Here are the press-shots given to us by AMD, of the Radeon HD 6000 series graphics cards, in their reference design. The Radeon HD 6870 was pictured from one angle much earlier, but this new deck of pictures show you the card from other angles. There is also the first set of pictures of the Radeon HD 6850 with its premium blower-type cooler. Partners can opt for this design, or choose a more cost-effective cooler design which isn't much more than a fan-heatsink over the GPU, probably heatsinks over the memory/VRM, and an egg-shaped cooler shroud. Past history has shown that when presented with two reference design cooler options, most AIB partners have chosen the cheaper one, for obvious reasons.

The styling looks a little carried forward from the HD 5000 series (black and red), only this time, the streaks of red-lines are on the top and rear-end of the card, not its obverse side (which now has a flame sticker). The sticker design around the fan intake is suggestive of an "eye", keeping up with the theme for this series and a trio of new "Eye" features the Radeon HD 6000 series will carry, one of them being next-generation Eyefinity. The Radeon HD 6800 draws power from two 6-pin power inputs, while the HD 6850 makes do with just one. Another important feature-change evident from these pictures is that the 6800 lacks support for 3-way and 4-way CrossFireX, there's only one CFI finger.More pictures follow.Finally, the branding. AMD is positioning this performance SKU as the Radeon HD 6800 series, even when its GPU is intended to be a generational evolution over the "Juniper" Radeon HD 5700 series products, for three reasons we can think of:

• Radeon HD 6800 series is too fast to sell at the price points HD 5700 series sells, so it warrants a slightly higher price point
• Selling at those price-points won't go well with the 6700 series brand-identifier, hence HD 6800 series. Instead HD 6800 will fall in the same league which both GPU vendors refer to as the "gamer's sweet-spot", which figuratively is a price range between $199~$249
• AMD wants to consolidate all high-end SKUs into the Radeon HD 6900 series, it's wasteful letting a low-volume, ultra-high end, dual-GPU SKU occupy the whole of it

To put this graphically, we'll cite a slide sourced from ChipHell.