Introducing AMD’s new HD 6870 and HD 6850 vs. GTX 460
Power Usage
This section is still unfinished, but we will tell you that the cards meet their specifications of low-power usage and show improvements over the HD 58×0 series. ALL of our cards run very cool and quiet and it is hard to hear any of them while playing PC games or using it for other tasks.
CrossFire-X
We were successful in pairing our HD 6870 with our HD 6850 in CrossFire-X (!) A single HD 6870 scores 17287 in Vantage; paired with HD 6870, it scores 23749. HD 6870 averages 70.83 FPS in Far Cry 2 (2560×1600/ultra/8xAA) and 103.48 FPS when paired with HD 6850 in CrossFire-X. This is good scaling for HD 68×0 and we will explore CrossFire and CrossFire-X in a subsequent review.
Price to Performance
It is pretty clear from our 22 games and two synthetic tests that the AMD HD 6870 and HD 6850 are potent GPUs to put against AMD’s own HD 5870 as well as its direct competition, the GTX 460. We also expect that some of its success will depend on market pricing and what AMD does with their HD 58×0 pricing. But if you want close to HD 5870/HD 5850 performance, these two new Barts HD 68×0 video cards gives you your performance cake and allows you to eat it also without paying HD 5870/5850 prices.
Clearly Nvidia is confident in its own mature product with GTX 470 and GTX 460 and they are apparently going to counter AMD for now with discounted pricing and it is also clear that they are leaving their partners to use their own judgment. Will this strategy work? How will AMD and Nvidia further respond? Well for now, it is important that you are up to date on the latest GeForce GTX 400 series pricing versus the AMD Radeon.
Nvidia informed us of new suggested etail pricing (SEP) for one of their most popular GPUs, the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. The new SEP for the GTX 460 1GB is $199.99. As always, the SEP is just a suggestion and you’ll likely find retail boards from Nvidia’s partners at multiple price points. We expect many standard boards to sell in the $180s-$190s, and overclocked boards to sell for $209+ (EVGA’s highly overclocked GTX 460’s SEP is $240 to match the HD 6870’s). It looks something like this chart:
- HD 6850 1GB – $180
- GTX 460 1GB – $200
- HD 6870 1GB – $240
- GTX 470 1.2MB – $260
- HD 5850 1GB – $280 (market)
- HD 5870 1GB – $350 (market)
AMD is currently positioning the $179.99 Radeon 6850 against the GeForce GTX 460 768MB, which currently has a SEP of $169.99. However, GTX 460 768MB boards can be found for as low as $159.99 online. As a result of Nvidia’s repositioning, it looks like the stock GeForce GTX 460 1GB will ultimately be the Radeon 6850’s closest competitor. Priced at $240, the HD 6870 will be competing with GTX 460 1GB OC highly overclocked boards like the EVGA GTX 460 that we used as our overclocked example. And for a few dollars more, users may also consider the GeForce GTX 470 or HD 5850. We also expect pricing on the HD 5870 to drop as we prepare for AMD’s “Cayman” and the 6900 series to take on the GTX 480 and GTX 470. The next six months are going to be very exciting as the graphics wars heat up and the consumer always benefits from competition.
Conclusion
This has been quite an enjoyable – if physically exhausting – 7 days, hand’s on experience for us in comparing our three GTX 460s versus our two HD 68x0s and the HD 5870. We used all “fresh” testing with the very latest drivers for all of these video cards and we wish that we had more than the very few days that we were allowed to benchmark the new Radeons under NDA to give you our first impressions. Fortunately, we have been gaming for months with our HD 5870, so that we can provide you with a reliable comparison. During that same week, we also had to set up and benchmark three differently clocked and vRAM configured GTX 460s. However, it was certainly worth it and we feel priviliged to bring you our very first benchmarks and performance testing of AMD’s new HD 6870 and HD 6850.
We like the new Barts Radeons a lot and we plan to follow up with this editor’s special areas of interest – multi-GPU CrossFire-X scaling and multi-display’s Eyefinity versus (2D) Surround. So, expect an ongoing series which will include evaluating SLI versus CrossFire. We also expect GF108 from Nvidia soon to take on HD 5500/5400 series. Who knows how else Nvidia plans to respond besides pricing? They do not like to be second place in any category and they have a history of bringing out “+” models to beat the competition. By Nvidia’s response, it is very clear that they are taking the launch of the new Radeons very seriously.
