AMD Radeon HD 6870 & HD 6850

Rob Williams

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
It's been a long time coming, but gamers can finally relax... AMD's Radeon HD 6800 graphics cards are finally here. They may still be built upon a 40nm process, but AMD has brought a lot to the table here. We set out to see how the HD 6850 and HD 6870 compare to their closest competition, NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 460 and GTX 470.

You can read our in-depth analysis on AMD's latest graphics cards and discuss it here!
 
eunoia

eunoia

Partition Master
Dislikes: Numbering scheme
Likes: Pretty much everything else

I'm guessing we'll see another round of price jockeying in the months to come. Both major manufacturers deserve some credit, this is an endlessly entertaining business war.
 
DarkStarr

DarkStarr

Tech Monkey
The renumbering sucks but when you look at what the cards are technically slotted to replace, mainstream to mainstream you see massive performance boosts from a 5750 to a 6850 or a 5770 to a 6870. I like, and I cannot believe how accurate my guess was Nvidia's cards are to be $20 more but not perform as well. They may be fairly close but the drivers are BETA Pre-release meaning there are tons of optimizations to be done and when that's done we may see the 6850 own a 460 and a 6870 crush a 470. From what I see, the 6950 could be more powerful than a 480 and the 6970 be even more powerful still, then there are still the 2 possible x2 cards, so far I have to say AMD has it in the bag. (also a 6850 looks like a sexy boost from my 5750 here :D)
 
Rob Williams

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
Bear in mind that the Radeon HD 5770 might not get replaced this launch at all, so it's hard to claim that there's funny business going on with the naming scheme at all. As far as AMD is currently concerned, the HD 5770 will remain for a while, and unless it -is- replaced in the future, I think it's better to not consider the HD 6800 series a replacement for that. The HD 6870 performs closer to an HD 5870 than an HD 5770, after all.
 
R

Relayer

E.M.I.
Nice review, Rob. Major improvement over last years mid-range, and without any shrink or major changes to the architecture.

Just curious, did you receive the EVGA GTX-460 FTW from nVidia that they wanted used for comparison to Barts? You obviously didn't use it, but I'm curious if you got one and what you think of having the competing company dictating what cards to use in a review?

Again, nice review. I think it's one of the best ones out.
 
Optix

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
Wow. My little 5770 is getting eaten alive and it's was only $20 cheaper than the 6850 when I bought it. So now I have a dilema - save for a 6850 or grab another 5770?

Oh well. I have to upgrade my wife's rig first so I guess either option will have to wait.
 
R

Relayer

E.M.I.
Optix said:
Wow. My little 5770 is getting eaten alive and it's was only $20 cheaper than the 6850 when I bought it. So now I have a dilema - save for a 6850 or grab another 5770?

Oh well. I have to upgrade my wife's rig first so I guess either option will have to wait.
Click to expand...

Give your wife the 5770 and get a new card for yourself. both problems sorted. :D
 
Rob Williams

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
Relayer said:
Just curious, did you receive the EVGA GTX-460 FTW from nVidia that they wanted used for comparison to Barts? You obviously didn't use it, but I'm curious if you got one and what you think of having the competing company dictating what cards to use in a review?
Click to expand...

Is it a fact that NVIDIA sent out those cards for people to test with? We didn't receive one, but it's not something that would surprise me. It's common for NVIDIA to use various tactics to either help its own launches or hold back its competition's. For this one, we were encouraged to benchmark with a broken H.A.W.X. 2 benchmark, for example.

Because it just doesn't make sense to, we don't use overclocked cards in our charts, unless of course we're reviewing a particular model that's pre-overclocked. But then, that's an additional model, not a replacement for the original and it never happens for launch content.

There's no doubt about it that the practice is ridiculous, but it's far from surprising. NVIDIA knew that it was going to have some impressive AMD cards to beat, so it had to figure out a way to lessen the blow somehow. It'd be even more ridiculous if a website used that FTW card as the comparison card, but I couldn't see that happening.

