AMD’s Radeon HD 6870 & 6850: Renewing Competition in the Mid-Range Market
by Ryan Smith on October 21, 2010 10:08 PM ESTThe third game on our list is one of the games new to our benchmark suite: Starcraft II. Under normal circumstances Starcraft II isn’t particularly GPU limited – it spends much of its time CPU limited – but in 2-player battles in particular we find that it responds more to GPU performance than it does CPU performance. As icing on the cake we have 4x AA enabled, which thanks to the deferred rendering workarounds used by AMD and NVIDIA, crushes the performance of all the cards involved.
Do note that due to the amount of time it takes to run this benchmark we had to cut our testing short. We’ll have our full results in Bench next week.
When we were running our benchmarks for Starcraft, Anand asked me more than once whether our results were a fluke. At 2560 the Radeon cards trample the GTX 460, and at 1920 it’s still lopsided when the 6850 breaks-even in most other games. Compared to the other Radeon cards the 6000 series continues to perform near the 5850, but otherwise the GTX 460 is at a clear disadvantage.
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Goty - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
Other reviews show 6850s hitting 1GHz+ with software voltage modification, so I don't think that will be an issue.karlostomy - Monday, October 25, 2010 - link
The question then is, why did anandtech choose to include the EVGA card that NVIDIA no doubt hand picked and delivered?Including the OC 460 card is one thing, but at the very least some 'attempt' at oc'ing the 6850 would have retained a semblance of reviewer impartiality.
wyvernknight - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
According to this article i just read it can do 6 way eyefinity.http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/10/21/amds-6870-b...
The diagram is close to the bottom.
notty22 - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
The reviewer addressed why the 460 o/c was included. Owners/gamers are reporting the ability to clock their 460's to the 810,820,850 mhz the clocks various "special" models come @ with stock voltage. I agree , its more of why did Nvidia do this ? Imho, it was to position the card without competing/obsoleting the gtx 465/470. Now that Nvidia has lowered the prices, and the good price point the new AMD cards launched with, this is a exciting time for the gamer.Now lets get some new, more powerful dx11 games !
Thanx for the COMPLETE review !
Kyanzes - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
I could have sworn that AvP had been mentioned as a future standard test game on Anandtech. I could be wrong ofc.3DVagabond - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
I'm really surprised you went along with using the EVGA (OC) card nVidia sent you. They sent you what is commonly referred to as "a ringer", and you went along. You should have used the stock 460 (both models) and a stock 470, IMO. Why let nVidia name the conditions? They are obviously going to do everything they can to tilt the playing field. Was there anything else they wanted that you did for them?AnandThenMan - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
Well in the article, they basically admitted to "caving in" to Nvidia by including the overclocked card. Obviously Nvidia was very keen to have a specific card included, seems dubious."However with the 6800 launch NVIDIA is pushing the overclocked GTX 460 option far harder than we’ve seen them push overclocked cards in the past –we had an EVGA GTX 460 1GB FTW on our doorstep before we were even back from Los Angeles."
I mean stating, "a matter of editorial policy" then ignoring that policy outright seems pretty sketchy to me. Like you said, makes one question the results in general.
DominionSeraph - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
If AMD's official segmentation strategy were to put a factory overclocked 6870 against the GTX 470, what would be the issue with AnandTech comparing the two? Granted, it doesn't mean much to enthusiasts who would just buy a stocker and overclock it to pocket the price differential, but I'd wager a card bought by your average idiot buying off the shelves of Best Buy isn't going to see anything other than the factory clocks.bji - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
Actually the people overclocking their video cards and then dealing with overheating and loud-as-an-aircraft-engine fan noise are the idiots.Just thought that if you were going to go around saying disparaging things about people who have different values than you do, that you might appreciate some of the same.
spigzone - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
Maybe if you had dropped testing the FTW 460 for the time being, saving it for your 'overview' test next week, you would have had enough time to release a fully fleshed out and organized review instead of letting Nvidia jerk you around, compromising your own 'editorial policy' on only using stock cards in the initial review and saving you the time and trouble of coming up with lame @$$ rationalizations.