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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.
nVidia solutions, unsurprisingly, score the highest with the Stone Giant benchmark. This is not without some controversy however, 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 review today. The GTX570 as expected is literally miles ahead, with the overclocked XFX HD6970 sitting in second place, just ahead of the GTX460 OC model.
Great results. runs a bit hot in furmark, but it tends to push hardware to limits no game will. shame they didnt opt for a dual slot cooler like they used on their 6800 series.
We all know how good the HD6970 is, but why would they not do the full monty on this. If powercolor can do it, surely XFX can.
those temps are too high. if I see 90c with any card I panic. I liked their dual cooler system on their other cards, really helped drop the temps. Can they update this card later with a new cooler ?
When I saw the card on page 2 I was stunned. its a reference cooler with an XFX sticker! I dont mind this on release day, but months later? what a letdown.
Its worth paying extra for their warranty, as my card failed and they replaced it without a problem last year. I wouldnt pay for a reference AMD card without a new cooler as my mates 6970 runs higher than this after he flashed his bios.
How much extra is it? £20?
That is no Black Edition Card. The only thing slightly above average were the memory speeds. Come on XFX! You can do better than that!
It’s ironic isn’t it; XFX One of AMD’s leading partners got out classed By Powercolor. Seems Powercolor Grew some man junk overnight and XFX decided profit was more important than a good product.
A rather disappointing release from XFX really. 95c in furmark is very high.
It is really going to struggle against some of the very cool competiting cards from people like powercolor and asus.
I love the HD6970, but this card isn;t offering anything the reference design isnt. its easy to overclock to these speeds with all 6970s. so why pay for it.