Which ATI 6950?

[sygnus21]

Well I'm not going to mess around. Called Amazon and though they're currently out of stock on the Sapphires, as soon as they get them in they'll ship me a replacement. I just need to send them the defective one when I get the new one in. Big plus for Amazon's customer service.

Untill then I'll monitor this one and report my findings.

Thannks.

 

[sygnus21]

Here's a screen of what I'm talking about. Get these randomly at various times. The card is not overclocked or flashed, nor has it even been. Note the spots by the red dots.

 

[mickey megabyte]

i see what you mean - not good.

good luck with the replacement when it comes, and let's hope it was just that particular card - not 69xx's in general.

 

[society misfit]

Here's a screen of what I'm talking about. Get these randomly at various times. The card is not overclocked or flashed, nor has it even been. Note the spots by the red dots.

Wow that sucks. Sorry to hear.

This may not pertain to your problem but thought I would share anyways. Sometime ago I had a Nvidia GeForce 4 card that was purchased brand new. Artifacts would randomly show up just like yours. But the computer would crash when the card was under load as well. After trying different drivers and such I decided to pull the heatsink/fan off the card. To my amazement I found that some noob (or knob!) did not remove the plastic film that protects the thermal grease during assembly. Removed the film, which was discoloured from the heat, removed the stock grease and applied some Artic Silver and the card was as good as gold. For the life of I can’t remember the company but I did send them one real nasty email. Their reply was “We know! A bunch were shipped out like that!” Nice!!

Anyways, hope you get yours all sorted out.

 

[sygnus21]

@ mickey, I think it's just one card that has issues. Haven't seen a bevy of these going bad so that's good. A replacement will confirm though.

@ society misfit, You have a point, and yeah I could take the card apart and check the thermo paste, but since the card is only 5 days old I might as well return it. Why mess around and find the card is still problematic and now I have to deal with an RMA. Best to return it now.

This is also why I have a philosophy of not overclocking/modding things until after I've established they work as intended. I almost flashed the card to a 6970 when I got it but decided to wait. Glad I did

Anyway Amazon is going to send me a replacement when they get some more Sapphires in. I'm good with that

 

[society misfit]

It was so long ago I can’t remember what drove me to tear the card apart. I think it was over that 15 day return period. But your right, no point in messing with it. Out of curiosity, can you return it for a different brand? Not that there is anything wrong with Sapphire.

 

[sygnus21]

I thought about it. Actually thought about swapping it for an XFX brand. Bottom line is I have to get the same brand I got for a replacement. Now I can get a refund and than purchase a different brand but I think I'll stick with Sapphire. Plus I got the card for 279 where the avarage price for a 6950 is 299.

 

[Wishmaster]

I haven't seen anything like this being reported widespread.
So, I would think you just got unlucky and got a bad card. As we all know, things like this can happen with any hardware.
It's never fun, but just the nature if the game.

The good thing is a replacement should be no issue.



As for me, Ive been putting money back and shopping around a bit. And Im a little bit on the fence now as to which card to go with.
What I mean is, I have always had ATI cards. And my next purchase was going to be the 6950 or possibly the 6970.

But Im actually considering switching to Nvidia this time.

But only for these reasons:

1) The ATI Cards can Eyefinity, and have 2GB of VRAM.
I only run 1 monitor at 1080P, and have no desire to run more than a single Display.
So, Eyefinity, and the extra VRAM really wouldn't be a major point to me, personally.

2) Nvidia offers PhysX, and in the handful of games that do support it, theres a slight advantage there.
Although thier multiple display support is not nearly as good as ATIs with a single card, this doesnt bother me.

3) Performance-wise, the GTX 570 and HD6970 seem to be pretty much equal. At least in overall results.
I know ATI performs better in a few games, but Nvidia does better in others, so about the same overall.

4) Price. The 570 is about $50 more than a 6950, but 25-30 cheaper than a 6970. So kinda in the middle.

Unless theres a better benchmark, that shows a much better advantage to the 6970/50 over the 570 I have missed.


Anyway, thoughts or suggestions on this? Or other points I have failed to realize here that could be added giving advatange to any of the cards listed would be appreciated as well.

In terms of budget, I was going to save up and put back around $300 for the 6950.
But if I hold off another month, I can be in the $350-370 budget, so that puts the GTX 570 and the HD6970 in target range.


Im just looking for a good card that will last me a couple years. Which camp doest matter to me, as much as current feature set and performance.

 

[mickey megabyte]

there are other factors such as power consumption, heat generation, fan noise that have to be considered too.

i believe the 6950 does well on these fronts.

bu then i am a little biased.

i'm sure someone from the green team will contradict me soon.

 

[Wishmaster]

Oh, good point. Didnt consider that aspect, even though I should have.

If I recall, the GTX does use more power than ATI ..


Hmm, guess I should research the Temps and Fan Noise a bit.

Thanks for pointing that out.

 

[sygnus21]

I haven't seen anything like this being reported widespread.
So, I would think you just got unlucky and got a bad card. As we all know, things like this can happen with any hardware.
It's never fun, but just the nature if the game.

The good thing is a replacement should be no issue.

As for me, Ive been putting money back and shopping around a bit. And Im a little bit on the fence now as to which card to go with.
What I mean is, I have always had ATI cards. And my next purchase was going to be the 6950 or possibly the 6970.

But Im actually considering switching to Nvidia this time.

