Radeon HD 6970: specs and benchmarks
Aggregate performance score
Radeon HD 6970 provides poor gaming and benchmark performance at 7.34% of a leader's which is GeForce RTX 4090.
Summary
AMD started Radeon HD 6970 sales 14 December 2010 at a recommended price of $369 . This is a desktop graphics card based on a TeraScale 3 architecture and made with 40 nm manufacturing process. It is primarily aimed at gamer market. 2 GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1.38 GHz are supplied, and together with 256 Bit memory interface this creates a bandwidth of .
Compatibility-wise, this is a dual-slot graphics card attached via PCIe 2.0 x16 interface. Its manufacturer default version has a length of 267 mm. One 6-pin and one 8-pin connectors are required, and power consumption is at 550 Watt.
Primary details
Some basic facts about Radeon HD 6970: architecture, market segment, release date etc.
| Place in the ranking | 534 | |
| Place by popularity | not in top-100 | |
| Cost-effectiveness evaluation | 1.00 | |
| Power efficiency | 2.03 | of 100.00 (Radeon 890M) |
| Architecture | TeraScale 3 (2010−2013) | |
| GPU code name | Cayman | |
| Market segment | Desktop | |
| Design | reference | |
| Release date | 14 December 2010 (13 years ago) | |
| Launch price (MSRP) | $369 | of 14,999 (Quadro Plex 7000) |
Cost-effectiveness evaluation
Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.
Detailed specifications
Radeon HD 6970's specs such as number of shaders, GPU base clock, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. These parameters indirectly speak of Radeon HD 6970's performance, but for precise assessment you have to consider its benchmark and gaming test results.
| Pipelines / CUDA cores | 1536 | of 21760 (GeForce RTX 5090) |
| Boost clock speed | 880 MHz | of 3599 MHz (Radeon RX 7990 XTX) |
| Number of transistors | 2,640 million | of 208,000 million (B200 SXM 192 GB) |
| Manufacturing process technology | 40 nm | of 3 nm (Arc Graphics 140V) |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 550 Watt | of 2400 Watt (Data Center GPU Max Subsystem) |
| Texture fill rate | 84.48 | of 2,554 (Radeon Instinct MI300X) |
| Floating-point processing power | 2.703 TFLOPS | of 109.7 (GeForce RTX 5090) |
| ROPs | 32 | of 192 (Radeon RX 7900 XTX) |
| TMUs | 96 | of 1280 (Data Center GPU Max NEXT) |
Form factor & compatibility
This section provides details about the physical dimensions of Radeon HD 6970 and its compatibility with other computer components. This information is useful when selecting a computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards, it includes details about the interface and bus (for motherboard compatibility) and additional power connectors (for power supply compatibility).
| Bus support | PCIe 2.0 x16 | |
| Interface | PCIe 2.0 x16 | |
| Length | 267 mm | |
| Width | 2-slot | |
| Supplementary power connectors | 1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin |
VRAM capacity and type
Parameters of memory installed on Radeon HD 6970: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Note that GPUs integrated into processors have no dedicated memory and use a shared part of system RAM instead.
| Memory type | GDDR5 | |
| Maximum RAM amount | 2 GB | of 294912 (Radeon Instinct MI325X) |
| Memory bus width | 256 Bit | of 8192 Bit (Radeon Instinct MI250X) |
| Memory clock speed | 1375 MHz | of 20000 (RTX 5000 Ada Generation Mobile) |
Connectivity and outputs
Types and number of video connectors present on Radeon HD 6970. As a rule, this section is relevant only for desktop reference graphics cards, since for notebook ones the availability of certain video outputs depends on the laptop model, while non-reference desktop models can (though not necessarily will) bear a different set of video ports.
| Display Connectors | 2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort | |
| Eyefinity | + | |
| HDMI | + |
Supported technologies
Technological solutions and APIs supported by Radeon HD 6970. You'll probably need this information if you need some particular technology for your purposes.
| CrossFire | + |
API compatibility
APIs supported by Radeon HD 6970, sometimes including their particular versions.
| DirectX | DirectX® 11 | |
| Shader Model | 5.0 | |
| OpenGL | 4.4 | of 4.6 (GeForce RTX 4090) |
| OpenCL | 1.2 |
Benchmark performance
Synthetic benchmark performance of Radeon HD 6970. The combined score is measured on a 0-100 point scale.
Combined synthetic benchmark score
This is our combined benchmark score. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.
Passmark
This is the most ubiquitous GPU benchmark. It gives the graphics card a thorough evaluation under various types of load, providing four separate benchmarks for Direct3D versions 9, 10, 11 and 12 (the last being done in 4K resolution if possible), and few more tests engaging DirectCompute capabilities.
