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

So far i have read approx 10 different sites reviews of these cards.

I am personally looking at the comparison between the 6870 to a GTX 470 which i was previously considering buying before this launch.

So far i think the reviews i have seen are split 80/20 in favour of the GTX when running at stock speeds, and the GTX may be more overclockable but need more info on 6870 overclocks. Also need to allow for immature drivers on the 6870.

There also might be a trend of the 6870 giving higher minimum fps but the GTX giving higher average fps.

Personally if performance turns out to be very close i am leaning towards the 6870 for heat/power reasons and connectivity.
 
Ejizz said:
^^^
Considering the minimums alone (As they are more important than average), I think the 6870 is an easy choice...
Click to expand...

Only if you can have it cheaper. Minimums can be seen as fps spikes and tell you virtually nothing in terms of enjoying the gameplay. The actual frequency of the framerate spikes will cause a game to either look smooth or not. Some of the fps drops can be related to hard drive loading the data. To be fair, there might be multiple causes not graphics card related. Looking at the fps graphs is more reliable in terms of real-world performance.
 
^^^
Lol, as the minimums are better over a large selection of games it's likely it's down to the GPU's than anything else.
Even if they 6870 was slightly more expensive, it has a long list of advantages that make it a more attractive option over the 470 IMO.
 
My reasoning exactly. My 8800GT died a couple of weeks ago and I was waiting to see how it panned out. Was looking at the 460 1MB intially, then the 470 when they dropped the price so far. Didn't like the stories of heat and noise so was happy to pay a bit more for the 6870. Whether it's a bit slower or faster than the 470 I don't care. I won't be overclocking it and I think I'll prefer the quiet to what might only be a few fps, and don't mind paying 20 quid more. 6870 and 1900x1200 monitor ordered ;-)
 
Ordered an XFX 6850 this morning for £133 delivered but as I was reading the reviews it went out of stock! Now i'll have to wait for Wednesday for some more to come in!

But my god what a good looking card the XFX is! Much better than the industrial 5*** series in my view.
 
MikeRossyBoy said:
Ordered an XFX 6850 this morning for £133 delivered but as I was reading the reviews it went out of stock! Now i'll have to wait for Wednesday for some more to come in!

But my god what a good looking card the XFX is! Much better than the industrial 5*** series in my view.
Click to expand...

just seen it & yeah it looks nice.

1346566a.jpg

Gigabyte HD 6850 ATI - AMD Radeon Graphics Card - 1GB looks good to with the twin cooler.

1348886a.jpg
 
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Looks like the days of bad crossfire scaling are over for the time being.

Radeon HD6870 Scaling - Anandtech @ 1920x1200

Crysis: Warhead - 83% (GTX470 79%)
Battleforge (DX11) - 95% (GTX470 88%)
Metro 2033 (DX11) - 66% (GTX470 69%)
HAWX - 84% (GTX470 77%)
Civilization 5 (DX11) - 46% (GTX470 0%)
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (DX11) - 100%> (GTX470 64%)
STALKER Call of Pripyat (DX11) - 95% (GTX470 75%)
Dirt 2 (DX11) - 83% (GTX470 75%)
Mass Effect 2 - 88% (GTX470 96%)
Wolfenstein (OpenGL) - 21% (GTX470 48%)

Good range of games, DX11 and not filled out with crap like Far Cry 2, Mafia 2 and whatever else but I would like to have seen F1 2010 in there as well and maybe Empire Total War.
 
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I like the fact that the HD6850 1GB only has one PCI-E power connector which is ideal for my system. There is one GTX460 768MB card I have seen which has a single PCI-E power connector too but this is priced around the same as the cheaper HD6850 1GB cards.

Anyway,it seems the HD68** pricing is going back to what we saw with the HD38** and HD48** series with the HD*850 cards being £150 and under and the HD*870 cards being between £150 to £250.
 
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