Official AMD Radeon 6000 Series Discussion Thread

[Athlon2K15]

@nvidiaintelftl knees not kneeze. and if crysis 2 is as poorly coded as the first then it will bring the best cards to their knees

@altec how is it not weak 10% is not going to get ATI anymore marketshare,all nvidia will do is drop the price on the 480 and hold off even longer on the 5 series. pure fail

 

[MT Alex]

Wait a minute...

The 6970 is slower than the 5970?

 

[Athlon2K15]

Wait a minute...

The 6970 is slower than the 5970?

yes but it appears the 6970 is a single GPU card,which leaves room for a 6990 dual gpu card

 

[MT Alex]

Sorry, it was a poor attempt at humor.

 

[Athlon2K15]

Sorry, it was a poor attempt at humor.

you can do better,just study a bit more

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Wait a minute...

The 6970 is slower than the 5970?

well a GTX480 is only like 5% slower then a 5970 now when overclocked. It can play tag with a 5970

 

[erocker]

Threads merged.

 

[yogurt_21]

well a GTX480 is only like 5% slower then a 5970 now when overclocked. It can play tag with a 5970

that assumes the 5970 can't OC as well.

 

[AltecV1]

@altec how is it not weak 10% is not going to get ATI anymore marketshare,all nvidia will do is drop the price on the 480 and hold off even longer on the 5 series. pure fail

so what you are saying is that price wars are pure fail

 

[MxPhenom 216]

so what you are saying is that price wars are pure fail

If nvidia drops the price on the 480 to like 375 or something thatll be a lot of win!

 

[dir_d]

All wrong. (5D yes but no updated tessellator)

All the reviews I briefed through expecting to say what some of the technical changes that were made to Barts (over Cypress/Juniper) were non existent (have not got a chance to read W1zz's yet). Today TR posted their review of the Barts cards and finally got some detail on what changed.

Result:


....and about the dispatchers and rasters?:


So wtf changed?!:


In other words we did some minor tweaks to the shaders and cut FP64 to save on transistor count. Anand gets it right we he states that "Barts is a very direct descendant of Cypress". Reason being is that nothing really changed! Most of the changes were to the display output and some other minor things.

The shader changes made to Barts helps throughput and thread management of tessellation. TR shows ~40% increase in performance in the Heaven bench using heavy tessellation at 1280x720. Sounds awesome until you realize its a 10fps improvement over ~20 and the exact same percent increase is seen from a GTX 460 768MB to a GTX 470. Barts is still triangle setup limited which is why there is no real improvement when it comes to heavy tessellated games.

Barts appears to really just be a 5850 with less shaders but a higher core clock that makes up the difference. Since it has less shaders and kicked FP64 to the curb it also has a smaller die. Thanks to TSMC screwing 32nm we all get meh from video cards this time around.

So youre saying exactly what AMD said this series was way back when FERMI launched...A refresh.

 

[aCid888*]

way to just completely bombard my thread

Stop posting troll attracting crap then.




Edit: My 2,222nd post was used to bash someone....oh the glory!

 

[johnnyfiive]

Heehhehe, I'm running 3DMark06... on a 6870. , but on a athlon 640...

 

[mastrdrver]

So youre saying exactly what AMD said this series was way back when FERMI launched...A refresh.

Define refresh because I think AMD is stretching the term here............a lot.

G92 comes to mind, it just took longer.

 

[johnnyfiive]

Define refresh because I think AMD is stretching the term here............a lot.

G92 comes to mind, it just took longer.

mastrdrver, go read the review on anandtech. MUCH more detailed and technical information. 68xx isn't just a simple 'refresh', there is much more to it then that. You need to read about all the features Barts and Cayman have, Cypress is definitely old news in comparison.

 

[Tatty_Two]

Define refresh because I think AMD is stretching the term here............a lot.

G92 comes to mind, it just took longer.

In some respects, I look at it like the 4870 > 4890 (but this is a lot more than that with this release) and that took even longer, lot's of people said then "it's just a refresh" but hey, the end product was a damn nice card IMO, people are only dissapointed because they expect too much in the first place, rarely has there been two major architectural breakthrough's by the same company in a year to be honest and I see no reason to beleive this will change significantly, it normally takes 18 months to 2 years to see something that significant...... the "refreshes" simply give the company that bit of extra time and breathing space to get the real new stuff sorted...... just my thoughts.

I just really dont know what some expect.... damn two HD6850's in crossfire faster than a 480 or 5970 (or as fast as) for half the price (of the 5970).... is this not good enough?

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

course it is unless your stuck up nv's rear

 

[yogurt_21]

In some respects, I look at it like the 4870 > 4890 (but this is a lot more than that with this release) and that took even longer, lot's of people said then "it's just a refresh" but hey, the end product was a damn nice card IMO, people are only dissapointed because they expect too much in the first place, rarely has there been two major architectural breakthrough's by the same company in a year to be honest and I see no reason to beleive this will change significantly, it normally takes 18 months to 2 years to see something that significant...... the "refreshes" simply give the company that bit of extra time and breathing space to get the real new stuff sorted...... just my thoughts.

