AMD 6850 and 6870 released, October 18

exlink said:
Would a Q9550 be able to run crossfire 6850's fairly well without too much of a bottleneck? I would be gaming at 5040x1020. Don't want to invest too much into these cards if I would be holding them back too much.
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I may take a beating for this, but you don't have to have the latest and greatest CPU to be able to run games with a nice GPU setup. If you have a stock CPU, crank it up, that will make a nice difference.
 
exlink said:
Would a Q9550 be able to run crossfire 6850's fairly well without too much of a bottleneck? I would be gaming at 5040x1020. Don't want to invest too much into these cards if I would be holding them back too much.
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a simple overclock to 3.4 would eliminate nearly any limitation.
 
rUmX said:
What the heck!? Why are they testing at 1280x1024!?
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To make the games more CPU limited so it appears that the cards are nearly equal. Either they're very biased or very incompetent (I'm going with biased seeing as how the 460 beats a 5870 in Stalker even in high resolutions). Either way, I'm not believing anything from that site anymore.

edit: Check out Metro 2033! A single GTX 460 beating two 6870s? What the...
 
fattypants said:
To make the games more CPU limited so it appears that the cards are nearly equal. Either they're very biased or very incompetent (I'm going with biased seeing as how the 460 beats a 5870 in Stalker even in high resolutions). Either way, I'm not believing anything from that site anymore.

edit: Check out Metro 2033! A single GTX 460 beating two 6870s? What the...
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Check out SC2. Both 460s beating a 5870...
 
Just wondering. These cards set a new performance for the buck standard... but are they any better at folding than the 4/5000 series?
 
vjcsmoke said:
but are they any better at folding than the 4/5000 series?
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Not until we get a new client but, for shits and giggles, I'm going to try a WU on mine when my card arrives in a couple days.
 
ZerazaX said:
legit has been a pretty bad place to read reviews in the past few years..
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Wow, I did not know that. I actually don't read them per say... but if I'm Googling up a review and if they came up I always read them. But yeah it's odd... very surprised they didn't test BC2 either. But we know already AMD performs better in that game so that's why they omitted it I guess.

Looks like it's time to scratch them off the "read list".

BTW, I'm so tempted to go 6850 CF but I don't like any of the AIB coolers. I want one with the reference cooler, but it seems only the 6870 has them so far... but 6870 CF is too pricey for me >_<
 
rUmX said:
BTW, I'm so tempted to go 6850 CF but I don't like any of the AIB coolers. I want one with the reference cooler, but it seems only the 6870 has them so far... but 6870 CF is too pricey for me >_<
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You could always do 6870 now + 6850 later...they crossfire
 
Not sure why you'd buy these now. They are just mid range cards that are slower than the 5850 and 5870, and they are commanding a high price considering their lackluster performance. Man I hate being a party pooper :(
 
KipCoo said:
Not sure why you'd buy these now. They are just mid range cards that are slower than the 5850 and 5870, and they are commanding a high price considering their lackluster performance. Man I hate being a party pooper :(
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well they are priced pretty fairly but certainly are not great deals IMO. if you bought a good overclocking 6850 for 180 bucks though that seems pretty sweet. maybe they will go down in price but it will probably be a while since many people were waiting to jump on these.
 
KipCoo said:
Not sure why you'd buy these now. They are just mid range cards that are slower than the 5850 and 5870, and they are commanding a high price considering their lackluster performance. Man I hate being a party pooper :(
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Then you'd have to say the GTX 460 isn't a great deal either, since the 6850 beats it at the same price...

What card is a good deal to you?
 
cannondale06 said:
well they are priced pretty fairly but certainly are not great deals IMO. if you bought a good overclocking 6850 for 180 bucks though that seems pretty sweet. maybe they will go down in price but it will probably be a while since many people were waiting to jump on these.
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Seems like an awful lot of performance at $240 to me (for the 6870 and GTX 470), especially compared to that price point 6 months ago.
 
Forceman said:
Seems like an awful lot of performance at $240 to me (for the 6870 and GTX 470), especially compared to that price point 6 months ago.
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it is in many ways but it really depends on how you look at it. a lot of these cards are still not massive upgrades for those of us with gpus that cost even less a year or two ago. I paid 180 bucks for my gtx260 in Oct 2008 and even two generations later I can't come close to doubling my performance for that same price.
 
cannondale06 said:
it is in many ways but it really depends on how you look at it. a lot of these cards are still not massive upgrades for those of us with gpus that cost even less a year or two ago. I paid 180 bucks for my gtx260 in Oct 2008 and even two generations later I can't come close to doubling my performance for that same price.
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And you're not going to for a long time. I couldn't stand having a card that long anymore. The itch to upgrade would drive me nuts.
 
Derangel said:
And you're not going to for a long time. I couldn't stand having a card that long anymore. The itch to upgrade would drive me nuts.
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oh its driving me nuts too. at the same time spending money for so little in return drives me nuts even more. I may go ahead and sell the gtx260 since I already removed it. I can play some less demanding games on my 8600gt for a few weeks while I decide what to do.
 
cannondale06 said:
oh its driving me nuts too. at the same time spending money for so little in return drives me nuts even more. I may go ahead and sell the gtx260 since I already removed it. I can play some less demanding games on my 8600gt for a few weeks while I decide what to do.
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6870/470 are what I'd recommend going for at your res. Haven't found much to tax my 470 and I'm guessing the 6870 is performing at near that level.
 
6870 is cheaper than I thought it'd be. 239 on Newegg, and with that performance, low temps and microscopic power draw I just went ahead and bought one here about an hour ago. Newegg probably doesn't even have the cards yet lol.
 
