AMD Radeon HD 6870 & HD 6850 Video Card Review @ [H]

nösferatu;1036325548 said:
Awesome launch and awesome review, the little downside is, i wish AMD havnet named them that way.
As a computer shop owner, i can feel its the time to fight again against my less informed customers, "NO, HD 6870 is NOT superior than HD 5870".
Click to expand...



Seems superior to me.

Offers great performance for much less money with less power requirements. It may not beat it in synthetic benchmarks but everything else about it is better IMO.
 
nösferatu;1036325548 said:
Awesome launch and awesome review, the little downside is, i wish AMD havnet named them that way.
As a computer shop owner, i can feel its the time to fight again against my less informed customers, "NO, HD 6870 is NOT superior than HD 5870".
Click to expand...

But aren't you always going to get assumptions from the uninformed that 5670 > 4890 ?

Unless you are reasonably well informed you probably aren't aware the the second digit class coding.
 
Awesome review, Thanks [H] :D
oh what to do now decisions decisions heh...
 
i currently have a gts 250, would i see any difference with a 6850? i mainly play wow, but occasionally play some mafia 2, and metro 2033. 1920x1080 res. thanks
 
Tobit said:
Which is why, although I could have actually used the added VRAM on the 470, bought a 6870 tonight instead of the 470. It's only a place holder for my til Cayman anyway.
Click to expand...

Heh........

Just imagine that perhaps when we finally get a decent OpenCL GPU client for folding@home, you can add it to your folding farm as that is going to be one incredibly efficient GPU.

If this is what Barts can do, I am definately psyched about what Cayman and later Antilles will be able to do.
 
For those interested in comparisons to GTX 470, the Hexus review is already up and covers a much wider selection of cards, albeit they aren't [H] style playthroughs.

The Hexus review shows the 6850 being OC'd up to ~900MHz and even surpassing stock 6870 on some benches which frankly doesn't make any logical sense. Smells fishy.
 
Snowdog said:
But aren't you always going to get assumptions from the uninformed that 5670 > 4890 ?

Unless you are reasonably well informed you probably aren't aware the the second digit class coding.
Click to expand...

True, but the uninformed will mostly listen, while the less informed will mostly insist : "NO, ofcourse 6870 is superior since it is an UPGRADE from 5870 :eek:",
:eek: .
 
XorCist said:
i currently have a gts 250, would i see any difference with a 6850? i mainly play wow, but occasionally play some mafia 2, and metro 2033. 1920x1080 res. thanks
Click to expand...

Yes you would get a big improvement.
 
Kaldskryke said:
For those interested in comparisons to GTX 470, the Hexus review is already up and covers a much wider selection of cards, albeit they aren't [H] style playthroughs.

The Hexus review shows the 6850 being OC'd up to ~900MHz and even surpassing stock 6870 on some benches which frankly doesn't make any logical sense. Smells fishy.
Click to expand...

They also do an overclock of the memory beyond the stock speed of the the 6870, so memory bandwidth might be a factor.
 
Is the eyefinity support on these cards the same as the 58xx cards? As in, would I still need an active dvi to displayport adaptor if I had two of these cards and 3 dvi monitors?

Also, I have a friend with eyefinity, and the colors are off on the monitor he's using the displayport adaptor on. The monitors are all the same brand/model. Is this normal behavior? If I have to use the adapter, I'd like the colors to still be exact to all three monitors.
 
Nice review. Love the price. Though my month old 5870 is still better so no need to upgrade.
 
spigzone said:
If so wouldn't that just move the price/performance hole from $200 to $300?

Seems illogical.
Click to expand...

Look at the price Hole between the new GTX 470 price and the GTX 480.

Price holes don't matter at all unless someone else is selling a lot of cards there.

Cayman is supposed to be faster than GTX 480 which is still well over $400.
 
alewman said:
Is the eyefinity support on these cards the same as the 58xx cards? As in, would I still need an active dvi to displayport adaptor if I had two of these cards and 3 dvi monitors?

