Radeon HD 6850 & 6870 CrossfireX review [Guru3D.com]

monoGPU
Cayman Pro
HD6950

Cayman XT
HD6970



Then the holy beast:
Antilles XT
HD6990

Supposedly an Antilles Pro exists (HD6980), for "poor people".

 

Not everyone bothers to research before buying.

 

i am very impressed with this release, i like the way ati is doing stuff lowering power consumption while improving performance. nvidia needs to learn something from them.
anyways $260 for a 6870 WOW hard to let this card pass. I only wish ati had some 3d in the driver and that it could do physx. this are the only things keeping me on the green side.

other than that even the 6850 is amazing at $200 and only slightly slower than its bigger brother.

 

iirc, the previously leaked benches of the 6870 (now called the 6970) showed that it had a vantage X gpu score of 15000-ish. so it should perform somewhere around the same as a 5970, except using a single gpu, which is pretty awesome.

now im just gonna wait for them to come out and buy two of those babies!

 

Do we have to go through this crap again about stupid people not doing research?

Search for "Average Joe" on this forum and you can see this subject has been beaten to death through 20 pages already.

If you think it's and issue, go help educate people or please drop it.

 

Lets think about this for a moment. "Average Joe" is what keeps these companies in business. "Average Joe" knows that typically the high-end cards are released first. "Average Joe" knows that HDx870 has been the high-end single GPU card at launch for the last 3 generations. "Average Joe" doesn't typically follow RUMORS for months on end. "Average Joe" is going to jump on the HD6870 if he's looking for a high-end card and happens to see them on the shelf before the HD69xx comes out because the idiot kids at BestBuy aren't supposed to do anything that can prevent a sale. "Average Joe" is the majority of the world. People that actually take the time to research before making a purchase....is a rather small portion in comparison.

 

Go and read all the posts on this as I pointed out there is quite a few, then you will understand why I am done arguing on this one.

I am not going to babysit Lazy (and or stupid) people from making the wrong purchase.

You can't change the naming scheme anyway so basically your complaining to people who don't care and already know how to look up a review.

edit: also if Average Joe knows 5870 is top of the line, well hes not Average Joe anymore because he was smart enough to choose a 5870 and install it.
But then again if he had a 5870 he wouldn't want to upgrade because it runs all his games great.

So he won't buy a 6870, in a few weeks the 6970 will be out anyway so this argument doesn't have a leg to stand on.

 

I just spend 4 times in the last 3 weeks explaining someone how the numbering scheme works for NVIDIA and ATI.

So no, "average joe" in real world doesn't know diddly about that "HDx870" are high end, neither do they know that it's "typical" to see high end cards released first.
In fact, they have no idea when a card was released. To assume they would know that, would assume they have done research to know when they are released.

 

I am in the market for a new videocard. After I read this review, I knew what I was going to buy: two HD6850 currently available for €149 a piece. 1,5 times the performance of a HD5870 for the price of one. After reading a bit more about crossfire, I came across a phenomenon called microstuttering. I have never heard of this and I was wondering why this isn't mentioned in reviews and this one in particular. Doesn't it happen at all, not even on demanding games and high resolution(2560x1600)?

 

Must be hard to see things cleary with your head inserted so far....

Arrogant, elitist wannabes are the reason most people don't learn.... people like you drive them away from wanting to learn.

Aside from those 2 lines, which if "average joe" had been at bestbuy looking for a video card those would have been explained to him, you have completely proven my point.

Unless someone explains it to them...which usually happens when making a purchase..."average joe" doesn't really care to go out of his way to learn.

 

not quite sure if you notice.

GTX 480 in single card performance is at least 20% faster than 6870...

If you add up, no **** GTX 480 SLi will beat 6870CF... If it doesn't beat it, you are wasting 500 cash just for a hell out of it.... :nerd:

GTX 480 SLI will be the top line performance for dual GPU, also come with premium price, but the problem is, 6870CF is mean to compete with GTX 470 SLi, and it beats it.....

Is ur brain much more clear now instead just keep shouting out loud how fast GTX 480 Sli is like second coming of jesus?

 

Got my Sapphire 6870 today, just tried BC2 all maxed (only left HBAO off) with 4xAA/16xAF, the fps were through the roof. I used to play with same settings on my 4890 but with 2xAA and get around 60fps no problem. Now it's sitting at around 75-90fps with 4xAA! Amazing performance, the card idles at around 50C and playing BC2 it reached around 69C. Plus, it's inaudible when idle, under full load it's about as loud as the 4890 was idle, but with game sounds on, you can't even hear that.

Love the card, fantastic.

 

^ nice one, I'm eagerly awaiting the 6970, this sounds promising, 6000 series new shader system seems to be doing wonders

 

the card delivers exactly what I was expecting. It's quiet, cooler, less power hungry. And although my 4890 performed really well with 2xAA in almost every game, the possibility of bumping the AA to 4x and getting 20+ fps more (in games where I was getting around 60fps) is just great. AMD released a great little card!

 

You should try using Morphological Anti-Aliasing(MLAA) instead of AA. From the screenshots I have seen it looks better and according to the reviews on the net you have barely loss of performance compared with no AA!