In the meantime, feel free to comment below, ask questions or have a detailed discussion in our ABT forum. If you have any requests on what you would like for us to focus on for further testing or for any other information, please join our ABT forum or leave a comment.
AMD RADEON HD 6870 and HD 6850
Pros and Cons:
Pros:
- HD 6870 is generally faster than its competition, GTX 460-1GB and offers HD 5850 performance levels for much less money. In the same manner, the HD 6850 beats the GTX 460-768 MB version and competes with the 1GB version in many cases.
- There is further room for overclocking; in our case, a lot with the HD 6850. Barts scaling with overclocking is improved over Cypress.
- New architecture brings support for GPU computing and a level of performance way beyond the last generation.
- Second generation DX11 and improved support for tessellation and now 3D gaming.
- Eyefinity is improved with chaining of displays now possible.
- Eyefinity only requires one video card – unlike Nvidia’s competing solution, Surround, which requires a SLI motherboard and two matching videocards
- The Barts architecture is more efficient than Cypress so there is less power used for even better performance.
- New enhancements including a new AA mode, improved AF, and the ability to turn off optimizations
- 3D gaming and 3D video playback are now supported by HD 68×0.
Cons:
- The HD 6870/6850 naming is confusing and implies that it might be faster than the HD 5870/5850 video cards.
That’s it. We now wait to see how this plays out in the markets. We are pleased to offer both of the new Radeons our Editor’s Choice and Great Value awards. AMD has succeeded in bring a great value to the $200 price-range!
Look for these cards at an etailer this week with good supply.
In this editor’s experience, either the HD 6870 and HD 6850 is a great choice if you game at 1920×1200 or below. AMD has brought the HD 5850’s performance to a new much lower price point. The competition is hot as the prices on the GTX 470 and the GTX 460 have softened and they offer their own set of great features including PhysX and Nvidia’s own 3D Vision. Stay tuned, there is a lot coming from us at ABT.
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Finally up!
Nice review Apoppin and I think the review with most games tested! Looking forward to BFG’s image quality follow-up.
Would have wanted a bit more about noise (especially compared to the 5870 PCS+ you reviewed), but can’t have it all.
On a sidenote: It says Galaxy GTX 480 SOC on conclusion page. Probably a template leftover. You probably want to remove that.
Thank-you! Believe it or not, there are still two charts to go up and a little bit about noise and power usage.
We got GTX 460-768M on Thursday; the morning the review was due to go up, so there was a lot of new testing. To top it off we had issues with our CMS for about 15 hours when no articles could be written nor posted to it.
I am just glad to be able to review these cool new cards that are going to make graphics cards a bit more affordable to us. There will be many follow up articles.
Can I ask why you use GTX 460 (OC) in the start, but lateron drop the (OC) part in the benches? I assume its still the same superclocked EVGA card your useing. But it does lead to misleading info for people that just happend upon your review and only looked at a few benchs and might have missed the (oc) part because it wasnt in the name.
Howcome in some tests where the readons seem to do well, you only have the 6850 benchs shown but not the 6870 that would then be even better compaired to the nvidia cards?
How come you dont use any stock 460 1gb, and stock 460 7xx mb versions? only the overclocked ones?
Also why dont you give more volts to the readons to overclock them more? I assume the 460’s that are super overclocked dont use the standart amount of volts the stock 460s do.
Overall your review smell abit of favorisme to nvidia.
When I come here, its normally to read about image quality and such… wish there was some of that here with the new features to show if they work and how well.
The GTX 460 is always “OC” when it is overclocked; if it is not labeled, it is the stock-clocked card.
My sole criteria for testing HD 6850 is generally at 1920×1200 and below. It does not do well at many games at 2560×1600 and I did not include the GTX 460-768 at that high of a resolution neither.
I do not see any favoritism to Nvidia. I am very impressed with the HD 6870 and HD 6850. AMD have brought much more value to the $200 price range and they have forced Nvidia to instantly respond by dropping prices – even on their GTX 470, benefiting all of us.
