VGA AMD Radeon HD 6950M

Specification VGA AMD Radeon HD 6950M

Manufacturer	AMD
Radeon HD 6900M Series	Radeon HD 6990M Crossfire 2240 @ 715MHz 256 Bit @ 900MHz Radeon HD 6970M Crossfire 1920 @ 680MHz 256 Bit @ 900MHz Radeon HD 6990M 1120 @ 715MHz 256 Bit @ 900MHz Radeon HD 6970M 960 @ 680MHz 256 Bit @ 900MHz Radeon HD 6950M 960 @ 580MHz 256 Bit @ 900MHz
Codename	Blackcomb Pro
Architecture	Terascale 2
Pipelines	960 - unified
Core Speed *	580 MHz
Shader Speed *	580 MHz
Memory Speed *	900 MHz
Memory Bus Width	256 Bit
Memory Type	GDDR5
Max. Amount of Memory	2048 MB
Shared Memory	no
DirectX	DirectX 11, Shader 5.0
Transistors	1700 Million
technology	40 nm
Notebook Size	large
Date of Announcement	06.01.2011

The AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6950M (or sometimes called ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6950) is a high-end graphics card generally used for big and heavy laptops. It is based on the desktop HD 6850 graphics card and therefore features the new UVD3 video processor, increased Tessellation performance and Eyefinity+. The codename of this GPU is Blackcomb Pro and it should have similar power consumption as the GeForce GTX 470M. Compared to the faster HD 6970M, the 6950M's core is clocked slower by at least 100 MHz.

The 960 Stream processors should be still based on the "old" 5D architecture, similar to the 5000 series. Therefore, the number of shaders in the 6950M is not comparable to the 1D cores of current Nvidia GPUs. The Tessellation performance, however, should be improved (like the desktop 6800 series) with the new cards. The Stream processors can be used with DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.1, DirectCompute 11 and OpenCL. With the latter two, the cores of the 6950M can also be used for general computations like video transcoding.

The 3D performance is on par with the GeForce GTX 470M in the high end class of notebook graphic cards. For gamers, this means that the Radeon HD 6950M is able to fluently play most modern games (as of 2011) in high detail settings. Only Crysis and Metro 2033 will stutter in the highest detail settings at 1920x1080 resolution (see below).

The new UVD3 video decoder supports the decoding of MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2, Flash and now also Multi-View Codec (MVC) and MPEG-4 part 2 (DivX, xVid) HD videos on the graphics card.

Furthermore, the HD 6900M series integrates an HD audio controller to transmit HD Audio (TrueHD or DTS Master Audio) over HDMI and DisplayPort (e.g., for Blu-Ray videos).

The AMD HD3D Technology offers support for Blu-Ray 3D and 3D displays (integrated and external). However, the solution is not as mature as Nvidia's 3D Vision.

Thanks to Eyefinity, the graphics chip is able to theoretically drive up to 6 monitors simultaneously provided that the notebook itself has enough video-out ports.

The power consumption of the 6950M should be similar to the Nvidia GeForce GTX470M and is therefore only suited for medium to large laptops with good cooling solutions.