ASUS EAH6970 Review

Test Setup

Slightly different to our 1366 setup with the i7-950 we wanted to see how well the HD6970 performed elsewhere and so have put it in our LGA1156 rig. Not only does this give us a chance to get a wider range of results, but also could be the swansong for our i7-870 with the forthcoming P67 boards.

Intel i7-870 @ 4GHz
4GB G.Skill Trident @ 2000MHz
Gigabyte P55 UD4
Thermalright MUX-120
ASUS HD6970EAH
Cougar CM1000 1KW PSU
Windows 7 64-Bit

Overclocking

When we tested the HD6970 recently we found their was a block at 950MHz when you hit the top of the slider and so couldn’t go any further.

We waited with anticipation for the Voltage Tweak BIOS included with ASUS graphics cards to see if this would improve the situation and allow us to break through the 1GHz barrier. However the rather odd thing is that even with the ASUS SmartDoctor the limit was still set at 950MHz. So the superb BIOS had nothing to do but twiddle its thumbs.