AMD’s Radeon HD 6870 & 6850: Renewing Competition in the Mid-Range Market
by Ryan Smith on October 21, 2010 10:08 PM ESTFinal Words
Going in to our first meeting with AMD, we weren’t quite sure what to expect with the Radeon HD 6800 series. After all, how do you follow up on the blockbuster that was Cypress and the Radeon HD 5800 series?
The answer is that you don’t, at least not right away. With AMD’s choice of names in mind, Barts and the 6800 series isn’t the true successor to Cypress; but it is the next generation of Radeon for another market. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a great product line though – in fact that’s far from it.
The 6800 series hits the one market segment that AMD couldn’t reach with either the 5800 series or the 5700 series: the $200 market. As we said back in July when we crowned the GTX 460 the $200 king, the most successful chips are those chips that are designed from the get-go for the market they’re being sold in. The GTX 460 succeeded where the Cypress could not, as the penalty for using a harvested Cypress chip for that market was too severe and AMD had little else to work with.
Now 3 months later AMD has their appropriate answer to the $200 market in the form of Barts and the Radeon HD 6800 series. The Barts GPU is small enough to cheaply produce for that market, and with AMD’s rebalanced design it’s capable of trailing the 5800 series by only 7%, making Cypress-like performance available for prices lower than before. It’s the missing link that AMD has needed to be competitive with the GTX 460.
As a result, even with NVIDIA’s latest round of price drops AMD has managed to dethrone the $200 king, and in the process is reshaping the competitive market only recently established by the GTX 460. With AMD and NVIDIA’s price stratification there are very few head-to-head matchups, but there are a few different situations that bear looking at.
At the top end we have the Mexican standoff between the recently price-reduced GTX 470, the newly released Radeon HD 6870, and the overclocked GTX 460 as represented by the EVGA GTX 460 1GB FTW. At $260 the GTX 470 is several percent faster than the 6870, and at only $20 more NVIDIA has done a good job pricing the card. If performance is your sole concern, than the GTX 470 is hard to beat at those prices – though we suspect NVIDIA isn’t happy about selling GF100 cards at such a low price.
Meanwhile if you care about a balance of performance and power/heat/noise, then it’s the 6870 versus the EVGA GTX 460; and the EVGA card wins in an unfair fight. As an overclocked card in a launch card article we’re not going to give it a nod, but we’re not going to ignore it; it’s 5% faster than the reference 6870 while at the same time it’s cooler and quieter (thanks in large part to the fact that it’s an open-air design). At least as long as it’s on the market (we have our doubts about how many suitable GPUs NVIDIA can produce), it’s hard to pass up even when faced with the 6870.
Without the EVGA card in the picture though, the 6870 is clearly sitting at a sweet spot in terms of price, performance, and noise. It’s faster than the 5850 while drawing only as much power and yet it’s still slightly quieter. Meanwhile it completely clobbers the reference clocked GTX 460 1GB in gaming performance, although with NVIDIA’s new prices and the $30 premium we would hope that this is the case. If nothing else the 6870 wins by default – NVIDIA doesn’t have a real product to put against it.
As for the Radeon HD 6850 however, things are much more lopsided in AMD’s favor. It’s give and take depending on the benchmark, but ultimately it’s just as fast as the GTX 460 1GB on average, even though it’s officially $20 cheaper. And at the same time it draws less power and produces less noise than the GTX 460 1GB. In fact unless the GTX 460 1GB was cheaper than the 6850, we really can’t come up with a reason to buy it. For all the advantage of an overclock when going up against the 6870, the stock clocked card has nothing on the 6850. Even the GTX 460 768MB, while $10-$20 cheaper than the 6850, still has to contend with the fact that the 6850 is almost 10% faster and only marginally louder.
In fact our only real concern is that while the reference 6850 is a great card, the XFX card is less so – XFX heavily prioritized temperatures over noise, and while this pays off with a load temperate even better than the GTX 460, it comes at the price of noise levels exceeding even the 6870. Shortly before publication we got a note from XFX that they’re going to work on releasing a BIOS with a less aggressive fan, which hopefully should resolve the issue. In the meantime we suggest checking back here next week, as we’ll have several custom 6850s arriving next week that we’ll be reviewing as part of a 6850 roundup.
Wrapping things up, we believe this will probably go down as being the most competitive card launch of the year. AMD and NVIDIA reposition themselves against each other with every launch, but by first launching the Radeon HD 6000 series against NVIDIA’s mid-to-high range GTX 460, AMD has gone head-first in to one of NVIDIA’s most prized markets, and NVIDIA is pushing right back. If you would have told us 3 months ago that we would have been able to get GTX 460 1GB performance for $180 only a couple months later, we likely would have called you mad, and yet here we are. The competitive market is alive and then some.
Ultimately this probably won’t go down in history as one of AMD’s strongest launches – there’s only so much you can do without a die shrink – but it’s still a welcome addition to the Radeon family. With a new generation of Radeon cards taking their foothold, we now can turn our eyes towards the future, and to see what AMD will be bringing us with the Radeon HD 6900 series and the Cayman GPU.
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Quidam67 - Friday, October 29, 2010 - link
Well that's odd.After reading about the EVGA FTW, and its mind-boggling factory overclock, I went looking to see if I could pick one of these up in New Zealand.
Seems you can, or maybe not. As per this example http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=32... the clocks are 763Mhz and 3.8 on the memory?!?
