290°

Guru3D: Radeon HD 6850 & 6870 Review

Today AMD releases the first series 6000 graphics cards, the HD 6850 and the HD 6870. Guru3D makes it's first review on the newest AMD graphic cards, where they worth the wait?

Single Card Review: http://www.guru3d.com/artic...

Crossfire Review: http://www.guru3d.com/artic...

NYC_Gamer5087d ago

nothing major but nice upgrade for those with lower end cards

EL1TE5087d ago (Edited 5087d ago )

Links are down temporarily, because NDA was broke by accident. Will be up in 3 hours. Links will be working again after that period.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

tacosRcool5087d ago

Darn. I was looking forward to reading this now but I'll guess it'll have to wait

ProjectVulcan5087d ago (Edited 5087d ago )

If the uk prices are right, these are suhhweeeeet and will dominate mainstream sales, force significant nvidia price cuts. Ebuyer listed a 6850 for 133 pounds and a 6870 for 176 pounds.

HardForums have got grabs of most of the review, decent range of games tested and several DX11 titles, BF:BC2, CMR dirt 2, Metro 2033.

Short story- 6850 beats out GTX 460 1Gb by a small increment fairly consistantly. 6870 equals or betters GTX470 in said tests.

Crossfire is even more promising. A pair of 6850s knock a GTX480 into a cocked hat for over 100 pounds less, literally blows it away. They are eye to eye with the old Radeon 5970. Full of win, as they say....

CombineElite5087d ago

I haven't wet my pants this much since I fell into the swimming pool one drunken night a while back.

HD 6870 and 6850 are BEAST.

Don't be all side tracked by the AMD number change as the Benchmarks speak for themselves. Seriously folks the HD6800 is mid range and the HD6900 is enthusiast level. You don't need a job at NASA to figure this out.

The HD 6870 CF is on level with the GTX470 sli and scaling at 80 to 95% using less Watts and producing less heat and noise than Nvidia across the board.

But heres the kicker....These are AMD's mid range cards as the Flagship line up HD 6950 6970 and the Godly 6990 will be released in November or early 2011.

Future AAA PC titles will max out DX11 with heavy Tessellation and so far Nvidia still holds the crown but the lead has shrunk severely as you see the reference HD 6870 very close to the GTX 460 1gb OVER CLOCKED cards. Slick how they used OC GTX 460 cards but it's ok as the GTX 460 1gb and the HD 6870 have the same price point $250.

heres are some Tessellation numbers...
http://www.hexus.net/conten...

The HD 6870 and HD 6850 are very impressive MID RANGE reference cards for $250 and $199

Hats off to AMD as I can't wait to see the HD6900 series with it's 384 bit interface up against the GTX 480

Release Sandy Bridge and Bulldozer then Time to Upgrade!!

Letros5087d ago (Edited 5087d ago )

I expected improved tessellation performance from AMD with these cards(though Dirt 2 and Metro don't utilize it as well as Heaven...they need to do a Unigine test), I suppose that will have to wait until the new architecture. That is one area where Nvidia really spanks AMD on, however not many games utilize it atm, in due time though.

hoops5087d ago

So far the biggest result seen with Nvidia hardware for Tessellation has been with benchmarks and not real world gaming. It's coming but nothing major

Letros5087d ago

Yea pretty much, until it's a major function in games, I'm not basing my GPU purchases on it.

EL1TE5087d ago

6850 and 6870 will replace the 5750 and 5770 respectively, while the 5850 and 5870 will be replaced by the 6950 and 6970.

fullmetal2975087d ago

I need to know when they come out so I can save

Thecraft19895087d ago (Edited 5087d ago )

Won't updating my gtx460 for a few years but nice have the options.

joydestroy5087d ago (Edited 5087d ago )

right there with you but i'll prob keep one 460 and sell the other for a newer nVidia card in a year.

commodore645087d ago (Edited 5087d ago )

Here in Australia, the gtx 460 is very hard to beat for value, so far.
http://www.msy.com.au/Parts...
We can buy a 460 768mb for $AU187.

SLI two of those and you get performance that beats a gtx 480, for $100+ less overall... it's simply astounding value.

However, the introduction of 6850, which seems to be better than the 460 1gb will likely push those prices down even more.

Nice.

TOSgamer5087d ago

Yep, I'm keeping my sli gtx 465 until there are more then a handful of games that need it or until they get down to 28nm.

Show all comments (20)
60°

AMD Adrenalin 24.8.1 drivers add support for Black Myth: Wukong and multiple other AAA games

AMD has rolled out Adrenalin 24.8.1 drivers, which include support for Black Myth: Wukong, HYPR-Tune support, and much more.

Admin note: Attempted to point to AMD directly, but it crashes N4G for some reason. An exception to the rule at this moment.

70°

AMD Gaming segment revenue fell 59% from Q2 2023 on weakness in semi-custom chips

Earlier today, Microsoft announced as part of its Q4 2024 earnings results that Xbox hardware sales fell 42 percent year-over-year.

Read Full Story >>
shacknews.com
TheCaptainKuchiki54d ago

Xbox sales tanking so hard that even the PS5 can't make up for it for AMD lmao

Einhander197254d ago

It's unfortunate AMD partnered with Microsoft which seems to prevent them from discussing anything related to PlayStation so much that PlayStation doesn't even seem to be able to be listed as having FSR support on AMD's website. Which is of course backwards since PlayStation keeps having the first implementations of FSR in games and FSR consistently performs better on PlayStation. And PlayStations checkerboard solution on PS4 Pro was almost certainly a major influence in the creation of FSR in the first place.

