To test the Radeon HD 6970M, we've placed it inside the well-known W860CU Barebone from Clevo (also see DevilTech Devil 9700 DTX or mySN XMG P500 PRO), kindly provided to us by the canadian company Eurocom. The 15.6" and only 3.5 kg heavy desktop replacement is known as the W860CU Cougar and is currently available starting at 1034 Euro.  Eurocom has fitted the notebook with 4 GB DDR3 RAM (2x 2048 MB), a quick 7200 RPM HDD from Seagate and a powerful quad-core processor from Intel (Core i7 740QM). The W860CU Cougar sadly didn't have the good fortune to be equipped with a new Sandy Bridge processor.

Our test notebook, unfortunately, has a tough problem to struggle with on its hands: right after starting many of the tests, the screen simply turned black, requiring a reboot each time. The reason for this is that Eurocom fitted the notebook with the wrong cooling system and the Bios was actually a beta version, due to which the laptop quickly heated up to a critical temperature. With the correct cooling components in place, the situation improved substantially.  Nevertheless, with high resolutions and intense graphics-rendering, the screen still went went black quite often. According to Eurocom, the current Bios version clears up this problem.  After numerous attempts, we did finally succeed in running all the planned benchmarks on the test notebook.  Accommodating the AMD graphics card will largely depend on Eurocom's initiative since this is not supported in Clevo Barebone notebooks.

The 3DMark 06 benchmark has been on the market for quite a while and therefore presented no challenge to the Radeon HD 6970M. In the standard resolution of 1280 x 1024, the Eurocom W860CU Cougar (Core i7-740QM) managed to rack up an astounding 14047 points. That's a whole 6% more than the GeForce GTX 480M of the DevilTech Fragbook DTX (Core i7 720QM, 13273 points) was able to muster and even 12% more than the Radeon HD 5870 of the Medion Akoya X7811-MD97327 (Core i7 720QM, 12553 points). Because 3DMark 06 does not give separate scores for GPU and CPU, where the CPU plays a relatively large role, making the coupling of Core i7 2630QM and GeForce GTX 485M far superior to our hardware combo—the mySN XMG P501 earns 17817 points (+27%).

Even though Futuremark has come out with the new DirectX 11-based 3DMark 11, the older DirectX 10-based 3DMark Vantage still keeps many current graphics cards in their place.  This is not the case for the Radeon HD 6970M, however, which in a resolution of 1280 x 1024 scored 11645 points for the Eurocom W860CU Cougar. With  scores of 7879 and 7616 points, the GeForce GTX 480M (DevilTech Fragbook DTX) and the Radeon HD 5870 (Medion Akoya X7811) trail a good deal behind.  This means the Radeon HD 6970M processes data about 50% more quickly. As opposed to the results of 3DMark 06, the Geforce GTX 485M (mySN XMG P501) only manages to retain a slight lead here, earning 12191 points (+5%).

We tested the DirectX 11 performance of  the Radeon HD 6970M with the highly resource-demanding benchmark Unigine Heaven 2.1. The high level of tessellation requires even high-end graphics cards to give it all they've got, although Nvidia's GeForce 400-series GPUs have done comparatively better in the past. The Radeon HD 6970M manages to do fairly well with high details settings and normal tessellation at a resolution of 1280 x 1024, reaching a smooth refresh rate of 33.0 fps. The GeForce GTX 480M performs at a comparable level, earning the Clevo D901F Barebone with a desktop CPU (Core i7-940) a respectable 33.7 fps. GeForce GTX 460M and Radeon HD 5870 trail by an expectedly large amount, leading the Medion Erazer X6811-MD97624 (Core i7-740QM) and the Asus G73JH-TZ014V (Core i-740QM) both to achieve a mere 24 fps.

First-person shooters continue to enjoy an incredible level of popularity and the newest Call of Duty offshooth, Black Ops, is the epitome of this phenomenon. In the first 24 hours alone after its release several million copies were purchased online. In terms of pirated downloads as well, it ranks in number one in 2010. In light of a certain problem, however, the release of Black Ops seems a bit premature. On a variety of systems—independent of the graphics settings—the game lags quite badly for a bit, causing the picture to become very choppy fairly often.