Look very carefully at the testing bench. ALL of the GTX 460s – 768MB and 1GB versions – are benched at their stock clocks
– the overclocked GTXes are included as an “extra” – just as the overclocked Radeons are. 100% fair!
arrghh just me getting confused… with the 460, and the 460-OC, and that in some setups all the cards arnt there and such.
You should try to volt mod a 6850
I saw a dude give it 1.5 volts and reach 1200mhz GPU cure and about 1200 mem too. (granted he soldered a resistor onto the pcb to get it)
arnt there programs you can use to do it via software?
like msi afterburner? to see if you cant overclock it more once you give it a few volt extra.
Thanks.
You need to realize that the reviewers only had ONE WEEK from receiving the card to publication. And even the GeForce drivers were brand new which means that we couldn’t even prepare for the review; same thing with benching HD 5870; I had to wait for Catalyst 10-10.
And then there is so much to explore and to talk about one has to limit the initial review to a rather narrow scope which is why it is important to read many reviews if you are considering one of these new cards.
Frankly, I believe that this is one of the most exciting launches in a long time (and especially considering what is coming – Cayman and Nvidia’s response). If my article lacked that enthusiasm it is solely due to exhaustion. I am certain that I spent over 100 hours over 7 days evaluating these cards and writing about them; which I totally enjoyed.
And we are not finished. I have a major review due this week that will cover CPU scaling and HD 5870 CrossFire – including Core i7 vs Phenom II 955 X4 (from 2.6 to 3.6 GHz and Dual- vs Quad-core). After that, I will work on HD 68×0 CrossFire and trying to get a real overclock with some voltage increase.
There seems to be a typo on the overclocking page wherein in the table it says 6850 OC is 900/1100 but below you described it as 5850. There is also a discrepancy with the 6870 OC numbers on the table and on the description below.
Other than that a very nice review!! Thats a whole load of games you got there. Anyway looking forward to your image quality review
Thank-you. I think that I got all of the typos. And I added a few CrossFire-X (HD 6870 + HD 6850) benchmark results to the still unfinished power section.
Simply astonishing review! Looking forward to CPU Scaling! ABT’s articles always seem more honest than some of the more “corporate” review sites.
Typo on page 27: “Our HD 5850 overclocked like a champion” should probably be the 6850.
Wonderful article. In case you guys are open to requests, I’d love to see StarCraft 2 added to the review roster.
Thank-you Matrixfan and hansmuff !
I think that I got most of the typos now. I did not realize that I wrote over 11,500 words on this launch (!)
It takes me awhile to add a game as a benchmark and I usually have to play the game first or else it is hard to relate the benchmark to gameplay. I was (sadly) never into StarCraft and it may be awhile for I play SC2.
Thank-you for your suggestions. We aim to please.
I always appreciate a good ABT review. Your opinions on the practical uses of gaming hardware (bottlenecks, etc) are more accurate than most other review sites.
However, I am also disappointed that you don’t review Starcraft 2. Not only is it immensely popular, but it’s also an excellent option for variety. Is there any way a reader might assist you in producing SC2 benchmarks?
Thanks, Jeremy Johnson!
Someday, I may add StarCraft 2 to my reviews. At this moment, I am adding a few other games to my benches.
If you would like to assist us in producing SC2 benches, we might be able to organize a project together on our forum where our readers help supply the benchmarks.
Hi,
well you used some interesting presentation slides from ATI in your review. I would be really happy when you could tell me where you found these.
The slides came from AMD.
Well OK AMD. But where can i find them? Probably on there developer site. Mayby I`m blind or something, but I don`t found the slides. Could you post a link?
I don’t think AMD has yet made them public on their own site. HardOCP posted quite a few of the slides in their HD 68×0 launch review.
Awesome, just awesome. I gotta read it again!
What’s up with the silly avatars, LOL?!
Never mind.. it’s just that I didn’t like my own avatar assigned to me by fate! lol..
I think it is random. If more readers complain, I will ask our web master to fix it. I am not so thrilled about my avatar. 😛
Please recheck the review! Lots and lots of typo error! And i mean a serious kind of typo error!
You’re no help.
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