I just really dont know what some expect.... damn two HD6850's in crossfire faster than a 480 or 5970 (or as fast as) for half the price (of the 5970).... is this not good enough?

in some respects it does appear 4870 -> 4890 esque, but the shader tweaking done does seem to give a hell of a boost to tesselation so those minor tweaks imo will have a big payout once dx11 becomes the norm. so while it may not be a big change for this gen, the tweakign they've done here may pave the way for a few gens down the line to be able to handle anything the game throws at them without slowing down.

not to mention the fact that the overall performance of the gpu seems to indicate that caymen will offer a nice boost over cypress which to me is enough.

 

[EastCoasthandle]

Here is an update to the different types of AA. Apparently, there is another type of AA called Directional localized AA. It's suppose to be used in The Force Unleashed II. Can anyone who has the game with a 6800 series confirm this or not?

Side Note:
Both MLAA and DLAA are used by consoles (as MSAA is simply to costly) and they do look better than MSAA as DLAA and MLAA targets more edges than MSAA. I'm beginning to wonder if MSAA is reaching end of life for those alternates or considered old hat? MSAA will probably will always be used but I wonder if MSAA will become the new alternate for the others over time?

 

[the54thvoid]

In some respects, I look at it like the 4870 > 4890 (but this is a lot more than that with this release) and that took even longer, lot's of people said then "it's just a refresh" but hey, the end product was a damn nice card IMO, people are only dissapointed because they expect too much in the first place, rarely has there been two major architectural breakthrough's by the same company in a year to be honest and I see no reason to beleive this will change significantly, it normally takes 18 months to 2 years to see something that significant...... the "refreshes" simply give the company that bit of extra time and breathing space to get the real new stuff sorted...... just my thoughts.

I just really dont know what some expect.... damn two HD6850's in crossfire faster than a 480 or 5970 (or as fast as) for half the price (of the 5970).... is this not good enough?

I agree so much i want your apes red waistcoat.

This is a tweak of a card, nothing more. The 69xx cards offer more in the way of change, allegedly so we'll see what they can do at the end of the month.

But until both companies move to 28nm, not much is really all that new.

 

[dir_d]

DLAA looks the same as MLAA to the untrained eye (my eye)...They both look like a form of blurring technique.

 

[Benetanegia]

Here is an update to the different types of AA. Apparently, there is another type of AA called Directional localized AA. It's suppose to be used in The Force Unleashed II. Can anyone who has the game with a 6800 series confirm this or not?

Side Note:
Both MLAA and DLAA are used by consoles (as MSAA is simply to costly) and they do look better than MSAA as DLAA and MLAA targets more edges than MSAA. I'm beginning to wonder if MSAA is reaching end of life for those alternates or considered old hat? MSAA will probably will always be used but I wonder if MSAA will become the new alternate for the others over time?

Personally I don't like MLAA, because it blurs almost everything which means that many textures are blurred when they shouldn't be and it also produces some artifacts on some places. For example, in this image from your thread:

Look at that lamp post on the lower left corner. Instead of smoothing the edges out, MLAA has interpreted the edges as actual geometry and has enhanced them instead of making them dissapear. There's also the fact that MLAA and DLAA seem to work against anisotropic filtering, it's somethin that I've seen in most pictures. All the pictures around the net are showing the same problems so far and for me they are something that deters me from using it. I have never liked CSAA or CFAA for the exact same reason. MSAA + alpha textures is IMO still the best all around AA method by far, but I use SSAA whenever posible. Of course in cases where MSAA and SSAA is not posible, MLAA is probably better than no AA, but that's not even true in all cases: I've seen some comparisons at high resolutions where the picture without AA looked better to me, because MLAA was blurring out every detail in the scene indiscriminately and was actually changing the real shape of geometry.

MLAA is a good promise for the future, but it needs A LOT of work before I can even consider it as an alternative to MSAA.

EDIT: I have to thank you for pointing out that MLAA or similar techniques are used on consoles. Now I finally know why the hell console games look so freaking blurred and look like crap and washed out. Blurring things out at 1920x1200 is one thing (an acceptable compromise), but blurring out a picture that has actually been rendered at 720p or less, just to get it blurred again by the upscaling to 1080p is a whole different thing...

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

and if crysis 2 is as poorly coded as the first then it will bring the best cards to their knees

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showpost.php?p=1985506&postcount=35

 

[10TaTioN]

World's first RADEON 6850 to hit over 1ghz core speed

http://www.kitguru.net/components/g...50-black-edition-review-1ghz-world-exclusive/

 

[DanishDevil]

Quick initial impressions of my 6870:

A little loud (compared to a GTX 460) but I can run Mafia II with AA on, which I could not do with my 460. Haven't delved into the different AA types yet, though.