R3: Aftermarket 6990 from 6970

Hey all, I have a few questions... I'm just wondering whether it's be worth it to upgrade my 6970m to a 6990m. Anyone who's had both, maybe you could shed some light on performance differences?

As for the process... I know there's 6990m's on E-Bay. I know there's lots of threads about upgrades around here, but I haven't seen many about going from a 6970 to a 6990 in an R3 specifically. Are they any issues to be aware of? For instance, will audio over HDMI still work? Is it at all possible to buy the card directly from Dell?

And lastly... how's the value of the 6970m these days? In a perfect world I'd like to get a 6990, have a decent performance bump, not have any major compatibility issues, and sell the 6970 to offset the costs.

Thanks for any and all input everyone

 

Not worth it. Your are better off overclocking. The only difference between the cards is the 6990 has more shaders and a higher default clock. You won't gain anything buy upgrading.

Sent from my Samsung Captivate/ICS using Tapatalk.

 

hell no. after going from 6970s to 6990s, theres no point.

 

Yeah, that's kind of what I figured. Thanks for talking some sense into me

Hey Zero989, sounds like you had (have?) an OC'd 6970M. What kind of performance gains did you realize? And any quick thoughts on how you did the OC? I'm assuming a good re-paste and all that.

 

Well as for someone who has had both i thought the 6990m was alot better than the 6970m. Yea u could overclock but then again you can overclock the 6990m as well. Most games got 10-15fps higher. The witcher 2 with the 6970m oced i could only play at 900p ultra settings ubersamblind off. When i tried it on 1080p only got 20-25fps. With the 6990m oced at 1080p im getting 30-45fps. Same with crysis 2 high res textures and direct x 11. Persoanlly its the directx 11 features and antialaising that is better on the 6990m. Well thats my input.

 

6990m all the way.

Even I started off with a 6970.

 

you'd have to overclock a 6970 ~20% to reach stock 6990 performance

so its doable...however, my opinion is that if you need it, then get the upgrade, if you can make do for the time being, wait for the 7900 series which should be here in late August because those cards are worthy of an upgrade

 

So you did a replacement? Might I ask how that went? Which 6990 did you use, any problems, etc.

That's a good point! I've kind of forgotten those were coming. D'oh.

 

and what I read from Clevo subforum is that new cards will be compatible with our hardware

 

bro, start saving now...i see a 680m in your future lol...unless the 7990m's are better

 

Dell tech came and replaced it for me.

The install went fine.

Dell 6990m was used with new heatsink, and no problems whatsoever.

 

Really? Were you able to buy the card directly from Dell as an upgrade? Or was the card replaced for another reason?

 

Hey cheesy i bought the 6990m off ebay brand new and used the heatsink from my 6970m and the install was easy and fast. Install the card, do a power drain and start it up. U will get some beeps then restart it and it will start right up using the 6970m drivers. Then install the 6990m driver from dell over it and ur good. I did the install myself so if u have any questions let me know.

 

as an upgrade... but it took me a fair bit of convincing and I had to show them some green.

 

cheesy, it's just not worth it.
say around a 10% increase at worst, and a 20% increase at best.

in reality if a game is running crap on a 6970, the 6990 will not do much better.
at crap fps that most likely 2 - 4 fps at most.

wait for the newer series and then spend the $ on an upgrade that's worth it.

look at the upgrade from the 5870m to the 6970m. it is practically double the performance. with the nvidia route, the 680m will not be cheap, but i'm sure it will be damn fast. with the newer architecture, may even be cooler too.
many reasons to hold out a bit more and get it at the beginning of it's life cycle as king.

 

xeroxide...right now they are saying the 680m is a rebadged 580m with slightly higher cuda cores, so it may not be worth it either but we shall see when they actually get hands on and benchmarks going.

 

Thanks for all the input guys, I really appreciate it

 

rebadged or not, the performance gain is certainly worth the wait (imo)

 

really? Then the 680m isn't a true kepler built on 22nm process? interesting...

I'm hoping the 7900s will be based on a smaller manufacturing process, hence cooler and less power hungry.

 

not quite, it's said that the 670m is based on the fermi core, the 640/50/60/80 will be based on the new kepler chip.

more details here with screenshots confirming the use of the new 28nm chip.

only time will tell the validity of these sources, but it's exciting none-the-less.