AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series Specifications Leaked

[HTC]

I never trust the benchmarks from the actual manufactures, because for some reason their own cards always seem to come out on top..

Still waiting for some benchmarks and reviews of these cards..

True that.

Personally, i don't care who wins or who loses: i just want a card that uses low power (idle), is quiet, runs @ low temps (stock cooler) and has performance, in that order.

When i bought this card, nVidia didn't use as low power as ATI and was way hotter, which is why i went with ATI instead of nVidia but i would have gone the other way if tables were reversed.


What i do care, however, is if ATI gets a big lead on nVidia because that will put ATI in Intel's position: to be able to sell their products @ much higher prices (compared to now).

If ATI passes nVidia by a bit, that's fine. If ATI trails nVidia by a bit, that's fine too. If either company gets a big gap against the other, that's BAD ... BAD, i tell you ...

 

[EastCoasthandle]

Never stated they were perfect iether but you will be hard pressed to find anyone syaing they have never had an issue with ATI crads and drivers, where as the vast majority of Nvidia users have never had 1 problem. Personally I run both, and the quality of Nvidia drivers trump AMD in every way. Not to mention the CCC is a bunch of jumbled garbage and forces needless menu navigation.

Really, not 1 problem? I guess you were unaware of the stuttering/latency issues, etc when the 460 was released that many complained about. There are other threads in other forums that discussed this but I thought 2 would be enough.

Now that's out the way neither are better than the other as both do have their problems from time to time. However, with AMD including better AF and MLAA from CCC I can't see why that wouldn't be note worthy additions. That would suggestion they are trying to make some improvements on the driver front (regarding added functionality). As for stability we will have to see as time goes on after the 6800 series release.

Edit:
Oh, btw, Cat 10.10 will be released this week. So lets start with that,

 

[N3M3515]

You mean like this one where they claimed HD5870 would befaster than GTX295?

http://i25.tinypic.com/2emg9zs.jpg

Yeah, comparing both slides doesn't do a favor to the HD6870.

For some reason i still believe a stock 6870 will be faster in every game(or like 80%) at every resolution(from 1680*1050) than a stock GTX 460 1GB, just like 5850 is right now....
And that percentage will increase due to tessellation adjustments.

Bottom line:
* 5850 IS 8.5% faster (in the resolutions that MATTER) than a stock GTX 460. source: source
* 5850 HAS 20% better performance per watt than GTX 460 1GB. source: source
* 6870 will be slightly faster than 5850
* 6870 will have 2x tessellation performance than a 5850
* 6870 will have better performance per watt than a 5850
* 6870 IS cheaper to produce than a 5850 (in case nvidia lowers the price of the GTX460, amd won't have a problem lowering price to stay competitive)

So, 5850 is faster than GTX460, 6870 will be faster than 5850 = 6870>5850>GTX460
According to this an overclocked GTX460 is 6% faster than a stock 5850 and 13% if further overclocked, that's where things get interesting.
Then, a stock GTX460 1GB will be no match for a stock 6870.
A regular overclocked GTX 460 1GB will be equal in terms of performance with a stock 6870 (my guess).
Further overclocking the GTX460 1GB will make it some 7% - 8% faster than a stock 6870.
How much can be the 6870 be overclocked ??? of that i have no idea.

 

[[H]@RD5TUFF]

Really, not 1 problem? I guess you were unaware of the stuttering/latency issues, etc when the 460 was released that many complained about. There are other threads in other forums that discussed this but I thought 2 would be enough.

Now that's out the way neither are better than the other as both do have their problems from time to time. However, with AMD including better AF and MLAA from CCC I can't see why that wouldn't be note worthy additions. That would suggestion they are trying to make some improvements on the driver front (regarding added functionality). As for stability we will have to see as time goes on after the 6800 series release.

Edit:
Oh, btw, Cat 10.10 will be released this week. So lets start with that,

Fanboy = fail

AMD = more problems

Why is it more people complain about AMD drivers than Nvidia drivers when Nvidia has a larger market share?

 

[CDdude55]

Why is it more people complain about AMD drivers than Nvidia drivers when Nvidia has a larger market share?

Because the majority doesn't do what we the minority do, the programs and games we run can be largely affect by the kind of drivers we run and how well they are coded. The majority isn't going to see a difference in how fast their email opens by switching to new drivers, so they aren't affected.

 

[btarunr]

Fanboy = fail

AMD = more problems

Why is it more people complain about AMD drivers than Nvidia drivers when Nvidia has a larger market share?

Heineken has a larger market share than Sam Adams, that doesn't change the fact that Heineken is pissier. Market share is hardly ever an argument if you're talking product quality.

