AMD HD 6950 1GB vs. NVIDIA GTX 560 Ti Overclocking

[PAGETITLE=Introduction][Top Ad] Catering to those with appetites for a ~$250 graphics card, both AMD and NVIDIA released appropriate models last week. AMD was responsible for the least interesting of the two, simply knocking its Radeon HD 6950 2GB down to 1GB, while NVIDIA released what it hopes will become a legendary offering, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti. Although we've posted articles taking a look at each card in some depth, one area we haven't tackled is overclocking, so that's the purpose of this article. When NVIDIA first briefed us on its GTX 560 Ti, it touted the major overclocking potential that the card offered. From AMD, "overclocking" wasn't uttered even once. In our review of NVIDIA's card, we had to give props to AMD for having the slightly more appealing offering, because while it costs about $20 more, it proved to be a bit faster, and boasts improved efficiency overall. But with the GTX 560 Ti's potential for overclocking, we thought we'd pit both cards against each other in that regard, to see if our opinions would change on which is better. So, I sat down with both cards, installed the respective overclocking tools, and then got to work. For the AMD card, I used Sapphire's TriXX, as it offers a great deal of flexibility. For the same reason, we chose to use MSI's Afterburner for the NVIDIA card. Voltages were not touched during overclocking as neither program would allow us that privilege. To deem an overclock as "stable", it must first pass 30 minutes of 3DMark 11's Extreme test, followed by real gameplay through both Dirt 2 and Metro 2033. If we can't force the card to crash via these means, we consider it stable. First up, AMD's Radeon HD 6950 1GB. Like its 2GB bigger brother, the 1GB model features core clock speeds of 800MHz and memory clocks of 1250MHz. (Click for larger version.) The overclock I managed to reach with this card, 950MHz core and 1300MHz memory, impressed me quite a bit. I haven't had the best of luck overclocking AMD's previous HD 6000 series cards, so I didn't expect much here, but as you can see, this is not a minor overclock... the core saw an 18% boost alone. What about NVIDIA? Strangely enough, even though this was the card I had expected to reach unbelievable heights, it couldn't. During our press briefing with the company, it floated around the idea of overclocks as high as 970MHz, but we were unable to even get close. Instead, we had to settle on 930MHz core (from 822MHz), 1860MHz shader (from 1645MHz) and 1020MHz memory (from 1002MHz). (Click for larger version.) Overall, I'm not super-pleased with this overclock since I was expecting much better. Even with a core clock of 940MHz (+10MHz above our "stable"), Dirt 2 would artifact rather starkly during a single race and caused the game to crash on me twice. In looking around the Web, I've seen others achieve higher overclocks than this, some as high as 1,000MHz, which leads me to believe that most people should be able to get a clock much higher than 930MHz. Unfortunately, I only had one GPU sample to test out, so I'm hoping to get more in, in the near future, to see if I can reach anything higher. As much as I wished we could have heightened the clock a bit more, we were unable, so what you see above is what we had to stick with. And with that said, let's take a look at the actual performance gains throughout our usual suite from each card. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Test System & Methodology] At Techgage, we strive to make sure our results are as accurate as possible. Our testing is rigorous and time-consuming, but we feel the effort is worth it. In an attempt to leave no question unanswered, this page contains not only our testbed specifications, but also a detailed look at how we conduct our testing. Test Machine. The below table lists our testing machine's hardware, which remains unchanged throughout all GPU testing, minus the graphics card. Each card used for comparison is also listed here, along with the driver version used. Each one of the URLs in this table can be clicked to view the respective category on our site for that product. Component Model Processor Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition - Quad-Core @ 4.05GHz - 1.40v Motherboard Gigabyte GA-EX58-EXTREME - F13j BIOS (08/02/2010) Memory Corsair DOMINATOR - 12GB DDR3-1333 7-7-7-24-1T, 1.60v ATI Graphics Radeon HD 6970 2GB CrossFireX (Reference) - Catalyst 10,12 Beta Radeon HD 6950 2GB CrossFireX (Reference) - Catalyst 10.12 Beta Radeon HD 6970 2GB (Reference) - Catalyst 10,12 Beta Radeon HD 6950 2GB (Reference) - Catalyst 11.1 Radeon HD 6950 1GB (Reference) - Catalyst 11.1 Radeon HD 6870 1GB (Reference CrossFireX) - Catalyst 10.10 Radeon HD 6850 1GB (Reference CrossFireX) - Catalyst 10.10 Radeon HD 6870 1GB (Reference) - Catalyst Oct 5, 2010 Beta Radeon HD 6850 1GB (Reference) - Catalyst Oct 5, 2010 Beta Radeon HD 5870 1GB (Sapphire) - Catalyst 10.8 Radeon HD 5850 1GB (ASUS) - Catalyst 10.8 Radeon HD 5830 1GB (Reference) - Catalyst 10.8 Radeon HD 5770 1GB (Sapphire FleX) - Catalyst 10.9 Radeon HD 5770 1GB (Reference) - Catalyst 