Radeon HD 6950 1GB vs GeForce GTX 560 Ti review - Introduction

When the GeForce GTX 560 Ti was released shortly ago, one things was clear - the price versus performance ratio would be great. Especially with the extensive factory overclocked models in mind, these cards perform really well.

Initially the 560 Ti was targeted solely against the Radeon HD 6870, but the one thing that became clear real fast was that the slightly more powerful Radeon HD 6950 was not far away from the GTX 560 Ti at all performance wise. So a couple of weeks ago AMD decided to sort of 'ambush' NVIDIA, by releasing a 1 GB version of the Radeon HD 6950, a product with the very same features and specifications as it's big brother, the 2 GB version was priced way below what we all expected it to be.

The strategy here is, and pardon my French here, AMD wanted to cock-block NVIDIA both performance and value wise. Therefore it is with little surprise to find out that AMD is inserting the 1 GB Radeon HD 6950 SKU for only 229 EUR.

And in US dollars AMD’s partners are introducing the AMD Radeon HD 6950 1GB variant, bringing all the capabilities of the AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series to new price points. Between $200-$300 end users can choose from:

• Radeon HD 6870 1GB: drops from $239 to $219
• Radeon HD 6950 1GB: introduced for $259
• Radeon HD 6950 2GB: drops from $299 to $269

But bare in mind, new SKUs of the AMD Radeon HD 6950 1GB will be available beginning mid-February, but as you can understand it is yet another interesting development from AMD as the sheer horsepower you can purchase these days under the 300 USD bracket ... is truly amazing.

In this review we are not going in depth on architecture, you can read that in our reference reviews. This is more a quick comparison in-between the two cards. Please understand that the R6950 1GB is identical to the 2GB version specs wise, except that memory partition of course.

First off, we'll dive into a photo-shoot showing both cards, and comparing them a little. We'll address power consumption, heat and noise levels and then put both cards to the test. Next page please.