AMD Radeon HD 6970M vs AMD Radeon HD 6990M

AMD Radeon HD 6970M

The AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6970M (or sometimes called ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6970) is a high-end graphics card normally reserved for big and heavy laptops. It is based on the desktop HD 6850 graphics card and therefore features UVD3 video processing and Eyefinity+. The codename of this GPU is Blackcomb XT and it should have comparable power consumption results as the GeForce GTX 480M.

The 960 Stream processors are still based on the "old" 5D architecture similar to the 5000 series. Therefore, the number of shaders is not comparable to the 1D cores of current Nvidia GPUs. The Tessellation performance should be improved (like the desktop 6800 series) with the new cards. The Stream processors can be used with DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.1, DirectCompute 11 and OpenCL. With the latter two, the 6970M can also be used for general computations such as transcoding videos.

The 3D performance of this card lies between the GeForce GTX 470M and 485M, both of which are high-end notebook GPUs. In our tests, the 6970M is on average 33% faster than a GeForce GTX 480M, but the newer GTX 485M is still about 12% faster than the AMD card. Compared to the previous generation ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870, the Radeon 6970M is about 50% faster, but has greater power demands.

For gamers, this means that the Radeon HD 6970M is able to fluently display all most modern games in high detail settings. Only Crysis and Metro 2033 stutter in the highest detail settings at 1920x1080 resolution (see below).

The new UVD3 video decoder supports the decoding of MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2, Flash and now also Multi-View Codec (MVC) and MPEG-4 part 2 (DivX, xVid) HD videos on the graphics card.

Furthermore, the HD 6900M series integrates an HD audio controller to transmit HD Audio (TrueHD or DTS Master Audio) over HDMI and/or DisplayPort (e.g. for Blu-Ray videos).

The AMD HD3D Technology offers support for Blu-Ray 3D and 3D displays (integrated and external). However, the solution is not as mature as Nvidia's 3D Vision.

Thanks to Eyefinity, the graphics chip is able to theoretically drive up to 6 monitors simultaneously. However, this only works if the laptop features enough video outputs.

The power consumption of the 6790M should be similar to the Nvidia GeForce GTX 480M / 485M and is therefore at about 100 Watts when considering the MXM board and the 2 GB GDDR5 memory. Eurocom, for example, states that the TDP ranges from about 75-100 Watts. As a result, the card is only suited for large laptops with good cooling solutions.

AMD Radeon HD 6990M

The AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6990M (or sometimes called ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6990) is a high-end graphics card for large laptops (17" and up). It is based on the desktop HD 6870 graphics card and there supports UVD3 decoding and Eyefinity+, albeit with overall reduced clock rates.

The 1120 Stream processors are still based on the "old" 5D architecture similar to the 5000 series. Therefore, the number of shaders is not comparable to the 1D cores of current Nvidia GPUs. The Tessellation performance should be improved (like the desktop 6800 series) with the new cards. The Stream processors can be used with DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.1, DirectCompute 11 and OpenCL. In particular, DirectCompute 11 and OpenCL can both allow the cores to be used for general computations like video transcoding.

The 3D performance should be similar to the Nvidia GeForce GTX 580M in the high end class of notebook graphics cards. Therefore, as of 2011, most modern and demanding games should run in full HD with highest settings fluently. Only Metro 2033 and Crysis (DX11) may need reduced detail settings.

The new UVD3 video decoder supports the decoding of MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2, Flash and now also Multi-View Codec (MVC) and MPEG-4 part 2 (DivX, xVid) HD videos on the graphics card.

Furthermore, the HD 6900M series integrates an HD audio controller to transmit HD Audio (TrueHD or DTS Master Audio) over HDMI and DisplayPort (e.g. für Blu-Ray videos).

The AMD HD3D Technology offers support for Blu-Ray 3D and 3D displays (integrated and external). However, the solution is not as mature as Nvidia's 3D Vision.

Thanks to Eyefinity, the graphics chip is able to theoretically drive up to 6 monitors simultaneously. However, this only works if the laptop features enough DisplayPort outputs.

The high power consumption of the chip limits its use only in large laptops with good cooling solutions (e.g. Alienware M18x or Clevo X7200).