The new Morphological anti-aliasing looks pretty sweet. Thats Starcraft 2 AA done right! :D

morphological%20aa.png

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-6870-radeon-hd-6850-barts,2776-4.html
 
Derangel said:
6870/470 are what I'd recommend going for at your res. Haven't found much to tax my 470 and I'm guessing the 6870 is performing at near that level.
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well the 6870 doesn't oc worth a poo without additional voltage and even then not so great. I would pick the $60 cheaper 6850 over the 6870 and just oc it since it has more headroom from its lower stock clocks. when both the 6850 and 6870 are overclocked to their respective max its only 10% between them for games. http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=27053&page=17

as for the gtx470, it would have to be a non reference cooler for sure. I had a reference cooled card for a few days and it was insanely loud while gaming and still didn't keep the card all that cool.
 
fattypants said:
Interesting...kinda reminds me of the SuperEagle filtering on emulators

http://i51.tinypic.com/xnhy13.jpg

It doesn't look perfect, but at high resolutions, you'd need to magnify a screenshot to tell the difference. A little refinement could make this a thing of the future.
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It might prove useful in the future as well as it is. :)

Starcraft 2 was the perfect game to try it on, since the performance hit with any other type of AA made it pointless to enable it. The new Morphological anti-aliasing gives Starcraft 2 basically free AA! :D
 
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cannondale06 said:
well the 6870 doesn't oc worth a poo without additional voltage and even then not so great. I would pick the $60 cheaper 6850 over the 6870 and just oc it since it has more headroom from its lower stock clocks. when both the 6850 and 6870 are overclocked to their respective max its only 10% between them for games. http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=27053&page=17

as for the gtx470, it would have to be a non reference cooler for sure. I had a reference cooled card for a few days and it was insanely loud while gaming and still didn't keep the card all that cool.
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I don't see any point at all in OC'ing video cards. You have to push the cards to some pretty high overclocks to get any real benefit. I just don't see the value in doing it. If you're doing it just because you can, cool, but if you're doing it to provide better game performance I don't think its worth the effort. In synthetic benches you can probably push a 6850 to reach 6870 levels, but I don't think it will translate that well to real world gameplay. The numerous OC'd card reviews H has done over the years shows a lot of that. Even the massively overclocked 460 they have probably doesn't make much difference in real world testing.

As for heat and noise, yeah. The 470 isn't for people who like quiet computers. Thats my only real complaint about the card. Heat I can deal with by turning the jet engine of a fan up. Or I can keep it a little lower and just let the card run hot. My case is set up as well as it can be for optimal air flow and getting as much cool air in and keep warm air from getting to the GPU.
 
Derangel said:
I don't see any point at all in OC'ing video cards. You have to push the cards to some pretty high overclocks to get any real benefit. I just don't see the value in doing it. If you're doing it just because you can, cool, but if you're doing it to provide better game performance I don't think its worth the effort. In synthetic benches you can probably push a 6850 to reach 6870 levels, but I don't think it will translate that well to real world gameplay. The numerous OC'd card reviews H has done over the years shows a lot of that. Even the massively overclocked 460 they have probably doesn't make much difference in real world testing.
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I disagree about overclocking. every video card I have owned has been able to increase settings and/or performance with overclocking. most of the time a 15-20% oc results in a 15-20% increase which is free performance. I am not going to go through every game but overclocking a video card most certainly has its benefits.
 
cannondale06 said:
I disagree about overclocking. every video card I have owned has been able to increase settings and/or performance with overclocking. most of the time a 15-20% oc results in a 15-20% increase which is free performance. I am not going to go through every game but overclocking a video card most certainly has its benefits.
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I don't see the point with OC either. Just more noise for little performance. I prefer to pay for a better card then instead. :p

Here's a link you might find interesting though :) :
21k_vantage_3-580x356.png

http://translate.google.com/transla...igabyte-radeon-hd-6870-studiu-de-overclocking
 
cannondale06 said:
I disagree about overclocking. every video card I have owned has been able to increase settings and/or performance with overclocking. most of the time a 15-20% oc results in a 15-20% increase which is free performance. I am not going to go through every game but overclocking a video card most certainly has its benefits.
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Maybe its different with current cards, but I overclocked my old 3870 pretty well and I didn't see a huge benefit. Same with my old 8800GTS 320. Ditto on a EVGA 9800GTX I had. The H reviews dealing with OCing kind of usually confirm my thoughts. That said, I do remember a time when OC'ing a GPU did wonders. The old ATI 9800 cards. Even a small OC could do great for the card. Well a small OC, and a hack that unlocked some of the lower end cards and made them faster and better.
 
Tamlin_WSGF said:
I don't see the point with OC either. Just more noise for little performance. I prefer to pay for a better card then instead. :p

Here's a link you might find interesting though :) :
http://lab501.ro/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/21k_vantage_3-580x356.png
http://translate.google.com/transla...igabyte-radeon-hd-6870-studiu-de-overclocking
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well then you guys would have already had to buy new cards where as I got much more use out my gtx260. heck I am using my 8600gt right now and overclocking it 25% is basically essential to play some games.
 
fattypants said:
Then you'd have to say the GTX 460 isn't a great deal either, since the 6850 beats it at the same price...

What card is a good deal to you?
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Waiting to see how Nvidia will respond. If the GTX480 can reach $300 territory I'd grab one. I game at lower resolutions and according to this:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2010/10/22/ati-radeon-hd-6870-review/5

6870 really suffers at 1680x1050 where as the GTX 480 performs the best.

I was going to sli gtx 460 1gb cards if they went down to $150 but that means I'd have to buy a sli mobo...plus run into driver issues.

GTX 470 seems like the best deal out there at the $239 AR. Seriously considering the 470 now since it is about the same price as the 460 1gb.
 
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