3DMark Fire Strike Graphics
Fire Strike is a DirectX 11 benchmark for gaming PCs. It features two separate tests displaying a fight between a humanoid and a fiery creature made of lava. Using 1920x1080 resolution, Fire Strike shows off some realistic graphics and is quite taxing on hardware.
Send your test results of Radeon HD 6970.
Gaming performance
Let's see how good Radeon HD 6970 is for gaming. Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in frames per second. Comparisons with game system requirements are included, but remember that sometimes official requirements may reflect reality inaccurately.
FPS performance in popular games
Full HD
Low Preset
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 12−14 |
Full HD
Medium Preset
| Assassin's Creed Odyssey | 18−20 | |
| Assassin's Creed Valhalla | 10−11 | |
| Battlefield 5 | 21−24 | |
| Call of Duty: Modern Warfare | 14−16 | |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 12−14 | |
| Far Cry 5 | 16−18 | |
| Far Cry New Dawn | 21−24 | |
| Forza Horizon 4 | 45−50 | |
| Hitman 3 | 14−16 | |
| Horizon Zero Dawn | 40−45 | |
| Metro Exodus | 21−24 | |
| Red Dead Redemption 2 | 20−22 | |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 24−27 | |
| Watch Dogs: Legion | 50−55 |
Full HD
High Preset
| Assassin's Creed Odyssey | 18−20 | |
| Assassin's Creed Valhalla | 10−11 | |
| Battlefield 5 | 21−24 | |
| Call of Duty: Modern Warfare | 14−16 | |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 12−14 | |
| Far Cry 5 | 16−18 | |
| Far Cry New Dawn | 21−24 | |
| Forza Horizon 4 | 45−50 | |
| Hitman 3 | 14−16 | |
| Horizon Zero Dawn | 40−45 | |
| Metro Exodus | 21−24 | |
| Red Dead Redemption 2 | 20−22 | |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 24−27 | |
| The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt | 21−24 | |
| Watch Dogs: Legion | 50−55 |
Full HD
Ultra Preset
| Assassin's Creed Odyssey | 18−20 | |
| Assassin's Creed Valhalla | 10−11 | |
| Call of Duty: Modern Warfare | 14−16 | |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 12−14 | |
| Far Cry 5 | 16−18 | |
| Forza Horizon 4 | 45−50 | |
| Hitman 3 | 14−16 | |
| Horizon Zero Dawn | 40−45 | |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 24−27 | |
| The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt | 21−24 | |
| Watch Dogs: Legion | 50−55 |
Full HD
Epic Preset
| Red Dead Redemption 2 | 20−22 |
1440p
High Preset
| Battlefield 5 | 14−16 | |
| Far Cry New Dawn | 10−12 |
1440p
Ultra Preset
| Assassin's Creed Odyssey | 7−8 | |
| Assassin's Creed Valhalla | 3−4 | |
| Call of Duty: Modern Warfare | 7−8 | |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 3−4 | |
| Far Cry 5 | 8−9 | |
| Forza Horizon 4 | 27−30 | |
| Hitman 3 | 10−12 | |
| Horizon Zero Dawn | 16−18 | |
| Metro Exodus | 8−9 | |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 5−6 | |
| The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt | 6−7 | |
| Watch Dogs: Legion | 45−50 |
1440p
Epic Preset
| Red Dead Redemption 2 | 12−14 |
4K
High Preset
| Battlefield 5 | 6−7 | |
| Far Cry New Dawn | 5−6 | |
| Hitman 3 | 3−4 | |
| Horizon Zero Dawn | 24−27 | |
| Metro Exodus | 5−6 | |
| The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt | 4−5 |
4K
Ultra Preset
| Assassin's Creed Odyssey | 4−5 | |
| Assassin's Creed Valhalla | 3−4 | |
| Call of Duty: Modern Warfare | 3−4 | |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 1−2 | |
| Far Cry 5 | 4−5 | |
| Forza Horizon 4 | 8−9 | |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 2−3 | |
| Watch Dogs: Legion | 2−3 |
4K
Epic Preset
| Red Dead Redemption 2 | 7−8 |
NVIDIA equivalent
According to our data, the closest NVIDIA alternative to Radeon HD 6970 is GeForce GTX 560, which is slower by 3% and lower by 10 positions in our ranking.
Here are some closest NVIDIA rivals to Radeon HD 6970:
Similar GPUs
Here is our recommendation of several graphics cards that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.
Recommended processors
These processors are most commonly used with Radeon HD 6970 according to our statistics.
