The Official HD 6000 Series Review thread

[Viral]

You gotta calm down dude. In the other thread I didn't see any reason for you flying off the handle like you did, Sazar has merit to what he is saying here. People for the most part are trying to have balanced discussion, if you make bold claims praising one company and dissing the other all the time for no real reason people are gonna get riled up. Please don't take me saying this as an attack, I'm just saying some of the things you say come across as bait and then when people take the bait you get all mega defensive.

As for 68xx. I'm liking them more than I thought I would. Tesselation performance is definitely a step in the right direction. NV have a huge edge in this area and it's unfortunately looking like they're encouraging devs to overdo tesselation to the extent where 75% of the triangles generated aren't even displayed. This not only shows AMD in a much worse light but also disadvantages GTX460/50 users who might not be able to use as high IQ settings because of this over done tesselation aimed at the GTX470/480. Anyhow, whinging aside, I hope Caymans tesselation performance is at least 75% that of GT100. NV do have the stronger implementation and while it's unfortunate they would promote inefficient use of the technique just to make their competitors look bad, AMD still need to catch up in this department. It's the main advantage NV have in my eyes.

[newparad1gm]

I'm just disappointed in that lack of any implementation of 3D on AMD's part. I don't want to have to hunt down third party solutions, and deal with third party driver support for 3D gaming. If AMD had a response to NVIDIA's 3D Vision that also supported Eyefinity, I would probably jump over to the red team on all my machines. For now, 3D Vision Surround is what keeps me firmly ensconced in NVIDIA's camp, at least for my main machine.

I'll probably be upgrading to a 6900 on my backup machine though. MLAA is what interests me, along with HDMI 1.4a.

[Soetdjuret]

Originally Posted by slaWter

Yeah Soet, it's not the data or facts you post, it's your attitude that's once again over the top and annoying for pretty much everyone here. Maybe you shouldn't post when your high but in that case you might as well just leave

Although the 6870 doesn't come close to the 480. Not even in your cherry picked Crysis and BC2 tests. But that's ok, since the 6870 is not targeted against the 480. AMD has other cards to beat the 480

Hey bro, wasn't high just had a rough day. Lets see how the 68 series will perform when drivers are stabilizing and optimized, then i think the gap to the 480 will be narrowing.


Am also disappointed about the 3D and radeon, wish they come up with something soon.

[Roadhog]

i wouldn't expect a 6870 to compete with a 480 performance wise. The card wasn't made to compete against it. It was made to compete against a 470, which is what it does.

[Sazar]

Originally Posted by Roadhog

i wouldn't expect a 6870 to compete with a 480 performance wise. The card wasn't made to compete against it. It was made to compete against a 470, which is what it does.

You're a towel

[Madpistol]

Radeon HD 6870 cards

Nvidia GTX 470 cards



Prices are generally about $20-$40 higher for the GTX 470, and generally, the GTX 470 performs slightly better than the HD 6870. All things considered, I would say they're competing against each other on features, but it's still the same story on Nvidia winning on brute force, but AMD/ATI being more efficient.

[Blacklash]

Honestly, I'm eager to see what the 6970 can do myself.

As I understand it the 5830 was meant to be replaced by the 6850 and the 5850 was meant to be replaced by the 6870. The replacement for the 5870 will be the 6950 or 6970.

The problem right now is AMD limits their card's OC greatly in the CCC. Once MSI's Afterburner has proper voltage tuning and support for them you'll see them both doing around 950-1010 or 975-1030 respectively on air (6850|6870). A 6850 gains +16% performance when it hits 950 on the core @ 1920x. That's not bad for its price.

IMO the HD 6850, 6870, and GTX 460 1Gb are all good cards. The GTX 460 1Gb is fantastic if you can hit 850 on the core. The GTX 460 768Mb is also a good card considering that a few of them can be scored for 150usd.

[JasonPC]

Thermography of an HD 6850 http://www.hardware.fr/articles/747-...thermique.html

I wish more reviewers would do that, that's really neat.

[Redeemed]

Yeah... I think I've settled on getting a 6850. Gonna' wait a few weeks, but then this 5770 will be up for sale.

[ragejg]

I guess I better sell my 5830 before it's worth less than a potato and a dash of salt.

[Blacklash]

If you fellows who are getting a 6850 want to OC them now and not be limited to 850 on the core from the CCC add Force Unsupported GPU = 1 to the config file in MSI's Afterburner folder. You do need to enable unofficial overclocking like normal as well.

It still won't allow you to increase voltage however it will open your core range up.

I'm testing one myself that I will be passing on to my nephew in a week or so when I'm done. I've had it up to 960 so far without voltage increases. That was only for one run though. I haven't had time to thoroughly test it. I can say it does 930|1150 with the fan @ 56% with zero problems. Once proper voltage support arrives I wouldn't be surprised if it hits 1010. This is a Sapphire HD 6850.

[Soetdjuret]

Get the Asus version of 68xx for the ability to increase voltage

Originally Posted by Blacklash

As I understand it the 5830 was meant to be replaced by the 6850 and the 5850 was meant to be replaced by the 6870. The replacement for the 5870 will be the 6950 or 6970.

Nah, the 6870 is already as fast or faster than 5870 in most games. 6950 and 70 will be much faster than both the 5870 and gtx 480.