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

[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.