# AMD Radeon HD 6870 And 6850 Benchmark Review



## topgear (Oct 23, 2010)

When you're up on top, it's pretty hard to imagine getting knocked back down. Perhaps that's why, after a mind-blowing Radeon HD 5000-series launch, AMD seems to have engaged the cruise control for these first two examples of its Radeon HD 6000-series.

Not that we'd blame the company. It enjoyed a solid six months of selling the world's only DirectX 11-capable product stack at a time when DirectX 11 and, more important, DirectX 11 games were actually shipping. Nvidia's response was compelling. But the heat and power consumption associated with a 3 billion transistor GPU counterbalanced some of its brighter performance highlights.

Only when Nvidia started rolling out derivatives did AMD's position seem truly challenged. The GF104-based GeForce GTX 460 offered the price tag and performance to make us reconsider the Radeon HD 5830, and the GF106-based GeForce GTS 450 was at least good enough to lock horns with AMD's Radeon HD 5770, even if prior-generation cards still offered (and continue to offer) better performance for your dollar. Interesting side-note: one of Nvidia's board partners lets us know earlier this week that G92 is officially dead. Supplies of GeForce GTS 250 should start drying up soon, leaving you to pick and choose between the current crop of DirectX 11 cards.

We know both of these companies are engaged in a brutal battle. In fact, that battle made the decisions in today's review very hard to make. First, we hear that we should be comparing the 6000-series boards to factory-overclocked GeForce GTX 460s because "they outnumber the reference-clocked boards." Then it's, "...and prices on the GeForce GTX 470 and 460 are going to be dropping; we just can't tell you to what level yet." AMD knows Nvidia doesn't have a target to aim for yet, so it holds back on pricing details on its new cards. When it can wait no more, that email lands. Less than a day later, Nvidia announces its own official price restructuring. Hooolllyyy...talk about corporate espionage enabled by wannabe journalists who can't keep email to themselves!

And in the midst of all of that jockeying, there are new games launching that may or may not be under the influence of developers who selectively cooperate with one GPU vendor or the other. These are anticipated games. Games we've wanted to test for some time now. But we face the possibility that one hardware architecture might be highly-optimized, while the other company's driver team still hasn't seen the title running. Now there's a recipe for hard-to-explain benchmark results. 

What's the point? Today's DirectX 11-class graphics market is more competitive than anything we could have imagined one year ago, when AMD was undisputed king of the hill and Nvidia's GeForce GTX 295 was still the flagship. Naturally, then, when you hear that AMD is launching its Radeon HD 6870 and 6850 cards, you expect the next generation of high-end--a follow-up capable of knocking GeForce GTX 480 off of its perch, perhaps. 

Not today. The potential for such an evolution will have to wait until next month. The Radeon HD 6870 is slower than Radeon HD 5870. Radeon HD 6850 is slower than Radeon HD 5850. It's confusing, we know, but AMD has what it considers a good explanation for the naming scheme.

And while raw performance is down, overall, the purpose behind AMD's Radeon HD 6800-series is purportedly an optimization of the architecture. The "Barts" GPUs realize a re-balancing of the Cypress design that performed so well already. A handful of features are being added, and price points are coming down. The idea here is to engage Nvidia's GeForce GTX 460 1 GB and 768 MB beyond performance. 

Before we dig-in to the Radeon HD 6800-series, let's take a closer look at the targeted price points.

*media.bestofmicro.com/D/O/266172/original/6800%20Product%20Strategy.jpg

What's With That Name?

Now, if you're like us, that Radeon HD 6800-series moniker will strike you as disingenuous. Even after hearing the official party line, we still don't like the fact that the branding requires an explanation from us in order to make sense. What about the folks who don't get the memo? We can only hope that price insinuates performance. Barts is designed to fill the $150 to $250 range, far below today’s Radeon HD 5870. This is more like Radeon HD 5830 and 5850 territory. The high-end Radeon HD 5870 and 5970 will be replaced by the “Cayman” and “Antilles” Radeon HD 6900-series before the end of Q4 2010.

I’m sure we aren’t the first to be surprised by the new naming scheme—to us, it’s a cinch that Barts should file in as the Radeon HD 6700-series. AMD claims that 6800 was chosen because the Radeon HD 5700s will remain in production for some time to cover the sub-$150 market. We honestly don’t think this is a very good justification, as product generations have overlapped time and time again without too much of a problem. The biggest issue for us is that the ill-informed Radeon HD 5870 owner will assume that the Radeon HD 6870 is an upgrade, when in fact the new card wields less performance.

But we're not here to review the card's name. We'll voice our dissent and move on. The Radeon HD 6870 promises Radeon HD 5850-class performance at roughly $240. The Radeon HD 6850 should slide in ahead of the Radeon HD 5830 for $180 or so. Both new cards also do a handful of things the 5000-series couldn't do, including Blu-ray 3D acceleration and playback, stereoscopic 3D gaming, a new level of anti-aliasing, faster tessellation, and a beefed up version of Eyefinity that lets you connect six displays, just as soon as the DisplayPort 1.2 ecosystem fills out sometime in 2011.

