PowerColor HD6970 Devil 13 2GB Review

1. Introduction2. PowerColor HD6970 Devil 13 2GB (Packaging & Accessories)3. PowerColor HD6970 Devil 13 2GB 4. PowerColor HD6970 Devil 13 2GB (Super High Res Gallery)5. Testing Methodology6. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark7. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage8. Synthetic: 3DMark 119. Image Quality: HQV Benchmark 2.010. Gaming: F1 201111. Gaming: HomeFront12. Gaming: Alien V Predator13. Gaming: Dead Island14. Gaming: Tom Clancy HAWX 215. Gaming: Resident Evil 516. Gaming: Lost Planet 217. Gaming: Far Cry 218. Gaming: Deus Ex Revolution19. Technical: Acoustics Performance20. Technical: Thermal Dynamics21. Technical: Power Consumption22. Technical: Overclocking23. Closing Thoughts24. View All Pages

AMD's HD6970 was warmly received when it was launched thanks to the excellent performance and reasonable pricing. The series is due to be replaced soon and Powercolor have decided to push the envelope by releasing one of the fastest clocked HD6970's ever released in a collectable box with a plethora of extras. They are calling it the ‘Devil 13'.

The Devil 13 is a custom design featuring an enhanced PCB and cooling solution, targeted at the high end enthusiast audience and overclocker. We aim to answer the big question today, is it worth the considerable price premium?

Product	PowerColor HD6970 Devil 13
Core Clock speed	880mhz/960mhz
Primitive Rate	2 prim/clk
Shader Architecture	VLIW4
Stream Processors	24 SIMD/1536 ALU
Texture Units	96
ROPs/Z-Stencil	32/128
Frame Buffer	2GB GDDR5
Memory Width/Speed	256 bit, 1375mhz/1425mhz
Power Connectors	8 pin & 6 pin
Display Outputs	2xDVI + 2x mDP + HDMI

The Devil 13 arrives in a very attractive box which is beautifully styled.

The top layer ‘folds' up to reveal a dual tray system.

One of the trays contains the accessories which are marked ‘recovery chamber' and ‘equipment chamber'. There is also a diagram of the card design, which is rather difficult to read as they have tried to keep everything following the same black and red colour scheme.

We were quite surprised that Powercolor decided to bundle a high quality Wiha screwdriver set. This is not a cheap Chinese knockoff, but a genuine high quality product. Buying a similar set online would cost about £40.

The bundle includes a Driver CD, documentation and a 3 year certificate for warranty. Powercolor also include a Crossfire cable, Devil 13 sticker, 2x 6 pin to 8 pin power adapters, a DVI adapter and a mini displayport to displayport adapter. There is also a Dirt 3 coupon. It is an extremely impressive bundle.

The Devil 13 follows a black and red colour scheme to give it an appearance of being ‘evil'. We aren't sure any graphics card could look scary, but it is effective.

The card has a very hefty dual slot cooler with dual fans onboard. The rear has a black backplate mounted for additional cooling efficiency and protection.

The Devil 13 requires two 8 pin PCI E power connectors for operation and it is CrossfireX capable in 2,3 and 4 way configurations.

The card targets the overclocking audience by offering Voltage Measurement points and an ‘LED lighting Signal' system.

There are two full DVI ports, two mini displayport connectors and a single full sized HDMI port. As mentioned earlier, there are adapters for VGA and full size Displayport. The red button is supplied in the ‘reference' state, which means the card will operate at the default AMD rated specifications of 880mhz core and 1375mhz memory. When pressed in, the card automatically overclocks to 960mhz core and 1425mhz memory, making it one of the fastest HD6970's on the market today.

A GPUz overview of the hardware. It is based around the Cayman core and features 32 ROPS, 1536 unified shaders and 2GB of GDDR5 which is connected via a 256 bit memory interface.

On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.

Today we are using an overclocked Core i7 970 system which is running at 4.33ghz. We compare against some lower specified AMD boards to judge how an ‘upgrade’ could improve your gaming experience. We are testing the Powercolor HD6970 Devil 13 in ‘turbo' mode, at 960mhz core. We would make an educated guess and assume that the audience interested in this card will be paying extra for the enhanced speed setting.

If you currently own a lower cost AMD 6000 series graphics card, how much benefit are you likely to see from an upgrade to the Devil 13? Today we find out.

Processor: Core i7 970 @ 4.33ghz
Cooling: Coolit Vantage
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Memory: 6GB ADATA @ 2133mhz 9-10-9-32
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot)
Monitors: Sharp Aquos 50 inch LCD 1080p.

