14 DAY TRIAL // Just about everyone's waiting for AMD's Radeon HD 6900 Series graphics cards to go official in order to start rolling out comparative tests and reviews, but until that happens, all we're left with are rumors and speculations, as well as leaked bechmarks, the latest such piece of information we've come across claiming that the Radeon HD 6970 is actually 10 to 35 (roughly) percent faster than the GTX 570 from NVIDIA.
As you've been able to see earlier today, Chinese website Taobao posted a listing for the Radeon HD 6970 reference card (incidentally, selling for around 2599 Chinese Yuan, the equivalent of 390 US dollars), complete with plenty of photos (including some teardown shots) and benchmark results.
However, they've also posted some interested graphs/slides picturing some comparative benchmark results, one pitting the Radeon HD 6970 against the GTX 570, and the second a couple of HD 6970 cards in CrossFire X mode against two GTX 480 in SLI configuration.
While the results of the second benchmark are pretty predictable, the first one is actually much more surprising, since it depicts the Radeon HD 6970 obtaining some very decent results in head-to-head benchmarks against the GTX 570, the Radeon constantly outperforming the GTX (10 to 35 percents better, depending on the specific test application).
What makes these slides so interesting is that, by taking a close look at the type of graph used, and also factoring-in the previous such representations provided by AMD within their press presentations, not to mention some of the footnotes prompting users to check out “appendices” for the benchmarking system configuration, we'd dare to say that the data actually pertains to none other than AMD itself, being taken directly out of their marketing materials.
Of course, since we're talking about some leaked information, you should take it with a grain of salt (we've seen, after all, some faked data in the past), and wait until the official reviews are in in order to finally make up your mind regarding what GPU to choose next.