Despite the densely detailed world of Mafia 2, the long awaited sequel didn't quite meet expectations. The game scores some points through with its built-in benchmark, with which we tested its performance with high detail settings on, 16x AF at a resolution of 1920 x 1080.

The extremely successful real-time strategy game from Blizzard made it into the top ratings worldwide.  Starcraft 2 essentially has moderate hardware requirements, but the more units on the screen at one time, the stronger the hardware the game demands. To take into account the hardware requirements of the later levels, our benchmark consisted of the demanding Intro "For the Swarm".  The resolution was set to 1920 x 1080 and the level of details set to "ultra".

The densely detailed first-person shooter from Ukrainian developer 4A Games is inspired by Dmitry Glukhovsky's novel by the same name. The game stands out not only through its sharp textures and high level of detail, but also through its incredibly high toll on hardware.  With high detail settings on, in DirectX 11 mode, AAA (analytical antialiasing), 4x AF and at a resolution of 1920 x 1080 even dual-GPU components like the GeForce GTX 480M SLI failed miserably.

The current Battlefield offshoot does an excellent job of mixing tactical elements and action-filled gameplay in the multiplayer mode.  The single-player mode isn't quite as appealing considering Call of Duty does a better job of delighting players with spectacular cut-scenes and smooth-functioning scripts.  For the sake of consistent stress on the hardware, we chose the cinematographic boat ride at the beginning of the single-player campaign for our benchmark.  High details, 4x AA, 8x AF and a resolution of 1920 x 1080 produced a smooth refresh rate with very few graphics cards so far.

First-person shooters like this, which delight both in the single-player as well as multiplayer modes, are a rarity. Modern Warfare 2 from Call of Duty creator Infinity Ward is an oldie but goody with a not-all-too-new graphics engine that inspires only the slightest of yawns from current high-end graphics cards. We therefore carried out our several-miniute-long benchmark sequence with the game set to high details, 4x AA and a resolution of 1920 x 1080

.

After the copious amount of bugs found in Gothic 3 sparked a legal battle between developer Piranha Bytes and publisher JoWood, JoWood ended up holding onto the license and Piranha Bytes abandoned ship.  The creators of Gothic 3 were then left to find shelter with publisher Deep Silver and released the successful sequel (for the most part), Risen, in 2009.  Risen doesn't quite offer cutting-edge graphics, but with high details on, 4x AF and a resolution of 1920 x 1080, it still requires some powerful hardware.

The very realistic Need for Speed Shift has always seemed to have a predisposition for Nvidia GPUs. That is, most comparisons of otherwise similarly-performing graphics cards seem to usually weigh heavily in favor of the Nvidia card. Our benchmark with high detail settings, 4x AA and a resolution of 1920 x 1080 (London circuit) confirmed that this trend will not stop with the release of the Radeon HD 6000M series.

Picturesque graphics are not only found in first-person shooters.  The creator of the racing game, Dirt 2 (Codemasters) has seen to that.  The numerous DirectX 11 effects and tesselation dazzle the eyes and produce highly realistic-looking foaming of water.  Now that Need for Speed Shift started the trend, Colin McRae Dirt 2 follows suit, tending to perform better with Nvidia graphics cards.

Finally, the Radeon HD 6970M has to take on Crysis. Despite being over three years old, this first person shooter still impresses with its excellent graphics even today. Because of its resource-demanding nature, Crysis could not be left out of our gaming tests.  Using the benchmark incorporated in the game, a fluid picture has yet to be reproduced by a single graphics card at very high detail settings and a resolution of 1920 x 1080.

To partially relieve the processor in its task of decoding HD material, the Radeon HD 6970M features a video decoder. The Universal Video Decoder 3  (UVD3)—in addition to formats already suppored by UVD2: MPEG-4, MPEG-2, H.264, AVC, VC-1—now also supports DivX/Xvid (MPEG-4 Part 2) and 3D Blu-Rays (MVC). Our test showed the UVD3 to perform very well in playing back H.264 and VC-1 videos (1920 x 1080), and the CPU load remained at 0% most of the time. A flash video online (1920 x 1080) results in a CPU load of 4%, leaving no room for complaints.  Also, the file format has no effect on the clock rates of the Radeon HD 6970M, which ran at a constant 300 MHz (core) and 900 MHz (memory).