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Nvidia's sub-£300 GTX 570 is the yardstick by which the HD 6970 is going to be tested and, aside from the Metro 2033 scores and a few extra FPS in the AvP benchmark, the AMD card struggles to keep pace with the cheaper chip.
The other bad news is that the HD 6950, which is still largely comparative to the GTX 570 is also much cheaper than its big brother.
All these benchmarks were taken at 2560 x 1600, with 4x anti-aliasing. Our basic test bench remains an Intel Core i7-930 at 2.8GHz, Asus P6X58D-E motherboard and 6GB Corsair DDR3 at 1333MHz.
DirectX 11 Tessellation performance
Heaven: FPS – higher is better
HD 6970 – 21.7
HD 6950 – 19.5
GTX 570 – 22
DirectX 11 Gaming performance
Metro 2033: FPS – higher is better
HD 6970 – 13
HD 6950 – 12
GTX 570 – 3
DiRT 2: FPS – higher is better
HD 6970 – 55
HD 6950 – 51
GTX 570 – 64
Lost Planet 2: FPS – higher is better
HD 6970 – 25
HD 6950 – 23
GTX 570 – 32
Aliens vs Predator: FPS – higher is better
HD 6970 – 25
HD 6950 – 22
GTX 570 – 22
DirectX 10 gaming performance
Just Cause 2: FPS – higher is better
HD 6970 – 30
HD 6950 – 27
GTX 570 - 30
Crysis Warhead: FPS – higher is better
HD 6970 – 20
HD 6950 – 18
GTX 570 – 25
Far Cry 2: FPS – higher is better
HD 6970 – 65
HD 6950 – 60
GTX 570 – 66