 

[a_ump]

um....AMD has more marketshare than Nvidia now. Thought that was understood lol been like this since 2010 Q1

http://xtreview.com/addcomment-id-13179-view-AMD-graphic-market-share-higher-than-NVIDIA.html

 

[HXL492]

Better than the 5850 but 25% less silicon?

OH noes the silicon reserves are running out!

 

[f22a4bandit]

If it works just as good, or better, with better efficiency then I'm all for it. Looking forward to possibly buying a new card to replace my 4850.

 

[btarunr]

Better than the 5850 but 25% less silicon?

OH noes the silicon reserves are running out!

Lesser die-area = lesser costs = lesser price.

 

[bear jesus]

I'm intrigued by the multi-stream transport hub in the last slide, does that mean a mst hub connected to the card via a display port 1.2 port means you can connect up all the monitors for eyefinity with either display port, vga, dvi or hdmi and have only a single cable running out from the card?

If that's right and actually works well it would make choosing monitors for an eyefinity setup much easyer, although the price of the hub may be silly just like the active display port converters used to be.

From the spec it looks like the 6870 would be a very nice upgrade over my 4870... but i think i will still be waiting for the 6970

 

[wahdangun]

Fanboy = fail

AMD = more problems

Why is it more people complain about AMD drivers than Nvidia drivers when Nvidia has a larger market share?

please don't say other fanboy when you are clearly the fanboy, its doen's matter if it ati or nvdia they have their own driver problem.

so please stop the trolling

 

[Steevo]

I've been running ATI cards since I bought a Saphire 9600XT, and Nvidia since I bought a Asus Geforce 2, so I am familiar with both, and I never had a single issue with my AMD drivers back then where as the Nvidia would BSOD (which turned out to be a poorly soldered capacitor). Yeah I've had 2-3 computers all at once since I was 13. All that said AMD could increase it's market share by a lot if it would just nut up and admit it's drivers are crap, and fix the damn problem, they could make customer service a priority something Nvidia seems to have forgotten about as of late.

2 or 3 whole computers? Really?

I spent almost 70K at newegg in the last year doing builds for work, clients, friends, family..... alot of others here play with tens of thousands of dollars in hardware for their personal rigs.

I have owned every ATI card series except the 2XXX series as it truly was shit. I have owned GeForce cards, and recently helped with a friends 460 upgrade from a older Nvidia card. It works well, but I could hardly navigate their control panel. He likes it, so ace for him, he has only used nvidia and has a perception that they are always better than ATI/AMD in everything. So despite having a better online video upscalling/display, lower power requirement, running cooler, running his games faster, for less money available he chose the more expensive option as it seemed to be a better product.

 

[a_ump]

i guess no body read my post....AMD has the majority of the graphics marketshare now NOT Nvidia

 

[Benetanegia]

For some reason i still believe a stock 6870 will be faster in every game(or like 80%) at every resolution(from 1680*1050) than a stock GTX 460 1GB, just like 5850 is right now....
And that percentage will increase due to tessellation adjustments.

Bottom line:
* 5850 IS 8.5% faster (in the resolutions that MATTER) than a stock GTX 460. source: source
* 5850 HAS 20% better performance per watt than GTX 460 1GB. source: source
* 6850 will be slightly faster than 5850
* 6850 will have 2x tessellation performance than a 5850
* 6850 will have better performance per watt than a 5850
* 6850 IS cheaper to produce than a 5850 (in case nvidia lowers the price of the GTX460, amd won't have a problem lowering price to stay competitive)

So, 5850 is faster than GTX460, 6850 will be faster than 5850 = 6870>5850>GTX460
According to this an overclocked GTX460 is 6% faster than a stock 5850 and 13% if further overclocked, that's where things get interesting.
Then, a stock GTX460 1GB will be no match for a stock 6870.
A regular overclocked GTX 460 1GB will be equal in terms of performance with a stock 6870 (my guess).
Further overclocking the GTX460 1GB will make it some 7% - 8% faster than a stock 6870.
How much can be the 6870 be overclocked ??? of that i have no idea.

I quess you made a typo and when you say HD6850, you mean HD6870, because everything suggests that a HD6850 will NOT be faster than a HD5850, by a long shot.

Comparing the GTX460 to HD6870 is pointless anyway, because Nvidia will not position the GTX460 against HD6870 once it is released. They will release a GTX475 or whatever they call the full blown GF104 card. That card with 15% higher shader count and probably a 10-20% higher clock (750-800 Mhz) will be about 25-40% faster than the GTX460, making it substantially faster, decidedly faster than GTX470 and maybe even faster than HD5870.

