX4090
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General info

Some basic facts about Radeon HD 6970: architecture, market segment, release date etc.

Place in performance ranking501
Place by popularitynot in top-100
Value for money1.04
ArchitectureTerascale 2 (2009−2015)
GPU code nameCayman
Market segmentDesktop
Designreference
Release date14 December 2010 (13 years old)
Launch price (MSRP)$369
Current price$189 (0.5x MSRP)of 168889 (A100 PCIe 80 GB)
Value for money

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

Technical specs

Radeon HD 6970's specs such as number of shaders, GPU base clock, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. These parameters indirectly speak of Radeon HD 6970's performance, but for precise assessment you have to consider its benchmark and gaming test results.

Pipelines / CUDA cores1536of 20480 (Data Center GPU Max NEXT)
Boost clock speed880 MHzof 3599 (Radeon RX 7990 XTX)
Number of transistors2,640 millionof 14400 (GeForce GTX 1070 SLI Mobile)
Manufacturing process technology40 nmof 4 (GeForce RTX 4080)
Power consumption (TDP)550 Wattof 2400 (Data Center GPU Max Subsystem)
Texture fill rate84.48of 969.9 (H100 SXM5 96 GB)
Floating-point performance2,703.4 gflopsof 16384 (Radeon Pro Duo)

Size and compatibility

This section provides details about the physical dimensions of Radeon HD 6970 and its compatibility with other computer components. This information is useful when selecting a computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards, it includes details about the interface and bus (for motherboard compatibility) and additional power connectors (for power supply compatibility).

Bus supportPCIe 2.0 x16
InterfacePCIe 2.0 x16
Length267 mm
Width2-slot
Supplementary power connectors1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin

Memory

Parameters of memory installed on Radeon HD 6970: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Note that GPUs integrated into processors have no dedicated memory and use a shared part of system RAM instead.

Memory typeDDR5
Maximum RAM amount2 GBof 192 (Radeon Instinct MI300X)
Memory bus width256 Bitof 19000 (GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB)
Memory clock speed1375 MHzof 23000 (GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER)

Video outputs and ports

Types and number of video connectors present on Radeon HD 6970. As a rule, this section is relevant only for desktop reference graphics cards, since for notebook ones the availability of certain video outputs depends on the laptop model, while non-reference desktop models can (though not necessarily will) bear a different set of video ports.

Display Connectors2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort
Eyefinity1
HDMI+
DisplayPort support-

Technologies

Technological solutions and APIs supported by Radeon HD 6970. You'll probably need this information if you need some particular technology for your purposes.

AppAcceleration-
CrossFire1
Enduro-
HD3D-
PowerTune-
TrueAudio-
ZeroCore-

API support

APIs supported by Radeon HD 6970, sometimes including their particular versions.

DirectXDirectX® 11
Shader Model5.0
OpenGL4.4of 4.6 (GeForce RTX 4090)
OpenCL1.2
Mantle-

Benchmark performance

Synthetic benchmark performance of Radeon HD 6970. The combined score is measured on a 0-100 point scale.


Combined synthetic benchmark score

This is our combined benchmark performance score. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.

HD 6970 7.32

Passmark

This is the most ubiquitous GPU benchmark, part of Passmark PerformanceTest suite. It gives the graphics card a thorough evaluation under various types of load, providing four separate benchmarks for Direct3D versions 9, 10, 11 and 12 (the last being done in 4K resolution if possible), and few more tests engaging DirectCompute capabilities.

Benchmark coverage: 25%

HD 6970 2836

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics

Fire Strike is a DirectX 11 benchmark for gaming PCs. It features two separate tests displaying a fight between a humanoid and a fiery creature made of lava. Using 1920x1080 resolution, Fire Strike shows off some realistic graphics and is quite taxing on hardware.

Benchmark coverage: 14%

HD 6970 3470

Gaming performance

Let's see how good Radeon HD 6970 is for gaming. Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in frames per second. Comparisons with game system requirements are included, but remember that sometimes official requirements may reflect reality inaccurately.

Performance in popular games

Full HD
Low Preset

Cyberpunk 2077 12−14

Full HD
Medium Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 14−16
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 10−11
Battlefield 5 24−27
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 21−24
Cyberpunk 2077 12−14
Far Cry 5 16−18
Far Cry New Dawn 18−20
Forza Horizon 4 24−27
Hitman 3 18−20
Horizon Zero Dawn 14−16
Red Dead Redemption 2 12−14
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 16−18
Watch Dogs: Legion 12−14

Full HD
High Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 14−16
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 10−11
Battlefield 5 24−27
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 21−24
Cyberpunk 2077 12−14
Far Cry 5 16−18
Far Cry New Dawn 18−20
Forza Horizon 4 24−27
Hitman 3 18−20
Horizon Zero Dawn 14−16
Metro Exodus 10−12
Red Dead Redemption 2 12−14
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 16−18
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 14−16
Watch Dogs: Legion 12−14

Full HD
Ultra Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 14−16
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 10−11
Battlefield 5 24−27
Cyberpunk 2077 12−14
Far Cry 5 16−18
Far Cry New Dawn 18−20
Forza Horizon 4 24−27
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 14−16
Watch Dogs: Legion 12−14

1440p
High Preset

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 10−12
Hitman 3 12−14
Horizon Zero Dawn 12−14
Metro Exodus 5−6
Red Dead Redemption 2 5−6
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 10−11

1440p
Ultra Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 6−7
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 2−3
Battlefield 5 8−9
Cyberpunk 2077 3−4
Far Cry 5 10−12
Far Cry New Dawn 10−11
Forza Horizon 4 12−14
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 7−8
Watch Dogs: Legion 2−3

4K
High Preset

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 5−6
Hitman 3 7−8
Horizon Zero Dawn 8−9
Metro Exodus 1−2
Red Dead Redemption 2 4−5
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 3−4
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 4−5

4K
Ultra Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 4−5
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 3−4
Battlefield 5 4−5
Cyberpunk 2077 1−2
Far Cry 5 6−7
Far Cry New Dawn 9−10
Forza Horizon 4 8−9
Watch Dogs: Legion 2−3

Relative perfomance

Radeon HD 6970's performance compared to nearest competitors among desktop video cards.


NVIDIA equivalent

According to our data, the closest NVIDIA alternative to Radeon HD 6970 is GeForce GTX 560, which is slower by 4% and lower by 11 positions in our ranking.

GTX 560GeForce GTX560
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Here are some closest NVIDIA rivals to Radeon HD 6970:

Similar GPUs

Here is our recommendation of several graphics cards that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.

GTX 560 TiGeForce GTX560 Ti
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GTX 470GeForce GTX470
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GTX 590GeForce GTX590
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HD 6870Radeon HD6870
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HD 7770Radeon HD7770
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ATI HD 5850Radeon HD5850
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Recommended processors

These processors are most commonly used with Radeon HD 6970 according to our statistics.

User ratings: view and submit

Here you can see the user rating of the graphics card, as well as rate it yourself.


3.7 148 votes

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Questions and comments

Here you can ask a question about Radeon HD 6970, agree or disagree with our judgements, or report an error or mismatch.