The $250 Radeon HD 6950 1GB has been released as a response to Nvidia's GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB card. Unfortunately, the GTX 560 Ti sample arrived in our labs after the Radeon HD 6950 1GB, so we did not include the results of Nvidia' s offering to our performance comparison charts. However, according to some quick benchmarks we did with our GTX 560 Ti sample, in most of the games, the performance for both cards is the same. Since both video cards have 1GB of RAM they are both limited in the same way in resolutions higher than 1920 x 1280. As a result, the choice between the HD 6950 1GB and GTX 560 Ti will likely come down to personal preference.

Compared to the 2GB version of the HD 6950, the 1GB version seems to perform equally unless you play with AA enabled. In this case, you likely better off with the more expensive HD 6950 2GB .

Without any doubt, our Club 3D HD 6950 1GB sample outperformed the Nvidia GTX 460, GTX 470 and the AMD HD 5850 and HD6850, HD 5870 cards. So if you are having one of these cards and you thinking of an upgrade, you can safely go for it. On the other hand, overclockers will be most probably disappointed as the Club 3D HD 6950 1GB did not show any wide overclocking margins.

The Club3D HD 6950 1GB is a gaming powerhouse in the category of mid-range graphics cards. As it currently stands, there is no better value than Radeon HD 6950 GPU 1GB video card in this "sweet spot" of ~$250. If you are gaming at 1920x1200 or lower and you are on a budget, the Club3D HD 6950 1GB version should be your choice. For high levels AA or game at higher resolutions, you' d better go for the 6950 2GB model.