Benchmarks: Dirt 2, F1 2010
Dirt 2 has a fantastic built-in benchmark tool that measures actual gameplay performance very accurately, so we closed Fraps for this title. The game was run in the DirectX 11 mode with 4xAA enabled and the best visual quality settings.
The Radeon HD 6970 averaged 77fps at 1920x1200 when testing with Dirt 2 making it just 10% faster than the Radeon HD 5870. More importantly the Radeon HD 6970 was 21% slower than its primary competitor, the GeForce GTX 570. Other more expensive cards also pulled away, the Radeon HD 5970 was 23% faster than the Radeon HD 6970 and so was the GeForce GTX 580 with a 33% advantage. Dirt 2 proved to be an unforgiving game for the new Radeon HD 6970.
F1 2010
F1 2010 has a great built-in benchmark tool that was added in with the first patch. This benchmark measures gameplay performance very accurately, so we dumped Fraps for this title. The game was run in the DirectX 11 mode with 8xMSAA enabled and the best visual quality settings. It should be noted that we weren't able to get Crossfire working correctly in this game with the latest drivers, so the Radeon HD 5970 was unable to pull ahead here.
The F1 2010 results are surprising as the Radeon HD 6970 is the second fastest graphics card tested at 1920x1200, just 9% slower than the mighty GeForce GTX 580.
The card was just 5% faster than the Radeon HD 5870. The results in this game still appear a little off as the Radeon HD 6970 lead the GeForce GTX 570 by a convincing 22% margin.