I recently picked up a Diamon ATI 6970 2GB, I believe the clock on it was either 880 or 890 , (not sure)
Just want to make this clear, I'm a long time nvidia user. My first enthusiast card was the very first Radeon series they released. Due to their buggy drivers at the time i was motivated to move to Nvidia and have been with them ever since. I have many nvidia card.
Out of all the hardware reviews i have read, it's looking like ATI has their act together somewhat. The benchmarks of various games put the 2 cards on par with each other. Each has their pros and cons. At that point the logical considerations come down to budget and how much you can afford.
For me, I'm a working class individual with a family and baby on the way. The ATI cost is very attractive. Thats really why I went with it.
I had the oppertunity to demo a ATI 5770 card (borrowed from the lab @ work) and try CoD on it. It was a massive step up from my Nvidia 8800GTS 512. I could play the game @ medium with somewhat good fps performance.
After about a week of scoping the price differences I was going to go with a GTX570. But i decided to why not try the Radeon 6970 since it has more physical ram on it.
I'm on my 4th / 5th day with it. I havent had much time to play CloD but I'm loving it.. It's a good card, its fast. The fan does kick on a little higher when theres a load on it. But I really don't care. I have a fridge in my office (for beer )
so its already noisy in there. Besides after 4 beers who cards about such things
You'l see at least 50-60 FPS non stop.. 30FPS over london. Depending on your Graphics settings that will increase/decrease. I have been playing a little bit with that optimization mod on the forum here. which resulted in the sustained high FPS.
At the moment I am running everything on High, except for visibility. I turned it off from unlimited -> High ... For the most part. When I'm in combat flying planes.. I'll drop to about 30 - 35FPS , 20 over london in combat. However For what it is & for the cost, it's a great deal.
The card cost me around $320. I used a newegg savers deal and combined it with a local microcenter in the area that matches newegg prices.
My cpu specs are.
Intel W3570 Processor
12GB ram DDR3 1600
Intel SSD Hard Drive (160gb)
2GB ATI 6970 (Diamond)
If your looking for a boost and don't want to shell out $500 +
I would recommend a 6970 to you guys. Like I said, I'm a long time nvidia user.