Microsoft is tanking their semi-custom chip division while PlayStation is propping it up. But AMD can't even promote PlayStation or it's hardware accomplishments to help themselves.

Hopefully they don't make the same mistake next generation.

160°

Leaked RDNA 4 features: AMD to catch up in RT - doubled RT intersect engine could come to PS5 Pro

A partially redacted data sheet highlighting the expected ray tracing features coming to RDNA 4 GPUs has been shared by well-known hardware information leaker @Kepler_L2. We expect the features to also be present in the hybrid RDNA 3 + RDNA 4 RT design coming to PS5 Pro when it launches (presumably) later this year or early next year. The leaked data points seem to confirm that advancing ray tracing technology is going to be a major focus of RDNA 4.

Read Full Story >>
tomshardware.com
Einhander197264d ago

This will be the actual start to Ray Tracing on consoles, I'm really looking forward to seeing what PSSR is capable of as well.

I can't wait to see what games designed around this can do.

sagapo64d ago (Edited 64d ago )

Don’t hope for anything major imo. RT remains a power consuming feature and I don’t think a pro version will make all that much difference. Higher frames (say 60fps) with RT features as they are now would be a big win if that would be the case. If RT features would be extended, games will probably stick at 30fps like they do now, is that worth a pro upgrade?

Einhander197264d ago (Edited 64d ago )

Zero first, second or major third party console exclusives have lacked a 60 fps mode on PlayStation, 30 fps is an xbox problem.

The GPU alone statistically offers 40% uplift, and with PSSR upscaling games designed around the console should have a significant performance uplift.

And my understanding is that RT has been largely decoupled from the CU's in RDNA 4 so the performance hit from RT should be much less than on current AMD GPUS. And regardless, the huge number of RT cores with the doubled RT intersect engine should be able to power through RT in a way that simply is not possible on current consoles.

fr0sty63d ago (Edited 63d ago )

With a rumored (according to the leaks) 4x performance jump in RT performance (and a 40% boost in overall GPU performance), in addition to the added AI upscaling frame generation tech, the actual RT performance increase should be significant.

sagapo63d ago (Edited 63d ago )

@Frosty; 40% GPU boost you claim. With PS4 pro vs base at the time, that increase basicly doubled so 40% ain’t that big of a deal imo.
4x performance jump with RT (if true) sounds impressive but will we be able to play games in 60fps quality mode then? If not then pro is a waste as most gamers prefer 60fps performance over 30fps quality mode.

Einhander197263d ago (Edited 63d ago )

@sagapo

The PS4 Pro had the same GPU as the PS4, the PS5 Pro is switching from RNDA 2 to a mix of RDNA 3 and 4. The 40% increase is just the CU increase and doesn't include any uplift from the technological improvements AMD has done to RDNA which have been significat.

PS5 Pro is going to be a much bigger improvement than the PS4 Pro was, especially when you take into account the RT improvements..

sagapo62d ago

@Einhander; assuming you are right, answer my question: will the pro do 60fps in quality (RT) modes? Because if not, why bother imo.

+ Show (2) more repliesLast reply 62d ago
FinalFantasyFanatic64d ago

I really hope so, AMD has been pretty far from Nvidia's performance on Ray Tracing, so to see such a huge uplift, with greater performance and efficiency is a big win.

Destiny108064d ago

if astro bot is fully raytraced / 60fps on the pro model, we can start believing the hype

fr0sty63d ago (Edited 63d ago )

No games are fully raytraced as of now, even on PC. All of them utilize a combination of raytraced and rasterized graphics, with ray tracing being used for shadows, reflections, or global illumination in the best cases, but not for the entire rendering process.

Whitey2k63d ago

There's gonna be quite a difference between ps5 and ps5 pro compared to ps4 and ps4 pro

fr0sty63d ago (Edited 63d ago )

agreed, PS4 Pro was only geared at pushing more pixels per frame (and HDR), not making those pixels look better in the process. PS4 Pro didn't offer much as far as increasing the actual quality of the rendering went.

Whitey2k63d ago (Edited 63d ago )

Expecially when ps5 is around 10tflops and ps5 pro rumored to be 30tflops compared to ps4 at 1.84tflops and ps4 pro at 4.2tflops u could pretty much call it a ps6 near enough. Then ps5 pro could be using rdna 3 or say rdna 3.5 because it's rumoured to be using that newly assets of rdna 4 which benefit greatly on resolution and Raytracing even effect etc etc. What would be nice for sony greatly benefit is amd solution of the X3D in its Cpu on cpu bound games

dveio63d ago (Edited 63d ago )

As always:

I can't wait for the specs of the new consoles.

Wether it's NSW2, Xbox Next or PS6.

If Cerny stays the lead architect of the PS6's hardware (which is very likely I guess?), I am VERY excited for Sony's approach.

They've always done something unique noone else did.

And I expect the same for the PS6.

Edit: man, crazy. PS6 (six!) is already near! Time flies.

neutralgamer199263d ago

Ceeny won't be going anywhere I don't think. He and his team have produced back to back amazing consoles

What I want to know is what the price for pro will be since it's much more powerful compared to regular PS5

smashman9863d ago

This might be his last run tho, I hope he has looked into training a protege