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By hanging out at the rumor mill, we recently learned AMD plans to ship its next-generation HD 6870 and HD 6850 graphics cards on October 22nd, just over a week from today. Before we left, we heard some more interesting chatter.
Keep in mind that none of this is coming from AMD, but it appears the company who killed off the ATI brand is playing shenanigans with the upcoming cards' model numbers. At a glance, you would expect the 6870 and 6850 to replace the 5870 and 5850, but you'd be wrong, through no fault of your own. Placing logic in a burlap sack, beating it senseless, and throwing it into a river, AMD's 6870 and 6850 will reportedly replace the Radeon 5700 series.
Chinese-language website XFastest.com has the skinny on the new parts. According to XFastest, the 6870 has a 900MHz core clock, 960 stream processors, a 256-bit memory bus, and GDDR5 cranked up to 4200MHz (effective). This one will likely end up selling for $250.
As for the 6850, this one features a 775MHz core clock, 800 stream processors, and GDDR5 clocked at 4000MHz (effective), as well as the same 256-bit memory bus.
XFastest has the 6870 scoring below a 5870 in 3DMark Vantage (P17,924 versus P16,270), while the 6850 scored below a 5850 (P15,593 versus P14,872).
Comments are closed on this article
harbingercmt
October 14, 2010 at 9:07pm
Psst...AMD...over here. I have a little friendly advice for you...
Buying ATI was a great move. We consumers have obviously enjoyed the great GPUs that the AMD/ATI partnership has churned out. We know your high-end procs can't compete with Intel's. That's ok...we love that your still trying and have instead decided to compete in the "bang-4-buck" category. We eagerly await what's next from both your CPU and GPU divisions
But here's the thing...you are taking a lot of hard-won consumer good will and squandering it on inane naming schemes. By overcomplicating the names of your parts, you are only confusing the market and making it harder for consumers to figure out just what the heck your selling.
For your own good, fire whatever glue-sniffing marketing team that is in charge of your product names. Come up with a simple and easy to understand naming convention, and we consumers will reward you handsomely.
That is all.
sniggler
October 14, 2010 at 2:02pm
I don't understand all these changes constantly in naming conventions. They need to stick to the 8xx / 7xx concept... The 5850 is well known as a powerhouse card and this is just a dirty trick by AMD to lower the cost of their mainstream cards. This is no different then if they decided to sell the 5770 as a 5850 so they could get the price point of a 5770. This is confusing to less enthusiastic consumers. How are they going to compete with the GTX 460, which by the sounds of it is level with these new Barts XT cards coming out? I used to really love ATI, but now since AMD started playing dirty I'm eager to see what Nvidia has in store to thrash them this time around.
Keith E. Whisman
October 14, 2010 at 2:10pm
The idea here is obviously to fool people into believing they are upgrading by buying one of these cards, especially the 6870 considering the last generation single GPU highend card was the 5870.
knexkid
October 14, 2010 at 12:07pm
All these high numbers are making me feel inferiour with my 4870x2...but wait..since it is x2 that makes it 9740 right? So that means I still have a while to go. lol
Peanut Fox
October 14, 2010 at 11:44am
I notice that the picture is credited to xFastested, but in the picture I also see that the card is sporting an ATI badge. I'd think they would have thrown out all those old useless loges by now.
Keith E. Whisman
October 14, 2010 at 11:16am
Yeah they still make the 5970, they are dual GPU cards with double the memory, each GPU has it's own memory.
These badass cards are selling for around $600 bucks on Newegg.com AMD has a newer card called the 5870X2 and it's two 5870 GPU's with 2gigs of ram for each GPU. The 5870X2 is actually faster than the 5970, but not enough to justify the $1200 dollar price tag.
mortalrage
October 14, 2010 at 10:25am
What feature are coming with these cards, I understand the rumors are they are a little slower. Other rumors are that these cards use less energy than the 5800 series, and also hearing these cards support up to 6 displays as well.
noobstix
October 14, 2010 at 9:09am
The 6850, clockspeed-wise, seems like a 5670 with a doubled bus width so I guess this would make sense that it would be replacing just the 5700 series. But the 6870, on the other hand, would seem like it could replace the 5800 series but I guess the 3DMark scores don't lie (although a little OC could bring that score up).
Keith E. Whisman
October 14, 2010 at 9:04am
Hey Paul My earlier assessment on these cards being not so great seems to have panned out. I was right. Ha ha ha... Anyone have any salt for rubbing in to open wounds?
Everyone was saying that this hardware was going to be better than current hardware but I knew better by looking at the stat page.
I remember that I actually gave in to you a little bit because I suspected that being at MaximumPC you would have some insider knowledge on the subject.
But yeah I figured this hardware would be about the same as the previous hardware and it's proven true. Well I'm done rubbing it in.. Group hug!!!!!
aviaggio
October 14, 2010 at 10:41am
Dunno what you're crowing about. These are the Barts chips, which are the new midrange chips. Yes the numbering scheme is wonky, but they are supposed to be taking over the Juniper line not the Cypress line. That's what the Cayman line is for. So the top end Bart is slightly slower than the midrange Cypress. What do you think is gonna happen when the Cayman line comes out? I'm thinking words like spank, bitchslap, blow-the-doors-off, Fermi.
Paul_Lilly
October 14, 2010 at 9:38am
Keith, if you recall I said the 6770 looks to be "somewhat comparable to the HD 5870." Assuming XFastest's benchmarks are valid, then the only thing that's changed since then is AMD decided to bump up the model number to 6870. The 6870 appears within striking distance of the 5870, it just has no business being called a 6870.
It also bests the 5850 (again, based solely on XFastest's findings), so it doesn't appear to be a bad card, just a poor marketing decision.
-Paul
Keith E. Whisman
October 14, 2010 at 10:15am
I agree completely, it has no business being called a 6870. People are going to be purchasing these things thinking they are upgrading from their 5870 cards just to get shafted. I wonder if the prices are going to be cheaper than the 5870. The 6870's performance would seem to me to be a good upgrade from a 5850 if the price is the same or lower than a 5850.
Paul, do you think they are going to release super high end enthusiast parts labeled in the 6900 range? or do you think the 6900 range is going to be used for 6800 refresh parts? The cards that get release a few months later with high clocks.
Paul_Lilly
October 14, 2010 at 11:16am
Hard to say where AMD goes from here in terms of branding. I understand wanting to drop the ATI nomenclature, but the 6800 nomenclature, if it sticks as rumored, is going to end up pissing off enthusiasts. The same might hold true for 6900 parts, if people expect these cards to come with two GPUs instead of one.
-Paul Lilly
orca11
October 14, 2010 at 8:52am
What 1d10t designed the heat-sink cover? As if space isn't already enough of an issue, they're going well past the end of the PCB just to make it look streamlined?
Peanut Fox
October 14, 2010 at 11:51am
It doesn't look like a large card to begin with. I don't think it's going to end up mattering much even in a mid tower.
Caboose
October 14, 2010 at 10:58am
It's not THAT far past the end of the PCB. I have 2 5770's with identicle heatsink covers.
HiGHRoLLeR038
October 14, 2010 at 8:22am
these scores are inacurate since you just previously stated that the 6870 and 6850 will replace the 5770 and 5750. its an unfair comparison.
Paul_Lilly
October 14, 2010 at 8:29am
By that same token, it's an unfair naming scheme. Nevertheless, hit the embedded source link to view more scores, including the 5770 and 5750 (which fall below the 6870 and 6850).
-Paul Lilly
