AMD's Radeon HD 6790: Coming Up Short At $150
by Ryan Smith on April 5, 2011 12:01 AM ESTCivilization V
Civilization 5 is the latest incarnation in Firaxis Games’ series of turn-based strategy games. Civ 5 gives us an interesting look at things that not even RTSes can match, with a much weaker focus on shading in the game world, and a much greater focus on creating the geometry needed to bring such a world to life. In doing so it uses a slew of DirectX 11 technologies, including tessellation for said geometry and compute shaders for on-the-fly texture decompression.
Civilization V is another title that we don’t use MSAA on at 1680 due to the game’s already low performance and the additional strain of MSAA. This works to the advantage of the 6790, giving it some of the best results relative to the 6850 of our entire test suite. Here the two cards are in fact virtually tied, and Barts’ improved tessellator gives it 20% over the 5770. However NVIDIA’s continued strong showing here means that the 6850 is largely tagging out for the GTX 460 768MB here, which is why the GTX 460 is nearly 20% ahead, and even the GTX 550 isn’t too far behind. If more games were like Civilization V the 6790 would be in better shape, but the rest of the Barts lineup wouldn’t be doing nearly as well.
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Belard - Tuesday, April 5, 2011 - link
Actually - AMD's 3000~5000 have been rather consistent. The 6000s is kind of like the 2000s. They should have stuck with the 3-5 series, everything would have made more sense.So that the 6850 should have been the 6750 since its not really better than an actual 5850. They said they did this to not cause confusion with the 5700 series which was not to be replaced - but INSTEAD ended up being relabeled into the 6600~6700s for the OEM market. The new "AMD" GPU first step with their branded was stupid and confusing. Not impressed.
Nvidia? Those nut-jobs are master at confusion.
GTX / GT / GTS are meaningless, especially in front of a model number. Seriously, to say "GeForce GTX 550 Ti" is plain stupid. "GeForce 550" is all that is needed or "Geforce 5 GTX, Geforce 5 GT etc".
Are there GF GTX 560 and a GF GT 560 and a GF GTS 560? Uh, no.
What happen to the Geforce 300 series? Oh yeah - OEM relabeled bottom end GF200 series. They skipped into the 400 series. Then there is the GF465 and GF 465 768MB... which is more than JUST a memory difference. They should have called it the 465 (with 1GB) and 460 (with 768) since there is ALWAYS a performance hit with the 768mb version of the card.
Then Nvidia brings back the "TI" tag to remind us OLD TIMERS of the days of excellent GF4000 series... which is idiotic as hell.
What?! Is there a GF 550 and a GF 550TI? Screw that, I want the NON TI version because its faster. Oh yeah, its just a few letters suck on the end that are meaningless.
The GF 500 series is the exact same tech as the GF400 series, but fully functional. ie: fixed. But calling them the 500 series makes them look better / newer.
I expect Nvidia to have the "GeForce GTX 785 TI Ultra" on the market around March 2012.
kedesh - Tuesday, April 5, 2011 - link
my question is, can i crossfire this card up with my current one (5750)? consitering i have the correct motherboard? no where on the internet can i find an answer.WhatsTheDifference - Tuesday, April 5, 2011 - link
is the 4890 excluded from ALL benchies? the problem is...? ban the 285 from just one article and we'll witness just exactly what?thanks.
Lex Luger - Thursday, April 7, 2011 - link
There hasnt been much improvement with video cards since the 90 nm 8800 GTX and GTS.Those were probalby the greatest cards ever in terms of performance boost vs the previous generation.
slickr - Thursday, April 7, 2011 - link
What is the point testing a mediocre graphic card at 1600 and higher resolutions?Most people are going to be playing at lower resolutions with that graphic card and their PC's are certainly not Core I 950 with 12GB ram, so they would be playing at resolutions of 1200x1024 or 1400x1050.
I mean we need more realistic representation of these cards and not some scenario that would never happen.
shady28 - Friday, April 8, 2011 - link
Seems GPUs are dead on the PC until and unless something that can actually use them comes along.
I agree with a previous poster - the 8800GT / GTS series was 'good enough'. There are only a handfull of games that really need anything more, so now all these cards are relegated to a niche market.
Now tablet GPUs, that's a different story, but people are still mostly developing for the lowest common denominator there too.
IloveCharleneChoi - Friday, April 8, 2011 - link
I don‘t care more about HD6790 and 550TI,The cards new released are usually expensive . hd6850 here is less than $150 in Nanjing,China.HD6850 can do better than GTX460 in many games,and of course it can beat 6790 or 550TI.SO WHY CHOOSE 6790?iamezza - Sunday, April 10, 2011 - link
Thanks Ryan for another great article :)I can't believe all the fruit loops posting in the comments here!
thenemesis2 - Monday, October 3, 2011 - link
I this the best card for mild gaming on a Shuttle SandyBridge box with only one 6 pci-e connector and 300w psu?