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Stone Giant is a benchmark tech demo that showcases and measures DirectX 11 performance using the BitSquid Engine. This is a very heavy tessellation dependant benchmark which runs very well on nVidia hardware.
Stone Giant has been surrounded in a little controversy lately, in our recent interview with AMD guru Richard Huddy he said “With artificial tests like Stone Giant, which was paid for by nVidia, tessellation can be done down to the single pixel level. Even though that pixel can’t be broken away from the 3 other pixels in its quad. Doing additional processing for each pixel in a group of 4 and then throwing 75% of that work away is just sad”.”
Regardless, it is a popular benchmark and we felt it was worth an inclusion in our reviews today. We can see that nVidia hardware scores well, claiming both of the top positions, followed closely by the AMD HD6970. Those who pay attention will see that the all important minimum frame rates of the HD6970 is higher than the GTX460 card, meaning it is slightly smoother to the naked eye. AMD are clearly improving their tessellation performance.
Wow this is incredible performance levels, price isnt bad either. cant believe the test 2 is delivering the same levels of performance as the XFX black edition 5970s in crossfire X. thats really interesting !
I think these are good boards, even though a lot of people will be disappointed with the fact the 580 is still leading the single card attack
CFX x 3 is awesome . blown away by the frame rates its generating. Noise might not suit everyone though :p
The price is the biggest selling point. I dont think they are the performance killers we expected, but the 280 price for the 6970 means its actually only 30 more than the 5850 was at launch. thats quite a good figure for them to achieve. I think they are doing what they do against intel in the CPU sector. drop pricing as low as poss.
Way to go, lol Crossfire in x3. thats a nice addition. XFX seem to love Kitguru. scaling is good in some of the games, but not so good in others. unigine at 133 fps caught my eye. mental
That was brilliant read. loads of testing and AMD have made a rockin card. the 6950 seems to be really well price positioned. cFx3 was fun, thanks
Nice work Zardon, get some sleep, too much for one man 🙂
Shit on a stick. CF x 3 is awesome. ill be sitting here green with envy, knowing I was shovelling snow from my driveway while I knew you were playing games with that setup
I wasnt expecting 3 way CFx to work so sun out of the gate. that should really kick nvidai in the nuts. im all for that.
Hey zardon if you are finished with the 40 cards you have can you send a few my way for a long term loaner? 🙂
Many people seem disappointed about the fact the 580 is still the performance king.
What about the price? 420 quid for a graphics card? its 140 quid more than the 6970. no thanks.
The bundle needs to be better. We need to start getting converters for 3 screens. mini displayport? no monitor supports that as far as I know apart from apple. a big converter cable like powercolor offer would be much better than anything else ive seen. No more Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2’s please, everyone has this game, years ago. Seems odd that no partners are selling these with better 3 screen out of the box suppotr. cables, converters etc.
@ Long Flow. I think you need to realise that about 0.5 percent of the potential audience have more than one screen, regardless of what AMD try to push. I agree in theory though, its hard to sell 3 screen cards if you need converters etc, as well as a displayport monitor. Sapphire should sell a flex gaming edition, that would sell bucketloads. Something more powerful than a 5770 !
over 100c in 3 way sli. They need to put the slots further apart in some motherboards for this. three cards in 3 way generate such heat and its pushed into the cards beside. Love the performance, but the noise and temps would put me off immediately. dual CFx though for certain. ill probably get two 6950’s in Cfx in the new year.
These are really great cards. I dont care for a 430 quid board, 220 quid for the 6950 though? yes please !
I think that most enthusiast gamers will stretch to £300 for a board, putting the 570 and 6970 in the top end for most people. id like to see the followup with 570 against 6970. the three monitor support is a selling point, ive already two screens, one more is only 130 quid. if I want this with 570 I need another card. nvidia are lagging here. but I prefer their drivers. no idea what to buy now 🙁
awesome work , those are mega cards. need to sell my dog to get some.