AMD Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 confirmed to be launched on 22.10.2010

[Kain665]

That is one wimpy cooler on the 6850...

[Sgt.McRuff]

6850 with a vapor base... wonder how well it will cool?

[Baron_Davis]

doesn't deserve the name 6870.. more like 5890.

lol yep

i stopped caring tho, as long as it's cheap I'm happy

[Manicdan]

the 6850 is under 150W, and it looks to be built as cheap as possible to reduce the price as much as possible.

i wouldnt expect a sub 200$ card to have a full copper heatsink and weigh 4lbs.

but the 6870 seems to be what they want people to do all their overclocking on.

[zerazax]

doesn't deserve the name 6870.. more like 5890.

That would imply it's meant to replace the 5870

People need to look at the pricing/chart. There was no card to fill the gap between 5770 and 5850. So they split Cypress performance into two new GPUs... Cayman for the > $250 range, and Barts for $150-250. Juniper is now < $150 and will not be renamed

Sounds like a good market plan, and 6800 was kind of necessary as a name since a 6700 would kill the 5700 sales, unless they wanted to rebrand the 5700

[JohnMike]

Leaked results from someone on my forums with HD6870 for 3D06 and Vantage it looking very interesting and i think it real not fake for sure, let to see what about 6870 performance

Zero fan speed @idle?!..

[Manicdan]

Zero fan speed @idle?!..

its 23%

[Chumbucket843]

How could they when market decided cards were more value than recommended price from AMD.

how do you know that? how many more people would have bought a 5870 if it were priced lower? i think there would be much more demand.

35% less transistors would surely help that dont you think?

and also they had a buggy tsmc node to work with ... and maybe they worked out the kinc now ....

surely less transistors and a smaller die will help yields with some assumptions but it doesnt guarantee anything for the product. there is a lot we dont know. because they are dominating in performance and manufacturability, they can have high margins and market share growth at the same time. basically, they can do as they please with these cards. this is more of an economics problem than a technical one so it's not my area to speculate in but i dont think the cards will be value oriented.

[lainakuitti]

how do you know that? how many more people would have bought a 5870 if it were priced lower? i think there would be much more demand.


surely less transistors and a smaller die will help yields with some assumptions but it doesnt guarantee anything for the product. there is a lot we dont know. because they are dominating in performance and manufacturability, they can have high margins and market share growth at the same time. basically, they can do as they please with these cards. this is more of an economics problem than a technical one so it's not my area to speculate in but i dont think the cards will be value oriented.

Lowering the power consumption is always a good thing. Even if cards are not that much more powerful in terms of raw performace. There is always the next generation of cards..

[FlawleZ]

That would imply it's meant to replace the 5870

People need to look at the pricing/chart. There was no card to fill the gap between 5770 and 5850. So they split Cypress performance into two new GPUs... Cayman for the > $250 range, and Barts for $150-250. Juniper is now < $150 and will not be renamed

Sounds like a good market plan, and 6800 was kind of necessary as a name since a 6700 would kill the 5700 sales, unless they wanted to rebrand the 5700

How do you figure?

5870 didn't replace 5850. Why would 5890 replace 5870? It really is a more fitting name as the performance increase is likely to be similar to 4870--->4890 than 4870---->5870.

[OCX600RR]

It doesn't beat the 5870...why would they name it the 5890? Plus its a totally new architecture...why would you call it 5k series?

[Manicdan]

if i had to place the 6870 somewhere in the 5k lineup, i would have called it the 5860, and the 6850 as 5840

[zerazax]

improved AF will be nice

[Iconyu]

if i had to place the 6870 somewhere in the 5k lineup, i would have called it the 5860, and the 6850 as 5840

They aren't the same series of cards, they can't have the same generational header. Face it, the chip is too big and has too big a bus for it to fit into the X770 hole any more.

[Manicdan]

They aren't the same series of cards, they can't have the same generational header. Face it, the chip is too big and has too big a bus for it to fit into the X770 hole any more.

read the first 4 words i said, "IF I HAD TO"

[hurleybird]

improved AF will be nice

Oh thank God.

[Dimitriman]

So basically the af bug was a hardware problem unlike most people believed and thought it was driver cheats.
thats kinda crazy though?

[cold2010]

Oh thank God.

LOL

[Lanek]

How do you figure?

5870 didn't replace 5850. Why would 5890 replace 5870? It really is a more fitting name as the performance increase is likely to be similar to 4870--->4890 than 4870---->5870.

maybe cause HD4870 > 5870 was top to top cards .... and in the 6K series 5870 > 6970 is the top to top cards ... excluding of course the dual gpu's from both series .