What gives, how can EVGA give the same name to a card and then have different specifications on it? So good thing I checked the fine-print or else I would have been bumbed out if I'd bought it and then realised it wasn't clocked like I thought it would be..
Murolith - Friday, October 29, 2010 - link
So..how about that update in the review checking out the quality/speed of MLAA?CptChris - Sunday, October 31, 2010 - link
As the cards were compared to the OC nVidia card I would be interested in seeing how the 6800 series also compares to a card like the Sapphire HD5850 2GB Toxic Edition. I know it is literally twice the price as the HD6850 but would it be enough of a performance margin to be worth the price difference?gochichi - Thursday, November 4, 2010 - link
You know, maybe I hang in the wrong circles but I by far keep up to date on GPUs more than anyone I know. Not only that, but I am eager to update my stuff if it's reasonable. I want it to be reasonable so badly because I simply love computer hardware (more than games per say, or as much as the games... it's about hardware for me in and of itself).Not getting to my point fast enough. I purchased a Radeon 3870 at Best Buy (Best Buy had an oddly good deal on these at the time, Best Buy doesn't tend to keep competitive prices on video cards at all for some reason). 10 days later (so I returned my 3870 at the store) I purchased a 4850, and wow, what a difference it made. The thing of it is, the 3870 played COD 4 like a champ, the 4850 was ridiculously better but I was already satisfied.
In any case, the naming... the 3870 was no more than $200.00 I think it was $150.00. And it played COD4 on 24" 1900x1200 monitor with a few settings not maxed out, and played it so well. The 4850 allowed me to max out my settings. Crysis sucked, crysis still sucks and crysis is still a playable benchmark. Not to say I don't look at it as a benchmark. The 4850 on the week of its release was $199.99 at Best Buy.
Then gosh oh golly there was the 4870 and the 4890, which simply took up too much power... I am simply unwilling to buy a card that uses more than one extra 6-pin connector just so I can go out of my way to find something that runs better. So far, my 4850 has left me wanting more in GTA IV, (notice again how it comes down to hardware having to overcome bad programming, the 4850 is fast enough for 1080p but it's not a very well ported game so I have to defer to better hardware). You can stop counting the ways my 4850 has left me wanting more at 1900 x 1200. I suppose maxing out Starcraft II would be nice also.
Well, then came out the 5850, finally a card that would eclipse my 4850... but oh wait, though the moniker was the same (3850 = so awesome, so affordable, the 4850 = so awesome, so affordable, the 5850 = two 6-pin connectors, so expensive, so high end) it was completely out of line with what I had come to expect. The 4850 stood without a successor. Remember here that I was going from 3870 to 4850, same price range, way better performance. Then came the 5770, and it was marginally faster but just not enough change to merit a frivolous upgrade.
Now, my "need" to upgrade is as frivolous as ever, but finally, a return to sanity with the *850 moniker standing for fast, and midrange. I am a *850 kind of guy through and through, I don't want crazy power consumption, I don't want to be able to buy a whole, really good computer for the price of just a video card.
So, anyhow, that's my long story basically... that the strange and utterly upsetting name was the 5850, the 6850 is actually right in line with what the naming should have always staid as. I wouldn't know why the heck AMD tossed a curve ball for me via the 5850, but I will tell you that it's been a really long time coming to get a true successor in the $200 and under range.
You know, around the time of the 9800GT and the 4850, you actually heard people talk about buying video cards while out with friends. The games don't demand much more than that... so $500 cards that double their performance is just silly silly stuff and people would rather buy an awesome phone, an iPad, etc. etc. etc.
So anyhow, enough of my rambling, I reckon I'll be silly and get the true successor to my 4850... though I am assured that my Q6600 isn't up to par for Starcraft II... oh well.
rag2214 - Sunday, November 7, 2010 - link
The 6800 series my not beat the 5870 yet but it is the start of the HDMI 1.4 for 3dHD not available in any other ATI graphics cards.Philip46 - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link
The review stated why was there a reson to buy a 460(not OC'ed).How about benchmarks of games using Physx?
For instance Mafia 2 hits 32fps @ 1080p(I7-930 cpu) when using Physx on high, while the 5870 manages only 16.5fps, while i tested both cards.
How about a GTA:IV benchmark?, because the Zotac 2GB GTX 460, runs the game more smoothly(the same avg fps, except the min fps on the 5850 are lower in the daytime) then the 5850 (2GB).
How about even a Far Cry 2 benchmark?
Co'me on anandtech!, lets get some real benchmarks that cover all aspects of gaming features.
How about adding in driver stability? Ect..
And before anyone calls me biased, i had both the Zotac GTX 460 and Saffire 5850 2GB a couple weeks back, and overall i went with the Zotac 460, and i play Crysis/Stalker/GTA IV/Mafia 2/Far Cry 2..ect @ 1080p, and the 460 just played them all more stable..even if Crysis/Stalker were some 10% faster on the 5850.
BTW: Bad move by anandtech to include the 460 FTC !
animekenji - Saturday, December 25, 2010 - link
Barts is the replacement for Juniper, NOT Cypress. Cayman is the replacement for Cypress. If you're going to do a comparison to the previous generation, then at least compare it to the right card. HD6850 replaces HD5750. HD6870 replaces HD5770. HD6970 replaces HD5870. You're giving people the false impression that AMD knocked performance down with the new cards instead of up when HD6800 vastly outperforms HD5700 and HD6900 vastly outperforms HD5800. Stop drinking the green kool-aid, Anandtech.