It's true that on the $200 bracket AMD will have the clear advantage in perf per cost of manufacturing and perf/die area, but why? Only, because of releasing their $200 card later, they have been able to position their full blown chip against a crippled part. It's the same as when they say that HD6870 is better at perf/die area than HD5850. They are comparing a fully enabled chip against a crippled and underclocked part while boasting the die area of the fully enabled Cypress die. But oh well, that's the same stupid mistake that so many people have always made with HD3870 vs 8800GT, HD4870 vs GTX260, etc etc.

i guess no body read my post....AMD has the majority of the graphics marketshare now NOT Nvidia

I'll wait until numbers are posted, but that's most probably false. In Q2 AMD had 52% market share, true, but I would hardly call that the majority.

No official numbers have been posted that include GTX460 sales, not to mention GTS450 and below cards. Meaning that AMD achieved that 52% with the complete HD5000 family cards vs GF100 + GT240/220 etc. It's nice to see competition and wanting AMD to be ahead is nice and all, but keep it real. Steam Hardware survey makes it very clear that GTX460 has sold A LOT more than any other card. In just 2 months it's user base (DX11) has increased to 5.5% or more than 1/6 of what HD6800 (3 cards conbined) has sold over a complete year.

Not only that but every single AMD card has seen a decline in DX11 share, while every Nvidia card has had an increase, so that clearly suggests that as of late Nvidia is outselling AMD. Also considering that Nvidi still sells DX10 cards, while AMD doesn't anymore.

 

[N3M3515]

I quess you made a typo and when you say HD6850, you mean HD6870, because everything suggests that a HD6850 will NOT be faster than a HD5850, by a long shot.

Comparing the GTX460 to HD6870 is pointless anyway, because Nvidia will not position the GTX460 against HD6870 once it is released. They will release a GTX475 or whatever they call the full blown GF104 card. That card with 15% higher shader count and probably a 10-20% higher clock (750-800 Mhz) will be about 25-40% faster than the GTX460, making it substantially faster, decidedly faster than GTX470 and maybe even faster than HD5870.

It's true that on the $200 bracket AMD will have the clear advantage in perf per cost of manufacturing and perf/die area, but why? Only, because of releasing their $200 card later, they have been able to position their full blown chip against a crippled part. It's the same as when they say that HD6870 is better at perf/die area than HD5850. They are comparing a fully enabled chip against a crippled and underclocked part while boasting the die area of the fully enabled Cypress die. But oh well, that's the same stupid mistake that so many people have always made with HD3870 vs 8800GT, HD4870 vs GTX260, etc etc.

http://img.techpowerup.org/101020/DX11.jpg

Yeah, i meant 6870

Anyway if nvidia positions GTX460 1GB at a lower price point, lets say 200 USD, then it would compete with 6850 and beat it, you really think amd would let that happen? no way.

Crippled or not i'm comparing price points, so that's what matter.

GTX475? not even seen any info on when will be released, not even rumours, so lets stay at now.

Right now amd has the upper hand, that's irrefutable, like nvidia had it whe released GTX 460, talking about mainstream.

When GTX475 is near release, then we can talk about it. (maybe when it happens, cayman will be out too, so the argument goes on and on...)

At the end we win if prices go down, so lets hope nvidia does what you say and put GTX460 at 200USD, that would be awesome.

EDIT: there is one at 210 USD woot! here

 

[pantherx12]

Bitch bitch bitch, both have issues clearly, I've only ever had problems with nvidia cards, do I assume all of their cards have problems ?

No.

I probably had hardware conflicts.


Such a stupid argument to have.

If the cards work for you who gives a crap, if they didn't work for you don't assume all cards are going to be the same.

 

[bear jesus]

In Q2 AMD had 52% market share, true, but I would hardly call that the majority.

ma·jor·i·ty
1.
the greater part or number; the number larger than half the total


But you are right about what the numbers include, the fact that the higher selling cards (lower priced) are not included means a lot, but it is also very hard to accuratly list market share with gpu's as its constantly changing so fast with new products and people upgrading between companys.
Some of that 52% could have just been waiting for cards like the 460 or people with low end ati gpu's could have been waiting for the 450, i geuss in a way we will never know for sure unless one company really pulls away from the other again in market share.

Bitch bitch bitch, both have issues clearly, I've only ever had problems with nvidia cards, do I assume all of their cards have problems ?

No.

I probably had hardware conflicts.


Such a stupid argument to have.

If the cards work for you who gives a crap, if they didn't work for you don't assume all cards are going to be the same.

