6850 cunlock to 6870; 6870 unlocks to ?????

Well I don't know what unlocking you're talking about with either of those cards. Neither the 6850 nor the 6870 can unlock any shaders as far as I'm aware. The only performance you'll be squeezing out of that 6870 will be from overclocking.
 
Exactly.

I don't know where you got the idea that the HD 6850 unlocks to HD 6870. In fact, neither of them unlock to anything.

They are great GPUs and overclock fairly well.

It doesn't unlock and never will.
 
6950's unlock to 6970s in some cases (do they still?). Is that what you were thinking of?
 
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