10.8 Radeon HD 5750 1GB (Sapphire) - Catalyst 10.8 NVIDIA Graphics GeForce GTX 580 1536MB (Reference) - GeForce 262.99 GeForce GTX 570 1280MB (Reference) - GeForce 263.09 GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1024MB (Reference) - GeForce 266.56 GeForce GTX 480 1536MB (Reference) - GeForce 260.63 GeForce GTX 470 1280MB (EVGA) - GeForce 260.63 GeForce GTX 460 1GB (EVGA) - GeForce 260.63 GeForce GTX 450 1GB (ASUS) - GeForce 260.63 Audio ASUS Xonar D2X Storage Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200.11 Power Supply Corsair HX1000W Chassis Cooler Master HAF X Full-Tower Display Gateway XHD3000 30" Cooling Corsair H50 Self-Contained Liquid Cooler Et cetera Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit When preparing our testbeds for any type of performance testing, we follow these guidelines: General Guidelines No power-saving options are enabled in the motherboard's BIOS. Internet is disabled. No virus scanner or firewall is installed. The OS is kept clean; no scrap files are left in between runs. Hard drives affected are defragged with Diskeeper 2010 prior to a fresh benchmarking run. Machine has proper airflow and the room temperature is 80°F (27°C) or less. To aide with the goal of keeping accurate and repeatable results, we alter certain services in Windows 7 from starting up at boot. This is due to the fact that these services have the tendency to start up in the background without notice, potentially causing inaccurate test results. For example, disabling "Windows Search" turns off the OS' indexing which can at times utilize the hard drive and memory more than we'd like. The most important services we disable are: Diskeeper 2010. Windows Defender. Windows Error Reporting Service. Windows Event Log. Windows Firewall. Windows Search. Windows Update. The full list of Windows services we assure are disabled is large, but for those interested in perusing it, please look here. Most of the services we disable are mild, but we go to such an extent to have the PC as highly optimized as possible. Game Titles. At this time, we benchmark with three resolutions that represent three popular monitor sizes available today, 20" (1680x1050), 24" (1920x1080) and 30" (2560x1600). Each of these resolutions offers enough of a variance in raw pixel output to warrant testing with it, and each properly represent a different market segment: mainstream, mid-range and high-end. Because we value results generated by real-world testing, we don't utilize timedemos. The possible exceptions might be Futuremark's 3DMark Vantage and Unigine's Heaven 2.1. Though neither of these are games, both act as robust timedemos. We choose to use them as they're a standard where GPU reviews are concerned. All of our results are captured with the help of Beepa's FRAPS 3.2.3, while stress-testing and temperature-monitoring is handled by OCCT 3.1.0 and GPU-Z, respectively. For those interested in the exact settings we use for each game, direct screenshots can be seen below: Colin McRae: Dirt 2. Just Cause 2. Mafia II. Metro 2033. StarCraft II. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Colin McRae: Dirt 2] It's not that often that faithful PC gamers get a proper racing game for their platform of choice, but Dirt 2 is one of those. While it is a "console port", there's virtually nothing in the game that will make that point stand out. The game as a whole takes good advantage of our PC's hardware, and it's as challenging as it is good-looking. Manual Run-through: The race we chose to use in Dirt 2 is the first one available in the game, as it's easily accessible and features a lot of GPU-pounding effects that the game has become known for, such as realistic dust and water effects, a large on-looking crowd of people and fine details on and off the track. Each run-through lasts the entire two laps, which comes out to about 2.5 minutes. The results seen here scale identically to the results from the non-overclocked versions of these cards. NVIDIA's GTX 560 Ti keeps ahead of AMD's HD 6950 1GB at 1680x1050 and 1920x1080, but the tables turn at 2560x1600. With AMD's overclock, the card reaches the same performance as the HD 6970, while NVIDIA stays a bit behind the GTX 570. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Just Cause 2] Just Cause 2 might not belong to a well-established series of games, but with its launch, it looks like that might not be the case for long. The game offers not only superb graphics, but an enormous world to explore, and for people like me, a countless number of hidden items to find around it. During the game, you'll be scaling skyscrapers, racing through jungles and fighting atop snow-drenched mountains. What's not to like? Manual Run-through: The level chosen here is part of the second mission in the game, "Casino Bust". Our runthrough begins at the second-half of the level, which requires us to situate ourselves on top of a car and have our driver, Karl Blaine, speed us through part of the island to safety. This is a great mission for benchmarking as...

AMD HD 6950 1GB vs. NVIDIA GTX 560 Ti Overclocking

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Rob Williams