AMD’s Radeon HD 6870 & 6850: Renewing Competition in the Mid-Range Market
by Ryan Smith on October 21, 2010 10:08 PM ESTKicking things off as always is Crysis: Warhead, still the toughest game in our benchmark suite. Even 2 years since the release of the original Crysis, “but can it run Crysis?” is still an important question, and the answer continues to be “no.” One of these years we’ll actually be able to run it with full Enthusiast settings…
For reasons we’ve yet to determine, Crysis continues to do a very good job serving as an overall barometer for video card performance. Much of what we see here will show up later, including the order that cards fall in.
As we’ve been expecting, the 6800 series cannot keep up with the 5800 series – Barts is still a “rebalanced” Cypress after all. The performance gap isn’t too severe, and it certainly couldn’t justify 5870 prices at today’s prices, but the 6870 and 6850 definitely aren’t perfect replacements for their 5800 series counterparts.
Focusing on 1920x1200, we have a 3-way race between the GTX 470, EVGA GTX 460, and the 6870. The 6870 comes out ahead, with the EVGA and then the GTX 470 bringing up the pack at under a frame behind. Meanwhile near the 6850 is the GTX 460 1GB, and it’s 2fps behind; while even farther down the line is the GTX 460 768MB, which officially is only $10 cheaper than the 6850 and yet it’s well behind the pack. As we’ll see, the 6850 will quickly assert itself as the GTX 460 1GB’s peer when it comes to performance.
Meanwhile taking a quick look at Crossfire performance we see an interesting trend: the 6800 series cards are much closer to their 5800 series counterparts than they are in single card mode. Here the 6850CF even manages to top the 5850CF, an act that nearly defies logic. This is something we’ll have to keep an eye on in later results.
Moving on to our minimums, the picture changes slightly in NVIDIA’s favor. The 6870 drops to the bottom of its pack, while the 6850’s lead narrows versus both GTX 460 cards. Meanwhile in CF mode now both 6800 series cards top their 5800 series counterparts. Crysis’ minimum framerate has always been a bit brutal to AMD cards due to how AMD’s drivers manage their memory, a problem compounded by Crossfire mode. Perhaps something has changed?
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StriderGT - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
I agree with you that the inclusion of the FTW card was a complete caving and casts shadows to a so far excellent reputation of anandtech. I believe the whole motivation was PR related, retaining a workable relation with nvidia, but was it worth it?!Look how ugly can this sort of thing get, they do not even include the test setup... Quote from techradar.com:
We expected the 6870 to perform better than it did – especially as this is essentially being pitched as a GTX 460 killer.
The problem is, Nvidia's price cuts have made this an impossible task, with the FTW edition of the GTX 460 rolling in at just over £170, yet competently outperforming the 6870 in every benchmark we threw at it.
In essence, therefore, all the 6870 manages is to unseat the 5850 which given its end of life status isn't too difficult a feat. We'd still recommend buying a GTX 460 for this sort of cash. All tests ran at 1,920 x 1,080 at the highest settings, apart from AvP, which was ran at 1,680 x 1,050.
http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/pc-compone...
oldscotch - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
...where a Civilization game would be used for a GPU benchmark.AnnihilatorX - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
It's actually quite taxing on the maps. It lags on my HD4850.The reason is, it uses DX 11 DirectCompute features on texture decompression. The performance is noticeably better on DX11 cards.
JonnyDough - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
"Ultimately this means we’re looking at staggered pricing. NVIDIA and AMD do not have any products that are directly competing at the same price points: at every $20 you’re looking at switching between AMD and NVIDIA."Not when you figure in NVidia's superior drivers, or power consumption...depending on which one matters most to you.
Fleeb - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
I looked at the load power consumption charts and saw the Radeon cards are better in this department and I don't clearly understand your statement. Did you mean that the nVidia cards in these tests should be better because of superior power consumption or that their power consumption is superior in a sense that nVidia cards consume more power?jonup - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
I think he meant the nVidia has better drivers but worse power consumption. So it all depends on what you value most. At least that's how I took it.zubzer0 - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
Great review!If you have the time I would be wery happy if you test how well these boards do in Age of Conan DX10?
Some time ago you included (feb. 2009) Age of Conan in your reviews, but since then DX10 support was added to the game. I have yet to see an official review of the current graphics cards performance in AoC DX10.
Btw. With the addon "Rise of the godslayer" the graphics in the new Khitai zone are gorgeous!
konpyuuta_san - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
In my case (pun intended), the limiting factor is the physical size of the card. I've abandoned the ATX formats completely, going all out for mini-ITX (this one is Silverstone's sugo sg06). The king of ITX cases might still be the 460, but this is making me feel a bit sore about the 460 I'm just about to buy. Especially since the 6870 is actually only $20 more than the 6850 where I live and the 6850 is identically priced to the 460. There's just no way I can fit a 10.5 inch card into a 9 inch space. The 9 inch 6850 would fit, but there's a large radiator mounted on the front of the case, connected to a cpu water cooling block, that will interfere with the card. I've considered some crazy mods to the case, but those options just don't feel all that attractive. The GTX460 is a good quarter inch shorter and I'm getting a model with top-mounted power connectors so there's ample room for everything in this extremely packed little gaming box. I'm still kind of trying to find a way to put a 6850 in there (bangs and bucks and all that), which leads to my actual question, namely:The issue of rated power consumption; recommended minimum for the 460 is 450W (which I can support), but for the 6850 it's 500W (too much). How critical are those requirements? Does the 6850 really require a 500W supply? Despite having lower power consumption than the 460?! Or is that just to ensure the PSU can supply enough amps on whatever rail the card runs off? If my 450W SFF PSU can't supply the 6850, it really doesn't matter how much better or cheaper it is ....
joshua4000 - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
let me get this straigt, fermi was once too expensive to manufacture due to its huge die and stuff but its striped down versions sell for less and outpace newley released amd cards (by a wide margin when looked at the 470)amds cheaper to manufacture cards (5xxx) on the other hand came in overpriced once the 460 had been released (if they havent been over priced all along...), still, the price did not drop to levels nvidia could not sell products without making a loss.
amd has optimised an already cheap product price wise, that does not outperforme the 470 or an oced 460 while at the same time selling for the same amount $.
considering manufacturing and pricing of the 4870 in its last days, i guess amd will still be making money out of those 6xxx when dropping the price by 75% msrp.
NA1NSXR - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
Granted there have been a lot of advancements in the common feature set of today's cards and improvement in power/heat/noise, but the absolute 3D performance has been stagnant. I am surprised the competition was called alive and well in the final words section. I built my PC back in 7/2009 using a 4890 which cost $180 then. Priced according to the cards in question today, it would slot in roughly the same spot, meaning pretty much no performance improvement at all since then. Yes, I will repeat myself to ward off what is certainly coming - I know the 4890 is a pig (loud, noisy, power hungry) compared to the cards here. However, ignoring those factors 3D performance has barely budged in more than a year. Price drops on 5xxx was a massive disappointment for me. They never came in the way I thought was reasonable to expect after 4xxx. I am somewhat indifferent because in my own PC cycle I haven't been in the market for a card, but like I said before, disappointment in the general market and i wouldn't really agree with the statement that competition is alive and well, at least in any sense that is benefiting people who weight performance more heavily in criteria.