AMD’s Radeon HD 6870 & 6850: Renewing Competition in the Mid-Range Market
by Ryan Smith on October 21, 2010 10:08 PM ESTWhat’s In a Name?
GPU naming is rarely consistent. While NVIDIA is usually the biggest perpetrator of naming confusion or suddenly switched names AMD does not have a clear record either (the Mobility 5100 series comes to mind). However we’re not sure there’s precedent for AMD’s latest naming decision, and there’s really no stepping around it. So we have a few thoughts we’d like to share.
Since the introduction of the Radeon 3870 in 2007, 800 has been the series designation for AMD’s high-end products. The only time they’ve broken this is last year, when AMD ditched the X2 moniker for their dual-GPU card for the 5900 designation, a move that ruffled a few feathers but at least made some sense since the 5970 wasn’t a true 5870 X2. Regardless, the 800 series has since 2007 been AMD’s designation for their top single-chip product.
With that naming scheme come expectations of performance. Each 800 series card has been successively faster, and while pricing has been inconsistent as AMD’s die size and costs have shifted, ultimately each 800 series card was a notable step up in performance from the previous card. With the 6800 this is not the case. In fact it’s absolutely a step down, the 6800 series is on average 7% slower than the 5800 series. This doesn’t mean that AMD hasn’t made enhancements to the card –we’ve already covered the enhanced tessellation unit, AA/AF, UVD3, and other features – but these are for the most part features and not performance enhancements.
Click to enlarge
Today AMD is turning their naming scheme on its head by launching these Barts cards with the 6800 name, but without better-than-5800 performance. AMD’s rationale for doing this is that they’re going to be continuing to sell the 5700 series, and that as a result they didn’t want to call these cards the 6700 series and introduce confusion. Furthermore AMD is trying to recapture the glory days of the 4800 series, where those parts sold for under $300 and then quickly under $200. It wasn’t until the 5800 series that an 800 series card became outright expensive. So for these reasons, AMD wanted to call these Barts cards the 6800 series.
We find ourselves in disagreement with AMD here.
We don’t have a problem with AMD introducing the 6 series here – the changes they’ve made, even if not extreme, at least justify that. But there’s a very real issue of creating confusion for buyers of the 5800 series now by introducing the 6800 series. The performance may be close and the power consumption lower, but make no mistake, the 5800 series was faster.
Ultimately this is not our problem; this is AMD’s problem. So we can’t claim harm per-say, but we can reflect on matters. The Barts cards being introduced today should have been called the 6700 series. It would have made the latest rendition of the 700 series more expensive than last time, but at the same time Barts is a very worthy upgrade to the 5700 series. But then that’s the problem for AMD; they don’t want to hurt sales of the 5700 series while it’s still on the market.
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Donkey2008 - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
Can you provide a link to your website so I can read your review of the cards? That would be awesome.Natfly - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
Sure, right here: http://tinyurl.com/36ag36dBlendMe - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
So you're telling me I can get two 6870 and spend lest money, use less power and have more performance than a GTX 480? I like the idea of going back to what made the 48xx cards so great. Small, cheap and expandable.Can't wait for the rest of the line up.
tpurves - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
how is it that the nvidia cards go UP in framerate when you increase the resolution from 1650 to 1920 and add 4xAA? Did you mix up some test run numbers?mapesdhs - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
It's a pity the charts don't include SLI results for the EVGA 460. I would like to have seen
how close it came to 470 SLI, given the 470s inferior power, GPU load temp and noise
results. The 470 GPU load temps under Crysis for just one card are particularly scary;
the idea of using two 470s SLI, and even more so oc'ing them, seems like a recipe for
thermal mayhem - alien astronomers with IR telescopes would wonder what the heck
they've spotted. :D
The price drop on the 470 is interesting, but the EVGA 460 still looks like a better buy
because of the power/heat issues, especially so for those considering SLI (as I am),
and also the fact that the EVGA is as good or better than the 6870. This graph is the
one that interests me:
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph3987/33232...
The stock 460 SLI is clearly nowhere near as good as 6870 CF or 470 SLI, but given
a single EVGA 460 matches the 6870, I'd really like to know how two EVGAs perform.
Any chance you could add the data later?
On the other hand, one could assume the 6870 should have some oc'ing headroom,
but toms' review didn't show that much of a gain from oc'd 6870s.
The 6870 here in the UK seems to be about 200 UKP (Aria, Scan), though the XFX
version looks to be an exception (178 from Scan). The EVGA is 174 (Scan, but no
stock yet). For those who don't want to spend that much, the 800MHz Palit Sonic
Platinum 460 has dropped down to only 163 (last week it was 183). I almost bought
two of the Palit cards last week, so I'm glad I waited.
Obviously the pricing is all over the place atm, and likely to wobble all over again
when the next 6xxxx cards are released. Either way, despite the lack of major
performance increases atm, at least there's finally some pricing/value competition.
I think I'll wait until the dust settles re pricing, then decide. Quite likely many others
will do the same.
Ian.
AtenRa - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
Why did you run at 1920x1200 and not 1920x1080 ??most 1920x1200 monitors are extincted from the market and 1920x1080 is becoming the defacto resolution.
Lunyone - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
Well with bowing down to nVidia on the selection of "what" GPU to use, you have lost all credibility in my eyes. Even Tom's Hardware took a higher road and agreed to use the "hand picked" GPU, but limited the clocks to near stock settings, so there was a more "real" world comparison. Who nows if this isn't the first time that this has happened at Anandtech. I notice no rebuttals on Anand's part, so I'm guessing that they are quite amazed that people are seeing how one sided this issue is. This article wouldn't affect my purchase, since I look a several sites to draw a conclusion from. But my confidence in quality and fair reporting from Anandtech's reviews have been compromised, IMHO. I don't know if I will put any merit to any on Anand's reviews, time will tell.Sunburn74 - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
Gee. You know whats all this about Anandtech losing credibility? Nvidia specifically asked them to test one card and the consumer benefits from having this information. Its not like anandtech didn't include the reference gtx460 as well. Anything that tells the consumer more about how valuable his dollar really is, is a good thing imo.I currently have an oced radeon 5850 and it annoyed the hell out of me trying to justify whether or not the extra 30 bucks I eventually ended up paying for it, was worth it. There weren't any reviews at the time you see...
SandmanWN - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
You can't gauge value of an overclocked card against a stock card. You have no idea what the other card can do. What you are saying is nonsense if you really put two seconds into thinking about what you just said.mindbomb - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
we are talking about factory oc'd cards.It's not like Anand was playing around in rivatuner.