*Radeon HD 6800-Series Specs :*

*i54.tinypic.com/2uorxar.png

*Image Galore :*

*HD 6870*

*media.bestofmicro.com/E/W/266216/original/6870%205850%20comp.jpg

*media.bestofmicro.com/E/X/266217/original/6870%20back.jpg

*media.bestofmicro.com/F/0/266220/original/6870%20power.jpg

*media.bestofmicro.com/E/Z/266219/original/6870%20outputs%20cards.jpg

*media.bestofmicro.com/F/5/266225/original/his%206870%20bundle.jpg

*HD 6850*

*media.bestofmicro.com/F/4/266224/original/his%206850%20vs%206870.jpg

*media.bestofmicro.com/F/3/266223/original/his%206850%20rear%20top.jpg

*media.bestofmicro.com/F/1/266221/original/his%206850%20bezel.jpg

*media.bestofmicro.com/F/2/266222/original/his%206850%20bundle.jpg

*Diff with reference card :*

*media.bestofmicro.com/E/V/266215/original/6850%20vs%20his%206850.jpg

*media.bestofmicro.com/E/U/266214/original/6850%20vs%20his%206850%20back.jpg

*For Benchmark and Detailed Scores ( & Source )*


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## damngoodman999 (Oct 23, 2010)

That was good ! But i still do fear about the Drivers from ATi ??


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## ico (Oct 23, 2010)

damngoodman999 said:


> That was good ! But i still do fear about the Drivers from ATi ??


Only the Linux users have to fear about ATi drivers. In Windows, this ATi driver thing is nothing more than a myth since 2 years.


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## damngoodman999 (Oct 23, 2010)

Ya i agree with the Linux thing But Wen i was using 4850 the Drivers gave me BSOD , Drivers Clash , CCC errors these kind a problems


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## Gollum (Oct 23, 2010)

Only good thing about nvidia is the drivers. Lets hope amd catches up soon.


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## Piyush (Oct 23, 2010)

so what will be the recommendation from ya all
gtx 460(768)/6850/5770 hawk
max 10k(budget)


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## topgear (Oct 24, 2010)

Right now @ only $180 ( 10k range ) HD6850 is the clear winner.


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## damngoodman999 (Oct 24, 2010)

Then Wat should be the price of HD 6870 in India ?? Is there any difference with 5870 & 6870 regarding DX11 ??


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## ico (Oct 24, 2010)

damngoodman999 said:


> then wat should be the price of hd 6870 in india ?? Is there any difference with 5870 & 6870 regarding dx11 ??


5870 > 6870 > 5850 > 6850 > 5830


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## quan chi (Oct 24, 2010)

HD 6870 quite touches with gtx470.Now lets see how the prices differ.


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## funkysourav (Oct 24, 2010)

HD6850 will surely hit a chord with the budget gamer market,
if priced <=10k
HD6870<= 14k


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## funkysourav (Oct 24, 2010)

any news on the supposed GTX 460 price cuts yet?


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## topgear (Oct 25, 2010)

^^ not yet but it's expected that the Price of GTX 460, HD5830, HD5770 will reduce for sure.


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## Jaskanwar Singh (Oct 25, 2010)

and i suppose with hd5770 reducing gts450 too will reduce in price.


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## Faun (Oct 25, 2010)

^^^^cool.............


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## desiibond (Oct 25, 2010)

Given that nVidia GTX460 offers CUDA and PhsX at a lower price than HD6870 which giving just a little bit less performance, I think GTX460 still will be a better buy and VFM. Do note that it is 30$ cheaper and we can expect further price cuts.


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## Nithu (Oct 25, 2010)

Its the time for nVidia to release 5xx series...


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## damngoodman999 (Oct 25, 2010)

^^ next year march or april only Nvidia releases , still there is no official news regarding 5 series


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## Jaskanwar Singh (Oct 25, 2010)

guys did you find any review of new AMD APP technology?
how does it compete with CUDA?


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## damngoodman999 (Oct 28, 2010)

Wow Msi launching HD 6870 from nov 1st , i asked about my distributor he told price as came by phone was 14.6K ! thats awesome !!


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## topgear (Oct 28, 2010)

what's the price we should expect for HD6850 - 11k  or little bit less than that.


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## Piyush (Oct 28, 2010)

^^6750 or 6850?


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## funkysourav (Oct 28, 2010)

HD6850 is available in TE and Erodov for 11.6k 
was expecting less than 10k


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## topgear (Oct 29, 2010)

piyush120290 said:


> ^^6750 or 6850?



my mistake - it should be HD6850.


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