AMD Radeon HD 6870 Review

i love this competition and i hate fanboysm. just changed my old gpu to an 6870, and is fast

AMD failed to create proper response to the GTX460 768 MB which is the best choice if someone cares for performance vs price ratio (up to resolution 1920 X 1080) and many of them are out there. We must not forget (AMD as well) the fact that Physx although not in many titles still holds the ground for nVidia. Enthusiasts are pretty disappointed with the latest response from AMD and from the naming/renaming scheme. Instead of 6850/6870 these new cards should have been named 6750/6770 as originally planned. From an owner of single 5870 comes the satatement: if I was to buy a new card now, the chouce would come down to one the "greens"! BTW I am fond of single graphic card solutions.

Super cool toy, ATI, or, AMD, whatever, really my mouth is watering but hey i have a question... why do i need to play mass effect 2 at 200fps and WQHD resolution if the game was designed to run at 720P and barely 30fps? Whats the point? So yea, i think my 4770 is more than enough, and you guys ( devs) aren't even using that! So no real pc games? no buy, mkay? ( lol i know)

You have a point @UT66. The hardware is way ahead comparing to the games out there and one single title with higher requirements (or lower optimization) makes the crowd crazy for powerful solutions. Actually my 5870 is not utilized to its max so I am moving down to 9800GT soon. Than I will wait for better winds in the graphics cards market until Spring.

The worst part? The trend is here to stay. Example? The incoming sequel of that single title with higher requirements @ crap optimization you mentioned? Guess what? is also designed around cellphone, i mean console limitations, designed to run at sub 720p, sub 30fps, sub par textures and analog aiming. Literally no turning back. BTW next gen is a Mii to for both MS and Sony? expect the same hardware with a minor bump in mhZ..., your 5870 is WAAAy ahead , trust me.

Yeah, quite right. Spring will bring some refreshment in my computer not due to the needs but due to the enthusiasm of owning and testing something new. I am thinking of the GTX460 786MB for now but I have a feeling that spring may bring some better prices. I know that we need to wait until 2012 for some better titles and shift in positive direction when the consoles will evolve to their new generations.

I also wish that the HD 68XX were named HD 67XX. The only time this new naming scheme would be easily acceptable would be if the HD 69XX were released before the HD 68XX.
It seems the HD 6850 stock and GTX 460 stock are competing relatively well at the $180 price point. When both are overclocked, the GTX 460 is able to slightly beat the HD 6850 overclock and have slightly equal performance to the HD 6870. However, as some who has a 2 year old Antec Earthwatts 500w psu, an overclocked gtx 460 probably consumes too much power compared to the HD 6870 for me to upgrade to.

I don't think AMD could effectively name the cards 6750/6770.
Firstly, the are not in the budget-mainstream pricing segment that the previous 4770 and current 5770 occupy.
Secondly, the 5770 is still being retailed, whereas the 5850/5780 have now finished their production runs, so you would have 5770 sales being negatively impacted by the perceived notion that the 6750/6770 "5770 replacement" parts are considerably faster. The other side of the coin is that AMD would suffer in PR if the perceived "5770 replacement" cards carry a substantial price increase over their predecessors.

My question is; Why were these cards not simply called HD 6830 and HD 6850 ?

Man I am still running a 4870 and was thinking it was about time for an upgrade. This is looking quite tempting.

@dividebyzero, you will be fine with a single overclocked GTX460 and 500W PSU. The differences in the power consumption between the two cards are marginal from general perspective. 6xxx are more efficient but it is not like "AMD invneted the wheel". Your choice should fall within the cards with the best performance/price ratio upon your needs. The only thing that I like about ATI reference cards (5 and 6xxx) is the cooling system which is far better comparing to the cheapish dual slot and open back solutions from the greens.

Also the problem in the renaming scheme is not the 5770. If the 6870 was renamed 6770 and if it was priced within the price range of GTX460 768MB it would have been a bingo for AMD. The next generation cards (6770 vs 5770) are supposed to be faster than their predecessors according to the expectations of the consumers of this type of hardware. This is the point. AMD took off with their efficiency campaign too soon I presume.

By "dual slot open back cooling solutions" I mean GTX460s being sold by the subcontractors of nVidia. AMD cards are being sold with different design comparing to the reference and from my experience only few out of a million offer better cooling with their custom solutions.

Damn that's cheap.. and FAST! For that price!
The gtx 460 price was already lowered when this came out, and they have lowered it again. Still the 6870 is a very strong opponent, and when it comes to choosing, I'll definitely go for AMD.
I'm no fanboy of any of the manufacturers, but as I can tell, AMD is winning a lot.
I personally have a 5870, and it's quite sad to see that such a cheap card is only a bit slower than my uber expensive monster.

That's a good point, I was definitely not fond of the name change but if they did release it under the 67xx name you'd have some consumers wondering about the constant increase in the budget/mainstream market as you said. Your second point about 6830/50 makes perfect sense, considering the 5830 is all but obsolete at its price-point as well as the 5850 with a couple exceptions.

Personally been holding out on upgrading to see what AMD would deliver with these cards and I'm overall pretty satisfied with what I saw in the 6850/70. Now I'm deciding which would serve me best between getting an OC'd 1GB GTX 460 or Radeon 6870.

I notice that there is barely any improvement on efficiency. At this rate the 6900 series will be very power hungry. Frankly, the only real impressive thing about these cards are the price. AMD could just have easily dropped the price on the 5850/70 and call that a day. Not saying they are bad products, but you have to question if they were necessary to begin with. I think i'll be waiting on their 28nm gpu's.

the real good news? > MLAA coming to AMD drivers, ( and apparently already hacked to work on 4xxx!) What is MORPHOLOGICAL AA? basically 8xmsaa WITH practically no noticeable impact on performance, as in almost free.

IMO, they are AMAZING cards for the price and I love crazy bang for buck but they should have really left the names the same. Make these the 6700 series and keep the 6800 and then have room for a 6970 (dual GPU 6870 <3).

I have a 5870 so no point upgrading, yet.

You realise that morphological anti-aliasing is already used in gaming consoles...right?
And, No..... 8 x MSAA ? No comparison. MLAA is a valuble blurring technique for lower performing graphics. It is not anti-aliasing. If you don't believe my words then here it is from the horse's mouth -the inventor of MLAA .
MLAA basically guesses where blurring on an image should/could be. A post-processing filter is closer to what MLAA actually is.
(Multi Sampled) Antialiasing is not post-processing - It is a constant recalculation of the graphics data stream and works selectively only on areas where "jaggies" need to be smoothed out.

So while MLAA may be a boon to the lower tier graphics card owner, and to gaming where AA is not natively available and forcing AA at driver level impacts too heavily on framerate/fillrate, it has never been intended - or able- to replace (or compete with) true antialiasing.
A graphic representation here with Tom's MLAA article. Note the blurred and indistinct text - a product of full coverage blurring consistant with MLAA.

They (6800 series) make more logical purchase for someone who is buying a new system; or is forced to buy a new graphic card due to some issues, otherwise, for an existing 5850/5770 user they are reasonably okay for now.

Someone please tell me why I would need something like this. I'm actually really curious. I mean aside from the geeks who just enjoy building obscenely overpowered gaming rigs. I'm using an nVidia GTX 260 and there isn't a game out there that I can't run on max settings.