****Official 6850/6870 Reviews thread****

[hedgey]

im not sure why this card even exists. the 6870 is pretty much = 5850. and its slightly cheaper, so id buy it - if i didnt have a 5850. but again, why does it exist?

 

[Final8y]

im not sure why this card even exists. the 6870 is pretty much = 5850. and its slightly cheaper, so id buy it - if i didnt have a 5850. but again, why does it exist?

Its cheaper to make so AMD gets more £ for there product & users who don't already have a 5850/5870 can upgrade to 5850/5870 performance levels for less £.

So its a win for the consumer & AMD & NV users who are looking to buy the mid 4xx range.

 

[Gantoris]

Things gonna get really exiting when the 69xx rolls out in November.

 

[straxusii]

6870:If it's selling for £199 then it sounds like a fail launch.

You can get a 470 for £185 and it's between -1 to 5% faster (src:techpowerup), granted it's hotter and louder but I'd still go for the 470 personally.


6850 @ £160 seems ok, significantly faster than the 460/1GB which is £150

Edit: £188 now, price went up £3 overnight

 

[cainer]

6870's can be had for £178

 

[straxusii]

They don't, but they are slightly faster than a GTX470

Nope, 470 is faster overall http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/Radeon_HD_6870/29.html

 

[straxusii]

6870's can be had for £178

£178 is more like it, obviously I contained myself to the prices on this site for the comparison

 

[Marine-RX179]

I've look around a bit, and found there are some places selling:
XFX/Sapphire 6850 for under £135
XFX/Sapphire on pre-order for £178

I'm still trying to decide between getting these new cards and the GTX460 1GB, as the GTX460 is know to overclock very good and performance gain is quite well as well, but there's not much reliable info on overclock performance on the 6850 and 6870 yet. First look seem to imply that the 6870 doesn't have much overclocking headroom...and there are more games prefer Nvidia's hardware than ATI/AMD's, and Nvidia can usually get at least 5fps higher in those games if the cards from both sides are on the same level...

The Gigabyte GTX460 1GB with a free HAWK 2 download vouncher for £152 is very tempting as well....

So hard to decide argh!

 

[cainer]

another with sapphire 6870 @ £176.45

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Perhaps people should wait a week or two before jumping to conclusions about the overclocking headroom of the HD6850 and HD6870.

Many of the HD5870 1GB cards at launch had problems going past 900MHZ.

There is even a sticky about bypassing the limit:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18061954

Also,the GTX470 needs at least 60W more power at load than an HD6870.

 

[Martini1991]

Perhaps people should wait a week or two before jumping to conclusions about the overclocking headroom of the HD6850 and HD6870.

Many of the HD5870 1GB cards at launch had problems going past 900MHZ.

There is even a sticky about bypassing the limit:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18061954

Also,the GTX470 needs at least 60W more power at load than an HD6870.

The 58XX launch was pro.

 

[Final8y]

I've look around a bit, and found there are some places selling:
XFX/Sapphire 6850 for under £135
XFX/Sapphire on pre-order for £178

I'm still trying to decide between getting these new cards and the GTX460 1GB, as the GTX460 is know to overclock very good and performance gain is quite well as well, but there's not much reliable info on overclock performance on the 6850 and 6870 yet. First look seem to imply that the 6870 doesn't have much overclocking headroom...and there are more games prefer Nvidia's hardware than ATI/AMD's, and Nvidia can usually get at least 5fps higher in those games if the cards from both sides are on the same level...

The Gigabyte GTX460 1GB with a free HAWK 2 download vouncher for £152 is very tempting as well....

So hard to decide argh!

Good post & well balanced without the exaggerations.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The 58XX launch was pro.

Makes little or no difference TBH. Is the overclocking headroom limited by the GPU or the BIOS? My HD3870 had the same issue until I reflashed it too.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Anyway,the power consumption of the HD6850 looks decent and most systems which can run an HD5770 1GB can most likely run an HD6850 1GB.

 

[Rhys-M]

Power consumption on these look very good. Forgot how much my GTX275 actually uses

 

[Marine-RX179]

Damn the Sapphire 6850 with cooler that resemble the Vapor-X on pre-order for £135 over at *beep* is gone!

 

[straxusii]

All you guys saying you can get 6870 for under £180, do these places actually have stock though?

 

[Marine-RX179]

ok...after reading some reviews on the 6850 and 6870 (thx cainer), these are the initial conclusions I gonna draw:

GTX460 1GB vs R6850 1GB:
On stock speed pretty much deliver identical frame rate
Overclocking:
On average GTX460 1GB can overclock from stock clock 675MHz to 820~850MHz, where as the R6850 can overclock from stock clock 775MHz to 850~900MHz...so 145~175MHz overclock (GTX460 1GB) vs 75~125MHz overclock (R6850). Also need to bare in mind that GTX460 would get performance boost in games that prefer Nvidia's hardware over ATI/AMD's. Also reviewers have mention the temp on the R6850 with reference cooler seem a bit high the lower power consumption than the GTX460 1GB, so consumers should go for cards with good custom coolers. Gigabyte's R6850's cooler seem to resemble their custom cooler on the GTX460, and the Sapphire's R6850 custom cooler seem to resemble the Vapor-X cooler.

R6870:
Overclocking:
Most reviewers only managed to overclock from stock clock 900MHz to 950~975MHz, and that these clock, the 6870 pretty much deliver plus or minus little bit around the 5870 speed depending on the game. So in a way, it is like the 5850, BUT guarantee to deliver 5870 performance with the overclock (we all know that the non-reference 5850 are not guarantee to realy 5870 speed).

 

[bhavv]

After reading up on these, it seems that the 6870 is a great card for its price, but the 6850 is kind of meh compared to the new £160 price on the 1 Gb GTX 460s.

It looks like the ranking in this performance range is 6870 > 5850 > 1 Gb GTX 460 > 6850 > 768 mb GTX 460 > 5770.

If I had waited for these cards, I would have still gone for the Cyclone 1 Gb GTX 460 at £160, which would have saved £44 over how much they cost on launch, but I'm not so bothered.

ok...after reading some reviews on the 6850 and 6870 (thx cainer), these are the initial conclusions I gonna draw:

According to this post here:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=4595290&postcount=61

NVM I read the GTX 460 / 470 clocks wrong.

 

[Marine-RX179]

According to this post here:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=4595290&postcount=61

The GTX 460 clocked to 750 Mhz beats a 6850 clocked to 950 Mhz. Based on that, I dont think that the 6850 is going to manage to compare much against a GTX 460 clocked to 850 Mhz or more. Nvidia's cards get much more performance out of GPU overclocking than ATI's do.

next I want to see how an 850-900 Mhz GTX 460 compares to a 950 Mhz 6870.

I believe you have misread the info and results of the GTX470 by mistake...the GTX460 1GB is overclocked to 875MHz...it is the GTX470 that's overclocked to 750MHz.

The OC GTX 460 1GB does beat the OC R6850 by a little bit, but it is 200MHz OC vs 175MHz OC, and Crysis and JC2 is more leaning toward Nvidia hardware if I'm not mistaken. Wish they had some comparison results for OC GTX460 1GB vs OC R6850 on BFBC2...