Also, I have a friend with eyefinity, and the colors are off on the monitor he's using the displayport adaptor on. The monitors are all the same brand/model. Is this normal behavior? If I have to use the adapter, I'd like the colors to still be exact to all three monitors.
Click to expand...

newegg has Sapphire adapters for 26.99 I haven't had any problems since getting one.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ve_display_port_to_dvi-_-14-999-030-_-Product
 
nösferatu;1036325587 said:
True, but the uninformed will mostly listen, while the less informed will mostly insist : "NO, ofcourse 6870 is superior since it is an UPGRADE from 5870 :eek:",
:eek: .
Click to expand...

In this day and age, any uninformed consumer who blindly spends their hard earned cash without doing ANY online research deserves to be parted from their money. Society is becoming ruthless and it is ultimately up to each consumer to do their research. The internets have made it very easy.

On the other hand, other reviews are popping up and I find it incredible how some of these reviews like Anandtech show that the Barts GPU's crossfired consume about as much power as a single GTX 470 when under load.
 
Kaldskryke said:
The Hexus review shows the 6850 being OC'd up to ~900MHz and even surpassing stock 6870 on some benches which frankly doesn't make any logical sense. Smells fishy.
Click to expand...
Who knows with Hexus. They often have "fishy" and unexplainable results. Stick to this site for results, the results here are consistent and will show very similar resuts you'd get with your own setup at the same settings.
 
Good article, thank you [H].

I'm sure seeing how all the cards in this article compare when overclocked at a later date will be interesting.
 
heflys20 said:
If it uses the same engine, those results aren't too surprising. However, HAWX 2 is pretty mediocre, so no will really be missing much.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I can understand why Nvidia wants it used and AMD doesn't though.
 
Hints about what Cayman has coming up next:

HardwareCanucks
November will see the release of the Cayman XT-based HD 6970 and Cayman Pro-based HD 6950 which have all of the features seen in Barts plus enhanced rendering scalability and off-chip buffering for DX11 applications. These will be the spiritual successors to the HD 5870 and HD 5850 and should go head to head with the higher end Fermi cards.

December will see the introduction of Antilles which is meant to be the lynchpin of AMD’s renewed assault on the DX11 market. The HD 6990 will bring untold performance to the table through the use of a pair of Cayman GPU cores and additional features we can’t divulge at this time.
Click to expand...

[H]ardOCP:
The 6900 series will have a superset of features compared o the 6800 series. This means that there will be features and architecture differences between 6900 and 6800 series. This allows AMD to take more chances on the high-end enthusiast class GPUs and architecture things different, to really step up performance that enthusiasts demand. So, just to restate, the new 6800 series will offer performance of the 5800 series, at a lower price, with lower power, and a smaller chip.
Click to expand...

PC Perspective
Later in the year we will see the release of future architectures that much more unique in the Cayman and Antilles product lines. We'll have to leave you with that tease for now and touch again on both of those items later.
Click to expand...

Hexus
These arrive armed with improvements in the two metrics discussed above, soon to be followed by a genuine performance GPU in the form of the Radeon HD 6950 and HD 6970 'Cayman' parts and, a little while later, the dual-GPU Radeon HD 6990, code-named Antilles. Phew!
Click to expand...

Looks like AMD might be back to playing the high-end GPU game
 
Last edited:
I find it interesting and smart that AMD is releasing their 'mainstream' product first. They really had a big hole to fill in the ~200 price range. 5830 was a joke and 5770 wasn't quite fast enough to challenge the 460. Now AMD has TWO cards that perform a lot better than expected for the money. The 6870 challenges the 470 and the 6850 challenges the 460. Plus have you seen the crossfirex reviews? AMD has significantly improved dual card crossfirex scaling with the 6000 series!
 
Let us all hope Nvidia can last. If they have to leave the consumer market, their goes your AMD prices skyrocketing. I remember a few years back when the top video card from nvidia was going 600 then a week later was 400. That is competition. Without Nvidia, AMD will raise prices to gain huge profits rather than low/moderate profits. I have the gtx480 and it is pretty amazing video card if you are willing to spend the money/only have one pci-e slot. Heat is the downside, but only in the summer in the winter it acts as the heater and you can turn the heater off to the house.
 
