AMD Radeon HD 6970 Deemed Only 10-20 Percent Faster Than GTX 480, Rumors Say [UPDATE]

Since the GTX 570 from NVIDIA has already made its official debut, everyone's eyes have now turned to AMD, whose Radeon HD 6900 series is expected to hit on December the 15'th, but which, according to initial rumors, will have somewhat of a tough time competing against the 500 series GPUs from NVIDIA.

So, according to a report by Fudzilla, it seems that initial benchmarking data provided by AMD seems to point out that the flagship Radeon HD 6970 GPU will provide a performance increment ranging between 10 and 20 percent over NVIDIA's GTX 480, the specific figures depending directly on the tests being carried out.

For example, it seems that, in 3DMark Vantage, the future Radeon is roughly 20 percent faster than a GTX 480, while performance in gaming varies along the same lines mentioned above, depending on the specific title being used for the benchmarks.

The real problem here, beyond that of the direct competition between the GTX 580 and the Radeon HD 6970, is the appearance of the GTX 570, which has also been deemed faster than the GTX 480 by some of the initial reviews.

And, in fact, from what we can see here, in a best case scenario (for AMD, that is), the GTX 570 will be only slightly inferior to the Radeon HD 6970, while in a worst case scenario, it will be either on par or even faster, in certain specific games.

This poses a huge problem for the read team, especially since the estimated difference in pricing is set at roughly 100 US dollars (the Radeon HD 6970 is rumored to retail for around 450 US dollars, while the GTX 570 sells for 350 US dollars, on average), which is way too much, especially if the differences in terms of performance are not that noticeable.

But, then again, we're only talking about rumors for the time being, and we'll have to wait a bit longer before being able to pass judgment on which card delivers the best price/performance ratio.

[UPDATE] 

As our readers point out, it seems that the original source of this rumor was apparently a fake, which means that, as clearly mentioned before, we'll have to wait for the first tests to come in (including here our own) in order to see who the Radeon HD 6970 really goes up against.