Tom's Hardware review of 6970M/6970M Xfire

It's not an Alienware but rather a Clevo X7200: AMD's Mobility Radeon HD 6970 In CrossFire On Eurocom's Panther : AMD Attacks On the Mobile Front


For those curious about how the performance stacks up against a fully loaded M17x-R2/Clevo X8100 with 5870M Xfire: Benchmark Results: Modern Warfare 2 And Crysis : Alienware's M17x: Mobility Radeon HD 5870 CrossFire Is A Go In this review Tom's noted Dell's driver was holding it back in some benchmarks so I'll be substituting X8100 benchmarks when needed since both machines are nearly identical hardware wise.

I'll give a quick breakdown of relevant benchmarks. Keep in mind the X7200 has a much faster CPU than the 920xm so it does play a role in some of the fps differences. Also the drivers are much newer in the 6970M review so that also factors in:

Call of Duty MW2@1080p, No AA:4xAA
X7200 + 6970M Single: 98 fps:77.4 fps
X7200 + 6970M Xfire:135.8 fps:123.8 fps
M17x-R2 + 5870m Xfire: 123.2 fps: 97.6 fps

Crysis @1080p, High detail & no AA:Very High Detail & 4xAA
X7200 + 6970M Single: 42.4fps:24.4 fps
X7200 + 6970M Xfire:55 fps:43.7 fps
M17x-R2 + 5870m xfire: 46.5 fps:26.9

Dirt 2@1080p, High quality, noAA:Ultra quality, 4xMSAA
X7200 + 6970M Single: 60.2 fps:49.4 fps
X7200 + 6970M Xfire: 103.7 fps:86.2 fps
Clevo X8100 + 5870m xfire: 72.3 fps: 55.7 fps

Stalker: Call of Pripyat@1080p, high preset, no AA:ultra preset 4xAA
X7200 + 6970M: 66.6 fps:35.6 fps
X7200 + 6970M Xfire: 113.8 fps:69.0 fps
X8100 + 5870M Xfire:79.3:39.8 fps


You can tell that at high resolution + AA, the extra ram in the 6970M is helping with the frame buffer and you get some nice gains.

 

Is Tom's hardware really that trust worthy? I have seen several questionable reviews in the past specially when it comes to nvidia / AMD.

On a sidenote, the crossfires 5870M hold up surprisingly well to a single 6970M.

 

Well they aren't the greatest place to get reviews but unfortunately the number of places that review systems like this is next to nothing. Even NBR is lagging big time.

 

Cool review

Its good to see some stuff and stats about new hardware.
Nice comparison.
THanks for the heads up.

Cheers.

 

Well I'm waiting for the 6970 for the R3. So you think with those statistics I can run most to all games at native resolution? 1080p

 

^^
you can actually run most games on 1200p on the R2 with 5870s.

 

i think the 6970M Xfire have amazing improvements compared to 5870xfire,
I hope they work with the R2...

 

A note:

look at the picture
The card is likely a preproduction sample which means it's performance may differ from the final units.

 

Cool the single card owns the older Xfire in my book. Less heat, less wattage and still comparable frames.

 

Considering the 6970m has 960 shaders and 5870CFX has 1600,and it still shows some comparable FPS,I would say 6970m is definitely a win and great improvement over the old GPUs!

 

The 6970M is an amazing upgrade. Much better than when going to the 5870M from the 4870M. This just confirms that the 6970M is about 10% slower than crossfire 5870M in most games which is very good.

 

Hope this thing fits in the M15x. :O

 

When the card gets finalized I expect its performance to be 30% above the 470M and slightly faster than the 485M. The tested laptop didn't have a proper firmware and drivers to show the true potential of the card.

 

any educated guesses if they will fit in the R2? Would be a nice final upgrade path.

 

That 256 bit bus is very tasty indeed thank you

 

As Joker has mentioned, the CPU difference is quite big. It's not directly comparable if you just look at graphic cards. High-end Clevo machines have desktop (Core i7?) CPUs.

 

nice..at least AMD is not renaming the High end Cards

 

Lets just say, I'm very interested in seeing how these end up in terms of power consumption and heat output. If they're about equal with the 5870m, I'll definately be investigating the possibility of getting hold of 6970ms and upgrading my 5870s, providing they're obtainable, the price isnt prohibitive, and crossfire works

An extra 33% or so GPU performance isn't to be sniffed at, especially as I'd imagine there'd be some demand for the 5870's as standalone MXM cards.

It'd certainly be a nice upgrade path

 

I was sorta surprised, to see the 6970M basically match the 5870 XF in Crysis @ 1080p w/ 4x AA.

At 1/2 the cost of the 485M, it's a great chip.

It's time for some dedicated 485M vs 6970M tests.

 

Yeah, if the crossfire issues are worked out (I'm not convinced Crossfire was working properly in Tom's testing with those drivers, or the current X7200 bios, because of how many times the single card was faster than the dual setup which hasn't been my experience with crossfire 5870ms) I'm pretty excited about the potential here.

Unless you need Nvidia only features the suspected cost difference does make Nvidia's line up look a little...redundant.

 

I just hope they fit into the R2. That would be a very nice option in a year or two....

 

6970Ms have close to 100W TDP, for each one. That doesn't mean they have no chance at being in the R2, though.

 

Whoops, I did, typo!
I've fixed that now

If crossfire appears though, I'll definately be looking at it!

 

As you suggested in the ATI 6000 thread, if we're going to throw out AMD's ruler and use Nvidia's then logically:

if
-HD6970M draws about the same power as the GTX 470M

and
-Nvidia rates GTX 470M's GPU as having a 50W TDP

then
-HD6970M's GPU must have a ~50W TDP.

 

TDP is not equal as power draw

 

Depends on who's measuring.

 

so the mobile 6970 is based off a desktop 6870/6850 is that correct?

 

depends on what you want to sell, this is the way I see it

 

6970m sounds amazing, I just hope somehow that Dell enables this card to be compatible with the M15x and M17x r2 BIOS. I know they won't, but an upgrade like this is tough to miss out on.

 

a single of these little bugger kick my dual 4850 in the nuts its almost time to upgrade

well ill do it when i begin having issue with runing a game at maxed setting

 

It's a downclocked 6850.

 

^^ A very little downclock