I'm absolutely floored how low the price of the GTX470 has dropped, you can get an EVGA for $259 and it comes with a coupon for Mafia2. If you want to go Nvidia, damn that's a sweet deal!

edit- apparently you can get the 470 for even less after rebate. Damn.
 
Thanks for the awesome review guys!

This is the first time since the 2900 XT that ATI has completely redesigned their architecture:
3000 series was just a shrink
4000 series fixed the flaws of the 3000 series (ROP AA efficiency and lack of texture throughput), but used the same basic architecture.
5000 series was just a rough doubling of the 4000 series, with a few new image quality features.

The fruits of this redesign really show in the improvements: they cut the shader complexity and improved the scheduler and somehow came up with the same performance in a smaller, lower-power package.

I am amazed how much more efficiency ATI was able to wring out of out of TSMC's 40nm process. The best part is, they will be able to carry-over these architectural improvements to future generations, so this is an investment in their future.

It's too bad I was enticed to buy a GTX 460 1GB back in July, or I would be buying a 6870 right this minute :D
 
Last edited:
hackztor said:
Let us all hope Nvidia can last. If they have to leave the consumer market, their goes your AMD prices skyrocketing. I remember a few years back when the top video card from nvidia was going 600 then a week later was 400. That is competition. Without Nvidia, AMD will raise prices to gain huge profits rather than low/moderate profits. I have the gtx480 and it is pretty amazing video card if you are willing to spend the money/only have one pci-e slot. Heat is the downside, but only in the summer in the winter it acts as the heater and you can turn the heater off to the house.
Click to expand...
ATI isn't like that. Historically, when they have the lead, they haven't abused it. The 9700 Pro was a top performer for TWO generations of Nvidia cards, only losing when the 6800 showed up. It was released at $400 and dropped in price during those two gens. And from the 6800 on up, when Nvidia had the lead, they released every generation at a hefty $500-$650 (including their most recent generation), while ATI continued to price competitively.

When the 5870 showed up and blew everything out of the water, did ATI price it at $500-$650? Nope...MSRP was $380. They did bring it up about 10% after release, but it still wasn't anywhere near a wallet-busting $500+ like every Nvidia card from the 6800 to GTX480.
 
Last edited:
ZerazaX said:
enhanced rendering scalability and off-chip buffering for DX11 applications
Click to expand...

Hmm, this sounds potentially game-changing or interesting. Enchanted rendering scalability, I can't help but read into 'better crossfire capabilties for the group that generally crossfires(enthusiasts)'. The later part about off-chip buffering for DX11 applications has GREAT potential imo.

I know my PC has 12GB of DDR3 in it that's wayyy faster to access than my hard drive in seek times, transfer rate(bandwidth/throughput) etc but most games generally make use of 'up to 2GB' and choose to stop there; even when I'm running an x64 bit operating system it stops at the 2GB mark for most games.

I tend to think that may lean towards to an OS limitation since I recall something about x86 applicatoins being unable to access more than 2GB of memory per application even if more than 2GB is available.

Regardless if my other say 8GB of memory after the memory being used by windows 7/background applications are taken into account are able to buffer models/data/whatever else for faster load times, that could be game-changing(performance wise).
 
Love the reviews but I just gotta say, with the price, performance, and efficiency of the 5850 and 6870 being wayyy to close, I can't see the 6870 getting a gold. On the other hand, the 6850's was well deserved.
 
Omegas said:
Love the reviews but I just gotta say, with the price, performance, and efficiency of the 5850 and 6870 being wayyy to close, I can't see the 6870 getting a gold. On the other hand, the 6850's was well deserved.
Click to expand...

The 6870 beats the 5850 and costs less, uses less power, and runs cooler. How the hell doesn't it deserve it?
 
WOW :D

Thanks for the great review guys.

I Just picked up an ASUS HD6870 from newegg. This should keep me "1920 x 1200" happy until 28 nm and new 120 Hz monitors arrival sometime in 2011.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top