Thanks for the nice comments on the review! :techgage:
 
Tharic-Nar

Tharic-Nar

Senior Editor
Staff member
Moderator
Rob Williams said:
It'd be even more ridiculous if a website used that FTW card as the comparison card, but I couldn't see that happening.
Click to expand...

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc...ds/amd-radeon-hd-6870-902549/review?artc_pg=2

Some sites DID use it as the comparison, saying that the FTW was cheaper and faster... the 6870 was only compared with the 460 FTW and the 5850... but thankfully, a few others pointed out the flaws in the review... no test methodology, limited comparisons, etc... all you have to do is look at other review sites and see the comparisons they make. It is worth mentioning that the above site does run regular 'sponsored' content, so yeah, up to you to decide.
 
Rob Williams

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
As a general rule, I'd rather not talk about content posted on other sites that I don't agree with, and I'm not going to make much of an exception here. Anyone could compare their results to ours, though, and see that something is a little bit off (with Dirt 2 and Just Cause 2 especially).

Since this article was published, I took a bit of a break (this article was grueling!), but I'm going to soon jump on top of CrossFireX performance and nail out an article on that. From initial testing so far, I can say that things are very impressive.
 
R

Relayer

E.M.I.
Rob Williams said:
Is it a fact that NVIDIA sent out those cards for people to test with? We didn't receive one, but it's not something that would surprise me. It's common for NVIDIA to use various tactics to either help its own launches or hold back its competition's. For this one, we were encouraged to benchmark with a broken H.A.W.X. 2 benchmark, for example.

Because it just doesn't make sense to, we don't use overclocked cards in our charts, unless of course we're reviewing a particular model that's pre-overclocked. But then, that's an additional model, not a replacement for the original and it never happens for launch content.

There's no doubt about it that the practice is ridiculous, but it's far from surprising. NVIDIA knew that it was going to have some impressive AMD cards to beat, so it had to figure out a way to lessen the blow somehow. It'd be even more ridiculous if a website used that FTW card as the comparison card, but I couldn't see that happening.

Thanks for the nice comments on the review! :techgage:
Click to expand...

Yes, they did send them out. That's reported from AT. Many sites used it, unfortunately. I'd also read about the HAWX Demo/benchmark. Kyle @ [H]OCP wrote a pretty searing editorial about it. (Like they had any chance of getting him to use a benchmark???) Also heard reported that not only dod nVidia want the 460 FTW to be the card used to compare to the 6800, but also didn't want the GTX-470 included. As you said, it's not surprising from them.
 
Rob Williams

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
I did end up seeing that AnandTech were one of the sites to use the card, and I admit I'm a little surprised. I'm all for including an overclocked card in testing as an additional model, but not as a replacement. I just don't see the benefit, and in the end, it's unfair to the opposing company.

As far as I'm concerned, pricing should never be brought into things, because it can change on a day to day basis. Not to mention, so could availability. You simply can't go wrong by giving people results from stock-clocked cards.
 
Optix

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
And that is why I dig TG, Rob. No bullshit, no nonsense reviews.

Besides, most of us will get the stock version and overclock it past what any company does with their own non-reference clocks...except maybe Gainward's GLH cards. Nutty!
 
DarkStarr

DarkStarr

Tech Monkey
In that case compare the Asus super version of the top end card in the 69xx series when they come out and show how bad they destroy the 480, not too different from what Nvidia is trying to do. I mean really underhanded much? But all in all Optix is right almost anyone who reads tech sites will buy a reference card and OC it to hell not get a pre-overclocked one.
 
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TheCrimsonStar

TheCrimsonStar

Tech Monkey
I know I'm reviving an old post, but just wanted to say that the 6870 is awesome. I have the Gigabyte model, and I can play Crysis on it with all the settings maxed out and still get 30-40fps, with it rarely dropping to 25. On Bad Company 2, my average is 80-100fps depending on the level with settings maxed out.
 
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