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.
Radeon HD 6900M Series
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| Codename | Blackcomb XT | |||||||||||||||
| Architecture | Terascale 2 | |||||||||||||||
| Pipelines | 960 - unified | |||||||||||||||
| Core Speed | 680 MHz | |||||||||||||||
| Memory Speed | 900 MHz | |||||||||||||||
| Memory Bus Width | 256 Bit | |||||||||||||||
| Memory Type | GDDR5 | |||||||||||||||
| Max. Amount of Memory | 2048 MB | |||||||||||||||
| Shared Memory | no | |||||||||||||||
| API | DirectX 11, Shader 5.0 | |||||||||||||||
| Power Consumption | 75-100 Watt | |||||||||||||||
| Transistor Count | 1.7 Billion | |||||||||||||||
| technology | 40 nm | |||||||||||||||
| Notebook Size | large | |||||||||||||||
| Date of Announcement | 06.01.2011 | |||||||||||||||
| Link to Manufacturer Page | www.amd.com | |||||||||||||||
- Average benchmark values for this graphics cardThe following benchmarks stem from our benchmarks of review laptops. The performance depends on the used graphics memory, clock rate, processor, system settings, drivers, and operating systems. So the results don't have to be representative for all laptops with this GPU. For detailed information on the benchmark results, click on the fps number.
For more games that might be playable and a list of all games and graphics cards visit our Gaming List
Samsung 700G7A-S02RU: Intel Core i7-2670QM, 17.30", 3.8 kg
External Review » Samsung 700G7A-S02RU
Samsung 700G7A-S01UK: Intel Core i7-2670QM, 17.30", 3.5 kg
External Review » Samsung 700G7A-S01UK
Samsung 700G7A-S01SE: Intel Core i7-2670QM, 17.30", 3.5 kg
External Review » Samsung 700G7A-S01SE
Samsung 700G7A-S01FR: Intel Core i7-2630QM, 17.30", 3.5 kg
External Review » Samsung 700G7A-S01FR
Samsung 700G7A-S02: Intel Core i7-2630QM, 17.30", 4.1 kg
External Review » Samsung 700G7A-S02
Samsung 700G7A: Intel Core i7-2630QM, 17.30", 4.1 kg
External Review » Samsung 700G7A
Rock Xtreme 685-I7-2820QM: Intel Core i7-2820QM, 15.60", 3 kg
External Review » Rock Xtreme 685-I7-2820QM
Alienware M17x R3, Radeon 6970M, i7-2820: Intel Core i7-2820QM, 17.30", 4.3 kg
External Review » Alienware M17x R3, Radeon 6970M, i7-2820
Eurocom Racer: Intel Core i7-2720QM, 15.60", 3.1 kg
External Review » Eurocom Racer
Eurocom W860CU Cougar: Intel Core i7-740QM, 15.60", 3.5 kg
External Review » Eurocom W860CU Cougar
» Comparison of GPUs
Detailed list of all laptop GPUs sorted by class and performance.
» Benchmark List
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» Notebook Gaming List
Playable games for each graphics card and their average FPS results.
* Approximate position of the graphics adapter
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