Damn straight

 

[N3M3515]

you now what would be great? if 6850 is 97% of a GTX460 1GB in performance xD

 

[Benetanegia]

Yeah, i meant 6870

Anyway if nvidia positions GTX460 1GB at a lower price point, lets say 200 USD, then it would compete with 6850 and beat it, you really think amd would let that happen? no way.

Crippled or not i'm comparing price points, so that's what matter.

GTX475? not even seen any info on when will be released, not even rumours, so lets stay at now.

Right now amd has the upper hand, that's irrefutable, like nvidia had it whe released GTX 460, talking about mainstream.

When GTX475 is near release, then we can talk about it. (maybe when it happens, cayman will be out too, so the argument goes on and on...)

At the end we win if prices go down, so lets hope nvidia does what you say and put GTX460 at 200USD, that would be awesome.

EDIT: there is one at 210 USD woot! here

Yeah, I already said that AMD has the upper hand in that segment, because Barts was specifically designed for that segment. GF104 was designed to compete/be close to Cypress or GTX470 (maybe not deliberately), but they have only released it in a heavily crippled fashion so that it does not eat on GTX470 sales (let's avoid the discussion about if that makes sense or not, for whatever reason it does make sense for them. maybe because of higher "justifiable" ASP?). Now that Barts will make GTX470 almost obsolete and that they have probably cleared GF100 inventories, I'm sure they will release the full chip. Rumor mill says that Nvidia has a warehouse full of "something" awaiting its time for release, "something" being cards of unknown nature and those are probably the GTX475.

The reason that you have heard nothing tangible about the card yet is that Nvidia probably prefers to let it be that way until they have to release it, which is what happened with G92. If you remember the release of G92, the paralellism with GF104 is amazing. Back then Nvidia released the crippled part firts, so that it didn't eat up on 8800 GTX sales and many people thought that Nvidia could not make the fully enabled part and also the mere existence of the 8800 GTS was nothing more than rumors, almost confirmed rumors, but rumors after all. And that's exactly what happens today with GF104 IMO. Back then AMD didn't have anything to compete (here ends te parallelism), whereas now it's Nvidia who will have to compete, but the reason for secretism is the same.

ma·jor·i·ty
1.
the greater part or number; the number larger than half the total

Yeah correct. My mistake. I was going by the main meaning in Spain, whose translation is "most".

 

[N3M3515]

Yeah, I already said that AMD has the upper hand in that segment, because Barts was specifically designed for that segment. GF104 was designed to compete/be close to Cypress or GTX470 (maybe not deliberately), but they have only released it in a heavily crippled fashion so that it does not eat on GTX470 sales (let's avoid the discussion about if that makes sense or not, for whatever reason it does make sense for them. maybe because of higher "justifiable" ASP?). Now that Barts will make GTX470 almost obsolete and that they have probably cleared GF100 inventories, I'm sure they will release the full chip. There's rumors mill says that Nvidia has a warehouse full of "something" awaiting its time for release, "something" being cards of unknown nature and those are probably the GTX475.

The reason that you have heard nothing tangible about the card yet is that Nvidia probably prefers to let it be that way until they have to release it, which is what happened with G92. If you remember the release of G92, the paralellism with GF104 is amazing. Back then Nvidia released the crippled part firts, so that it didn't eat up on 8800 GTX sales and many people thought that Nvidia could not make the fully enabled part and also the mere existence of the 8800 GTS was nothing more than rumors, almost confirmed rumors, but rumors after all. And that's exactly what happens today with GF104 IMO. Back then AMD didn't have anything to compete (here ends te parallelism), whereas now it's Nvidia who will have to compete, but the reason for secretism is the same.

Lets hope you're right for our sakes lol
I want 5850 perf at 199 USD yay!

 

[TAViX]

So this is actually the equivalent of the next gen 57xx series??

 

[MikeX]

So this is actually the equivalent of the next gen 57xx series??

the die design is different with less silicone. Shaders are more efficient too. And yea these are like 5850s trying to performing a near gtx480

 

[Mr McC]

Yeah correct. My mistake. I was going by the main meaning in Spain, whose translation is "most".

"Mayoría" and "mayor parte" also mean the majority, I don't understand where the confusion arose.

 

[bear jesus]

"Mayoría" and "mayor parte" also mean the majority, I don't understand where the confusion arose.

I think it was just me being pedantic about the definition, with being such a small percentage into the majority it hardly seams that way to most unless the term is used with the exact meaning.

Back on topic though, we won't know the real ingame speeds untill friday so to me most of this is just talking to pass the time untill the reviews arrive.