AMD’s Radeon HD 6870 & 6850: Renewing Competition in the Mid-Range Market
by Ryan Smith on October 21, 2010 10:08 PM ESTThe latest game in the Battlefield series - Bad Company 2 – remains as one of the cornerstone DX11 games in our benchmark suite. As BC2 doesn’t have a built-in benchmark or recording mode, here we take a FRAPS run of the jeep chase in the first act, which as an on-rails portion of the game provides very consistent results and a spectacle of explosions, trees, and more.
Our experience with Bad Company 2 more or less matches our experiences with other shader-heavy games at 1920x1200. The GTX 470, 6870, and EVGA GTX 460 all vie for the top of their pack within a frame of each other, while the 6850 enjoys a clear lead over the GTX 460 1GB. However what’s interesting is that the Radeon 5800 series takes a very obvious lead here, a lead that’s larger than in most other games. If you ever wanted to know just how shader-bound Bad Company 2 is, there’s the answer you’re looking for.
As for the Crossfire situation, once again the 6800 series closes the gap. Even the GTX 470 in SLI can’t quite keep up with the 6850CF, which is much a story of how well the game runs on AMD cards as it is a story of what’s clearly going on with the 6800 series and Crossfire.
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Ryan Smith - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
In case it isn't obvious from the slipshod organization of the article, we didn't quite get it done on time. We had less than a week to put this article together when normally for an article of this size it takes 2 weeks. Check back in the morning, everything on Eyefinity, DP1.2, etc will be up by then.counter03 - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
i am quite interested in that 'mst hub'.is there any available product now?well,i just find nothing with google.wolrah - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
The card still has two TMDS clock generators. This means only two DVI/HDMI displays can be driven off the card at one time, no matter what connection. With that in mind, I wouldn't be surprised if the card doesn't even support passive adapters as there is literally no good reason to ever use them. You already have two native ports, so with a maximum of two DVI displays that's that.Regardless of if passive adapters are supported, you'll still need active adapters or native DisplayPort on your display to run three or four monitors off this card.
Supposedly it also supports DisplayPort daisy chaining, so possibly when monitors arrive that have an out port it may handle more than four displays, but again only a maximum of two can be DVI/HDMI without active adapters.
ninjaquick - Monday, October 25, 2010 - link
DP support shouldn't be a problem since I've seen quite a few monitors coming out with DP in and some with I/O.Abot13 - Saturday, October 23, 2010 - link
With the 6800 series the cards can support up to 6 monitors in Eyefinity. The DP ports can use a DP hub or the monitors can be chained with DP. Either way the max is 6 monitors per card.ol1bit - Thursday, October 21, 2010 - link
The naming stinks, but I can see how these cards will be a big Christmas season for AMD.So people that don't the new naming scheme will rush out an buy the bigger names. Smooth Marketing Move.
Well, if the 6900's launch next month, that will be fun to see.
Zokudu - Thursday, October 21, 2010 - link
You removed Left 4 Dead from your benchmarks. Does this mean you won't be replacing it with another Source game (ie L4D2 or maybe Portal 2 when that releases)?I know its not 100% perfect but 3 of the top 10 selling games on steam right now are run on the Source engine and the only other ones that share and engine are BF:BC2 and MoH both using Frostbite. I would think that having some form of a Source game in there would be a good idea considering the vast amount of popular games that run on it. I always used the L4D benchmark to compare performance for TF2 and CS:S. in the past.
Otherwise good review and I'm excited for the HD6900 launch next month.
Ryan Smith - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
By the time Portal 2 comes out, it'll be about the time we refresh our suite anyhow. For the time being the existing Source games run on anything (even the GT 430 got L4D playable at 1680 with 4xAA) so it's not a useful benchmark, especially since there's no guarantee Portal will run that well.AmdInside - Thursday, October 21, 2010 - link
In the 3DTV Play article, you mentioned AMD's 6000 series would challenge NVIDIA in 3D with the 6000 series but I didn't read any info on it in this article. What gives?StevoLincolnite - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
Also didn't see any mention of the improved crossfire performance either...