AMD 6970 vs AMD 6970 CF

Hi everyone,

Not sure if someone else has already posted this, apologies if they have but I was wondering what the difference is between the two and which one am I getting on a MALIBAL ordered P150hm

According to anandtech, there seems to be quite a difference between the performance of the two.

 

1. 6970M CF is just two 6970M's linked by CrossFire. For games that support CrossFire, you will see 2x the performance from a single 6970M since well, you are running two 6970M GPU's at a time vs. one 6970M.

2. The MALIBAL P150HM can't do CrossFire. It only has room for one GPU. I think only the D900 series Clevos and the M18x Alienwares can do CrossFire.

 

D900 is an older generation. X7200 is XFire/SLi capable with a desktop cpu.

 

Derp didn't know that. Thanks! +Rep.

 

In my country you get your hand chopped off for that, you too op. Lol I like how he says, apperently there is a major difference in performance between the two.

Also its not double its closer to 50%, because you would need to double all of the comonents speed and bandwidth to achieve that.

 

I think what I meant is double in terms of that you get two cards' of power over one card's of power so twice the performance you get from a single. You are talking in percents which makes sense. 100% will yield more like a quad setup.

Either way, I am not really an expert on Sagers/Clevos so give me a break! The OP should know this though since he brought one!

 

Crossfire AMD GPUs does scale quite good, so i think it would be more than 50% boost over a single AMD Radeon HD 6970m.
6970m also does mad OCing if you got the cooling required.

Both SLI and Crossfire has some issues with games that doesent natively take advantage of multi GPU systems, and that might cause microstuttering ect.
Just keep it safe and use 1 card so you dont need to replace the notebook either.

 

I think the boost is dependent on the specific utility (game, video rendering, etc.) rather than a fixed value, no?

 

Wait... I get my hands chopped off for what now? @_@

Thanks for the quick reply guys. Didn't know CF meant cross fire.

 

That is correct.
Multi GPU users need to keep their Catalyst Application Profiles updated.

I cant link it right now cause im typing from a phone, but Toms Hardware did a multi gpu test not too long ago and the desktop HD 6950 increased on average of 78% when paired with a second card on 1680x1050.
The same setup with dual GTX 570 got a 58% increase.
Upping the resolution increased the Crossfire scaling even more.
Nvidias SLI did the same but not as good.

Still this would not mean that the mobility cards would do the same, but most modern games can benefit from multi GPU setups.

 

if you have the extra money its worth it, other then that your better off running two older boards CF then one 6970

 

The scaling of the 6970m is close to 100%, the 6990m as well.

Dunno about nvidia gtx 485m or the gtx 580m

 

AnandTech - AVADirect's Clevo X7200 Redux: AMD 6970M CF Takes the Crown

The real subject of our review today is the AMD Radeon HD 6970M, specifically in CrossFire, and this is a big winner. After a long dry spell of mobile graphics having a very hard time catching up with their desktop counterparts, the 6970M at least makes a decent stride towards closing the gap. AMD's much improved CrossFire scaling pays off in spades here, too: generally you'll get close to 100% performance improvement with the second GPU (at least at higher quality settings), and that's outstanding.

This is 2011 guys, not 2006. Also mobile GPUs being less powerful than desktop cards, they have more to gain as there are bottlenecks that eventually kick in, but they usually come knocking around 2xGTX580 levels.

 

muhahaha that just makes me laugh. anyways yes i do agree that amd scaling is a bit better than that which nvidia provides.

and yes the 6970m is very overclockable, but my BAMF is as well. right now im running a 27% core/shader overlock, and a 23% memory overclock, so its not too bad on my machine.

 

The only sneaky advantage the 580M got was access to higher core voltages in the bios (beyond the chip tweaks).

But I would not mind a "BAMF" of my own lol.

 

yes my bamf is quite nice, espescially since the clocks are so stable, for running bc2.

 

You're right, AMD worked hard on improving scaling on the 69xx series, and a lot of people have seen near double the performance with two cards in CF.

 

Not exactly. I worked the ratios of the benchmarked games. Close to 100% improved performance was like for 50% of the games, the rest was average like 75% or so. Its better to look at the data that take the conclusions at a face value. Yes, were are not in 2006 where the majority of games were benefited by SLI/CF only 20% average, but still today the 100% mark has not been reached.

So, are those benchmarks good? Definitely, no doubt about it (but no 100% )

 

Yes it's not always 100%, there are games where it is CPU limited lol.

 

Do you know of any games where this happens? Is that even mentioned in any CF/SLI reviews? (no sarcasms here, I really don't know about it).

 

Well Starcraft 2 for one and left 4 dead 2.

Basically look at the benchmarks, if the framerate hardly drops when increasing the details (such as the 1600x900 0xaa to 1920x1080 4xaa in the benchmarks) then its a good sign of CPU bottlenecks.

 

You're right, I forgot about that . Thanks for pointing it out.