iMac Radeon HD 6970M GFX Performance

[liquidshade]

So i know iMac's use the "Mobility" versions of the Radeon HD 6970s (Radeon HD 6970M 1GB) which output a lesser performance over the Radeon HD 6970.



But if I opt to upgrade the card to the Radeon HD 6970M 2GB do you think it would reach the same level, performance wise as the 1GB non-mobility card?

 

[Hellhammer]

6970M is underclocked desktop 6850. No matter what you do, it won't be anywhere near as fast as desktop 6970. The extra VRAM will help a bit with some games but it won't e.g. double the performance.

 

[peskaa]

No.

GPU speed is mainly dictated by clock frequency, processing cores and so forth rather than the amount of available VRAM. The VRAM just allows more textures to be stored, which is good for big screens. The 2GB 6970M is going to be no faster than the 1GB 6970M in terms of raw horsepower, it just has more memory for textures that may result in a handful of FPS increase in some games.

However, 2GB of VRAM is a lot for a GPU. Lots of desktop class cards are still only using 1GB, whilst being faster than the 6970M. NVIDIA's top of the range GTX 580 only has 1.5GB, and is way, way, way quicker.