But only for these reasons:

1) The ATI Cards can Eyefinity, and have 2GB of VRAM.
I only run 1 monitor at 1080P, and have no desire to run more than a single Display.
So, Eyefinity, and the extra VRAM really wouldn't be a major point to me, personally.

2) Nvidia offers PhysX, and in the handful of games that do support it, theres a slight advantage there.
Although thier multiple display support is not nearly as good as ATIs with a single card, this doesnt bother me.

3) Performance-wise, the GTX 570 and HD6970 seem to be pretty much equal. At least in overall results.
I know ATI performs better in a few games, but Nvidia does better in others, so about the same overall.

4) Price. The 570 is about $50 more than a 6950, but 25-30 cheaper than a 6970. So kinda in the middle.

Unless theres a better benchmark, that shows a much better advantage to the 6970/50 over the 570 I have missed.

Anyway, thoughts or suggestions on this? Or other points I have failed to realize here that could be added giving advatange to any of the cards listed would be appreciated as well.

In terms of budget, I was going to save up and put back around $300 for the 6950.
But if I hold off another month, I can be in the $350-370 budget, so that puts the GTX 570 and the HD6970 in target range.

Im just looking for a good card that will last me a couple years. Which camp doest matter to me, as much as current feature set and performance.

The way I see it is to go with what you're comfortable with. Honestly I've never used or considered moving to an Nvidia card. That's me.

In the end it just comes down to what you like, what you want, and what you want to do with what you got. If you feel like Nvidia is a better for you go with them. Personally I'm comfortable with ATI/AMD and what they have to offer.

As for the 6970 vs the 6950. I honestly thought about going with a 6970 as price really wasn't a factor so much as what I was going to do with the card. From that standpoint I only have one monitor as well with a resolution of 1680 x 1050 so for me the 6950 works.

My two cents.

 

[Wishmaster]

Thats actually a small concern of mine.
Because I am comfortable with ATI cards, and really do not have a issue with them at all.
Ive never had any issues with drivers etc,so, changing over is a bit of gamble in a way.


I still have a bit of time to research and decide though.


It probably wont matter much in the end anyway, seems any of them will be an excellent card and upgrade.



BTW, Sygnus ..
Now that you've had it awhile, going from your 4890 --> the 6950 , can you tell a nice overall improvement?
Other than benchmarks?

 

[sygnus21]

Well I've only had the card less than a week and the only game I'm currently playing is Dead Space 2. Since I started playing it with the 4890 I can't say I've noticed a difference in performance now that I'm finishing the game on the 6950. So with regards to Dead Space I see no difference.

Now, because curiosity is killing me, I do intend to reinstall Crysis, and Metro 2033 and give them a go to see what they do on the card. Stay tuned

As far as 2D performance, maybe it's me, but color looks slightly better and text a little crisper. And if you didn't see my WEI score, the graphics/gaming graphics jumped from 7.6 to 7.9! Not that that matters because as you say it's a benchmark.

I'll let you know what I see in Crysis and Metro.

Later.

 

[Wishmaster]

Cool, look forward to it.


Although, benchmarks are good, love seeing numbers sometimes knowing if theres is a noticeable difference without them is good too.



My guess is with Metro and Crysis is where youll really notice

 

[sygnus21]

Well I got my replacement in today and as of now no artifacts, though it's early.

Now the good news - I won't be returning the old card till Monday so that gives me a chance to play around with CrossFire



I've never played with a crossFire setup so I don't even know where to start

Anyway here's a preliminary test using Unigine Heaven (DirectX11 Benchmarking tool). The first one is a single 6950, the second is CrossFire



I'll play around a little more this weekend but I may remove the failing card before Monday. Incidentally I've notice no artifacting with either card in this configuration so....

One other thing to note: With hear both cards running. It's not 4890 loud though. But you do notice a difference between having one 6950 vs two.

That's it for now.

 

[Zen00]

Well, congratulations on the properly working card!

 

[sygnus21]

Yeah thinks. I just took the second card out so I can ship it out Monday. I'm not really into crossfire anyway so I saw no need to keep the setup. Plus the heat and noise didn't impress me.

Anyway the new card seems to be performing much better - meaning no artifacts. This really is a good card

Thanks

 

[mickey megabyte]

time for some porn!



my new msi twin frozr ii r6950 - only £7 more than standard card.

(it came 'overclocked': 810 rather than 800 - ridiculous marketing ploy there, msi - should be ashamed of your corporate selves.)

the fans are very quiet and do a damn good job.

only trouble with card is that msi have tweaked it from reference, and (only just found out) so i can't do the bios hack, but with those coolers, overclocking should be easier to keep stable.

had a slight panic when machine wouldn't boot after installation. i left it for a minute, and all was well.

quick and dirty benchmarks compared to old 4890:



just over 50% faster - i'm happy with that. using old 10.12 drivers too - maybe newer ones will make it a bit faster still?

haven't tried overclocking yet...hopefully i won't need to for a while.

anyways, i'm off to install new drivers and check out some dx11 titles...see ya!

 

[sygnus21]

only trouble with card is that msi have tweaked it from reference, and (only just found out) so i can't do the bios hack, but with those coolers, overclocking should be easier to keep stable.

Hmmm..... do you know what they did to prevent to BIOS update?

And happy to hear those fans are quiet. BTW is that the 1 or 2gig version?

Mine is the 2gig version. Seems like they changed the fans on the 1gig versions while leaving the 2gigs alone.

Here's a Sapphire 6950 1gig version.....



Here's my Sapphire 6950 2gig version (lower card).....

 

[cody471]

Yeah XFX make premium quality products...go for XFX