$300+ Price Point

Finally the Radeon HD 6970 which comes clocked at an already high 880MHz for the core and 1375MHz (5.5GHz) for the memory provided very limited headroom for overclocking. The core maxed out at 955MHz while the memory went on to 1470MHz (5.8GHz) for a 9% core and 7% memory overclock.

Our mild 9% overclock allowed for a shy 6% performance gain as the frame rate increased by just 2fps. This didn't do a whole lot for the Radeon HD 6970 and still meant that it was much slower than the GeForce GTX 570 in this game.

The Radeon HD 6970 only saw a 1fps performance gain when testing with Crysis 2.

On Dirt 3 the Radeon HD 6970 enjoyed an extra 5fps for a 7% performance gain. This was enough to knock out the GeForce GTX 570 running at stock frequencies.

The Radeon HD 6970 also managed an extra 4fps in The Witcher 2 for a 6% performance increase.