Comparison Cards:
HD6950
HD6870
HD6790
HD6770
HD6670

Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Catalyst 10.11
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Nikon D3X with R1C1 kit
Keithley Integra unit
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter

Games:
HomeFront
Alien V Predator
Dead Island
Tom Clancy HAWX 2
Resident Evil 5
Lost Planet 2
Far Cry 2
F1 2011
Deus Ex: Human Revolution

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.

Some game descriptions are edited from Wikipedia.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We use the following settings: 1920×1080 resolution. Anti Aliasing off. Anisotrophy 4, Tessellation normal. Shaders High. Stereo 3D disabled. API: Direct X 11.

We already knew the HD6970 was a very capable performing discrete solution, but in ‘turbo' mode, the frame rates are noticeably enhanced.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

The Devil 13 scores 23,459 points which is well in advance of a reference clocked HD6950.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

A score over 6,000 points is very impressive and is close to the Nvidia GTX580. The Devil 13 scores around 1,000 points more than a reference clocked AMD HD6950, which is considerable.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here

	Powercolor Devil 13
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	5
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	7
Total	196

The HD6000 series deliver great image quality with high definition content and that hasn’t changed recently. The familar score of 196 points, which is class leading at this point in time.

F1 2011 is the newest Direct X 11 racing game from industry pioneers CodeMasters. The 2011 Formula One season is the 62nd FIA Formula One season. The original calendar consisted of twenty rounds, including the inaugural running of the Indian Grand Prix before the cancellation of the Bahrain Grand Prix. Pirelli returns to the sport as tyre supplier for all teams, taking over from Bridgestone. Red Bull Racing are the reigning Constructor’s Champions. Red Bull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel is the defending Drivers’ Champion, one of five World Champions appearing on the grid.

F1 2011 is another great racing game from the Codemasters team. The Powercolor Devil 13 makes mincemeat of the frame rates at these settings, averaging almost 70 fps with 8 times anti aliasing.

Homefront’s PC version was developed by Digital Extremes, a Canadian developer responsible for numerous Unreal Tournament games and Bioshock ports. It received mixed reports, although Kitguru really likes the single player aspect of this title. The engine isn’t the most demanding on the market, but it requires decent partnering hardware for solid frame rates at 1080p.

A game that was critically panned, but one I really enjoyed earlier this year. At these settings the Devil 13 produces an average of 61 frames per second, extremely smooth at all times.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparable throughout reviews.

Alien V Predator is still demanding of graphics hardware, even some time after the initial release. At these settings the Devil 13 delivers a very good experience, smooth throughout, dropping to 42 fps only a few times.

Dead Island is a first person horror action-adventure video game developed by Techland and published by Deep Silver for Microsoft Windows. It is centered on the challenge of survival on a zombie-infested open world island with a major emphasis on melee combat. It is rather good fun, for a short while, but it becomes repetitive.

Not the most demanding engine, even at high resolution. Any of the cards on test today can handle this engine, however the Devil 13 is quite some distance ahead, if you wanted to upgrade.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 is an arcade-style flight action game developed by Ubisoft Romania and published by Ubisoft. After the events of the first game, the H.A.W.X squadron is sent to Middle East, where a high level of violence is being registered, and the appearance of various insurgents leaders in various hotspots. The team also has to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Russian nuclear weapons. The player will be controlling three groups: one American (Hunter), one British (Munro) and one Russian (Sokov), each with its own pilots and supporting characters. There will also be references to other characters in the Tom Clancy universe.

We are testing in full DX11 mode with all settings to maximum.

HAWX 2 is playable on most of the hardware at these settings, apart from the lower end HD6670 which struggles to maintain playable frame rates throughout.

Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.

Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made.

A very nice looking Direct X 10 title. The Devil 13 had no performance concerns with this game at these settings.

Lost Planet 2 is a third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the sequel to Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, taking place ten years after the events of the first game, on the same fictional planet. We don’t really enjoy playing this game, but the engine is a great Direct X 11 test of modern hardware.

A demanding title, and only a few cards in the group today can power the game at these settings. The Devil 13 is noticeably smooth during all the testing environment, maintaining a frame rate close to thirty, even during the more demanding sections.

Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2.

Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer.

Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today.

Settings: 1920×1200, D3D10, Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(8x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Ultra High), Vegetation(Very High), Shading(Ultra High), Terrain(Ultra High), Geometry(Ultra High), Post FX(High), Texture(Ultra High), Shadow(Ultra High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High).

A clear improvement, even if moving up from the HD6950, averaging 90 frames per second with 8x anti aliasing.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a science fiction action role-playing video game developed by Eidos Montreal and published by Square Enix.