[drjunk]

if i had to place the 6870 somewhere in the 5k lineup, i would have called it the 5860, and the 6850 as 5840

I would've called the:

hd6850-hd6820
hd6870-hd6830
hd6950-hd6850
hd6970-hd6870

Then kept the 69xx for x2 gpus only...easer to understand...dont you think?

[Jowy Atreides]

seems that AMD is going to make quite a money with these new series
...maybe thats what they were really after with the 68xx series,not so much to best the 5870.

But they have bested the 5870. This is the MID RANGE!
Why does everyone take their eye off the prize?

It's Cayman. Super Cayman ftw. 5970 single chip performance and all for the price of a second hand car.

The 6870 is replacing the 5770, when you think about that reality, it's a performance king.
Now think about where the 6970 will fit in terms of performance?

It's a case of being 35% more efficient for barts per watt. If the same is true for Cayman and if Cayman (as rumoured) ups the power use far more than the 5870 used.
We're talking a massive increase of speed.

[Jowy Atreides]

double post

[tajoh111]

Is this thing 4d shaders or 5d shaders? It seems like most sources like beyond3d and albeit not a good source(fudzilla) are saying this is a 5d shader.

Most things are pointing to 5D shaders, so this begs the question, how much of an architectural change was there? I am thinking almost none with some of these performance numbers.

Tessellation performance is tied to polygon throughput and it seems it is entirely tied to clocks, so this is where tesselalation performance is coming from, so no real miracles here really.

e.g polygon count of the 5850 is 725 million, 5870 is 850 million and the 6870 is 900 million.

Also when i look at it, a 1120 shader clock at 900mhz might(based entirely on cypress technology) might give exactly the performance we are seeing in these leaks.

http://www.overclockersclub.com/revi...e_hd5850/6.htm

When you look at this review where a 5850 was clocked at 5870 speeds more or less, it performs more or less the same, wins some and loses some. This makes me suspect that increasing shader numbers to increase performance has hits its bottle neck at 1440 already and perhaps even earlier than this. Maybe 1120 was the sweetspot to increase this.

Look at this review which more mirrors a card with barts xt specs would perform based entirely on cypress technology.

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/xfx_5830/7.htm

This has a 5830(which shares the specs of the 6870 except that it has half the ROPs) at the likely clocks of barts xt(900/1200). Compared to the 5850, the 5830 most of the time is about 10% slower, but occasionally it is faster in a couple games. I think if you gave the 5830 twice the ROPs(which is a huge bottleneck for the 5830) and put it at clocks of 900/1200, you would get exactly the performance we are getting with the 6870.

If we looked at the bottlenecks of the cypress, slimmed it down to levels before the plateu was reached, I think you would get barts xt.

I don't think we are getting any change in technology beside something related to drivers(a couple changes maybe to use polygon throughput better maybe), I think people are getting a little too excited about this card without actually analyzing the performance and looking at the actual specs and comparing and contrasting with the cypress generation.

[LightSpeed]

Seems to be a 5 VLIW design. 16x5x14 = 1120 shaders total. Might be mistaken though, and I dont know if there are shaders disabled but it is very unlikely. Id say 6870 should be within 10% of a 5870.

6850 should have some shaders disabled and perform slightly slower than the 460 1GB IMO. Not bad

Improved Tesselation, AA, AF, added features, better Perf/mm^2, Perf/Watt, great overclocking headroom (I know that the 6870 is a great overclocker, but lets just say its a rumour) all add up and are most welcome. Heres hoping they are priced right. $199/$249 should translate to £169/£209 over here, thats great if true. Id get better than 5850 performance for the same money. Small leap, but every little bit helps

edit: Tajoh, 5850 @ 5870 speeds is still about 3 - 5% slower. This is faster than 5850 having 320 less shaders at roughly 5870 speeds. Surely there have been changes to the architecture, but maybe not dramatic..

Since they have added a bunch of hardware features, why wouldnt they tweak the arch while they are at it? As I mentioned a month or so back, Barts is a tweaked Cypress with added features.

[Aten-Ra]

Well actually 6870 is a 5830 with double the ROPs + better ILP + better Tessellator + HDMI 1.4

It is not a new architecture, it’s a Cypress refresh but AMD felt that it should name it 6000 series.

Let’s wait and see full reviews on Friday to have a better view both on performance and prices.