Having both the 5700 and a new 6700 series on the market at the same time would be confusing. First, the Radeon 5700 series will continue to be produced and sold for some time, occupying the sub-$150 price bracket.
So why the confusing 6800-series moniker, rather than calling these cards the 67? The naming makes sense when you consider three things. What’s more, you’ll still be able to buy 5800-series graphics cards for a while, as they occupy shelves alongside less-expensive 6800-series cards. Usually, cards of a new generation in the same series are faster, not slower, than their predecessors. The 6870 will be slower than the 5870, and the 6850 will be slower than the 5850. If all that is Greek to you, here’s the takeaway: On paper, the new Radeon HD 6850 looks as though it’s going to be a lot faster than the 5770, and the 6870 will nearly equal the performance of somewhat more expensive 5850.Īt first, the naming of these new Barts-based graphics cards seemed odd to us.
Though there are fewer shader units and texture units, the clock speeds are a lot higher, so actual performance isn’t too negatively affected. The GPU still has a full 256-bit memory interface and 32 render back-ends. For comparison, we’ll include the specs of the less expensive Radeon HD 5770, which is based on the Juniper GPU of the Evergreen family.Ī quick glance at the numbers shows that the new cards use a GPU that is roughly 30 percent smaller than the Cypress GPU found in the Radeon HD 58, and 50 percent larger than the Juniper GPU found in the 5770. The Barts GPU is smaller than Cypress, and is manufactured by TSMC using its 40nm process technology, but it delivers excellent performance. The new chips use a GPU code-named Barts (the first in the Northern Islands family). The main chip architecture is a modified and enhanced version of what we saw in the Radeon HD 58, which used a GPU code-named Cypress (part of the Evergreen family). They’re quite energy-efficient, too.īefore we dig into the new features that these cards offer, let’s take a look at the specs. The leap in performance offered by these cards is often the difference between being able to play games at full settings and having to reduce resolution or detail levels to keep things running smoothly. The architecture is based on last year’s Radeon HD 5800 graphics cards, but the HD 6800 cards also incorporatea host of optimizations such as improved tessellation performance, better video decoding, and more-robust display output options. It appears as though the Radeon HD 6800 cards are set to be the best performers at their respective prices by a considerable margin. If you want great game performance but don’t want to spend too much money, you look for a graphics card in the $150 to $250 range. With the release of the Radeon HD 6850 and Radeon HD 6870 graphics cards, AMD delivers fantastic value for the average PC gamer.
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