The game is set in 2027, 25 years before the first title, where corporations have extended their influence past the reach of global governments. The game follows Adam Jensen, the security chief for one of the world’s most powerful human augmentation corporations, Sarif Industries. After a devastating attack on Sarif’s headquarters, Adam is forced to undergo radical surgeries that fuse his body with mechanical augmentations, and he is embroiled in the search for those responsible for the attack.

One of the best games this year and one that runs exceptionally well on the Devil 13, averaging over 90 frames per second.

We have changed our method of measuring noise levels. We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. We are using a heatpipe based passive power supply and an Intel SSD to keep noise levels to a minimum. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests. Ambient noise in the room is around 20-25dBa. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

When idle, the hardware is relatively quiet rising to 34.6 dBa when gaming. Furmark pushes the fan speeds a little higher to 35.6 dBa. It isn't a silent card, audible when gaming and under synthetic load, but the noise levels aren't intrusive.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 25c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.

Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.

Under Furmark load, the card peaks at 83C, around 8c higher than when gaming. Idle temperatures are very impressive … 36c.

The fan profile is not aggressive at all, moving between 20% (idle) and 28% (gaming)/36% (Furmark). There is only a few percent difference when at the ‘reference' setting.

To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. We measure results while gaming in Crysis Warhead and record the results.

Powercolor have clearly optimised the power delivery of this PCB design as it is more efficient than the reference AMD design. It won't make a huge difference to your electricity bill, but every little bit helps.

For overclocking today we used the excellent Sapphire TriXX software tool, which we use for all our AMD based discrete reviews.

Using TriXX we managed to increase the voltage to a stable level, while increasing the core clock to 1000mhz – any higher than this and the system would become unstable. The card has certainly been released in a highly overclocked state, so we weren't expecting a dramatic increase on either core or memory speeds. The GDDR5 memory doesn't have a lot of headroom (2.5%), only 35mhz extra was possible before artifacting would occur.

The increase is small, but noticeable. around 200 points extra in the Direct X 11 based 3DMark 11.

The Powercolor Devil 13 is an impressive ‘collectors edition', something you are aware of immediately by the design and effort that has gone into the box alone! Supplying the card with a ‘turbo' button is an interesting idea and it is much easier to work with than a fiddly, tiny, bios switch. We can't imagine anyone contemplating buying this card will want the ‘reference' speeds mind you, but the option is there. The overclocked settings are some of the highest on the market, which will appeal to the hardcore AMD audience.

The bundle really is exceptional, particularly the quality Wiha branded screwdriver set which may prove useful to many modders and people who build their own systems. Wiha are not a cheap, ‘no name' far east brand destined to fall apart in a couple of months, they make a quality product.

The card is not silent, but the latest bios only emits a modicum of noise which will not annoy a gamer, it would almost be drowned out by several performance oriented chassis fans when gaming. At idle it is barely audible at all. We certainly have no points to raise about a lack of performance, especially in turbo mode. It is one of the fastest HD6970's you can buy today.

The biggest issue we have with the Devil 13, is the pricing and availability. Currently one of the few places you can buy Powercolor hardware in the UK is at Ebuyer. Today, they are selling the reference clocked Powercolor HD6970 for £253 inc vat. This low cost card however is also supplied with a dual fan cooler, so you are buying a very price effective solution which should overclock to around 930mhz (or more) without a problem.

While the Devil 13 is still not available in the United Kingdom at time of publication we were informed that the price will be around £350. This means it will cost £100 more than the current dual fan Powercolor HD6970 card. Of course there is a possibility it might cost a little less, but the pricing information we received came direct from Powercolor.

Is it worth the cost? We would factor in around £40 for the screwdriver set, but this is only worth the money, if you actually need it. In my own case I already have all the screwdrivers I need, and I would assume that many other enthusiast users feel the same. The box is certainly a beautiful design and the other extras make for a fine ‘collectors' edition, but for £100 extra it seems rather expensive, especially when the Arctic Cooling based KFA GTX580 Anarchy Edition is only £30 more.

It is a fantastic card and worth buying, but we do feel that a £100 price hike will put it in direct competition with the higher performing, custom cooled GTX580 solutions.

Pros:

• Capable cooling solution.
• Highly overclocked out of the box.
• Love the Wiha screwdriver kit.
• Low power demand under load.
• Dual BIOS is handy.
• Dirt 3.

Cons:

• Very expensive.
• Not the quietest 3rd party cooling solution.
• Not much headroom left for manual overclocking.
• New AMD range will be released soon.
• Most dual fan HD6970's cards can overclock to 930mhz with a little effort.

Kitguru says: A beautiful ‘collectors edition', but we don't think it offers wonderful value for money at £350. It also arrives a little ‘late' to the party, especially with new hardware waiting in the wings.

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