ATI Radeon HD 6000 series released!

[SaviorSelf]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...arts,2776.html

More important than all of those points put together, though, the Radeon HD 6800-series lowers the buy-in for very powerful graphics cards. Last week, the cheapest GeForce GTX 460 you could find was $220—the Radeon HD 6850 offers performance in the same league for an MSRP of $179.99. Not very long ago, the Radeon HD 5850 was priced at $300—and enthusiasts were happy to pay that much! Now, the Radeon HD 6870 ups the ante a little for the low price of $240.

Hurray for price drops on older stuff and that the newer cards are comparable and cheaper!

[Bloodfire]

I got an email today about these cards. Opinions anyone?

[Khalil]

My retail computer store got about 5-6 quantities of the Sapphire 6870 and they sold like hotcakes!

[Isiolia]

I got an email today about these cards. Opinions anyone?

I ordered a 6870 as part of my new machine, so I'll have hands-on experience with one next week. To me, they seem like they'll be worthy successors to the 4850/4870, in terms of price/performance, which the 5000 series didn't really have - 5700s were generally lesser performers for more money, and the 5800s were far more expensive.

[alt]

Tom's review on them:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...arts,2776.html

But enough speculation. The bottom line is that the new Radeon HD 6800-series refreshes excellent performance. It also introduces a handful of notable features at lower prices that what we were seeing previously. It’s hard to complain about that. To misquote the bard, “Now go we in content!”

[SaviorSelf]

Tom's review on them:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...arts,2776.html

Not even reading the OP: priceless

[Shojin]

6870 is basically better than the GTX 460, but worse than the 5870. AMD seem content on confusing consumers, the 6870 is no longer high end, and the "replacement" for the 5870 is going to be the 6970 which comes out around December and that will be their flagship high-end card, and i guess 6990 will be their dual-GPU card. As of right now, the GTX 480 is still the most powerful single GPU card out, we'll see if that changes come December.

[Bloodfire]

6870 is basically better than the GTX 460, but worse than the 5870. AMD seem content on confusing consumers, the 6870 is no longer high end, and the "replacement" for the 5870 is going to be the 6970 which comes out around December and that will be their flagship high-end card, and i guess 6990 will be their dual-GPU card. As of right now, the GTX 480 is still the most powerful single GPU card out, we'll see if that changes come December.

Can you provide a comparison as to why you feel the GTX 480 is as good as you say it is? I have considered buying one but wanna make sure it's worth the time and money.

[Shojin]

Can you provide a comparison as to why you feel the GTX 480 is as good as you say it is? I have considered buying one but wanna make sure it's worth the time and money.

Just go around and look at benchmarks, the only thing that can beat it in some games is the 5970, but that technically is a dual GPU card, not a single like the GTX 480. 2 GTX 480 in SLI would completely destroy a 5970 but you're looking at like $1k on just the graphics cards, plus GTX 480's run hot and use a fair amount of power. You should wait until December for the 6970 and see how that stacks up against Nvidia, chances are good that it'll be stronger, not to mention GTX 480 prices might drop a little then to compete.

Here's a bunch on GAF:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost...90&postcount=1

[Bloodfire]

wooo, awesome card, I even saw someone use quad SLI with it, which is insane to me, but damn it's expensive. That can be a deal breaker for me since I don't hardcore game on PC.

[Akucaen]

Also don't forget that nvidia leaked the GTX580, which should be coming out soon.

[Eldoras]

I still like the ATI boards given their performance per dollar value has always been magic! I "want" one of the new ones too but heaven knows I'm flat broke building my desktop for FF14 but hey it runs nicely w/ crossfire though The only sh*t I'd have to add is "F-U" to my co~worker who said a 500watt power supply is all I need and a cheapo from Best Buy would be all I need. Johnny Guru wouldn't approve of that sh*t and neither would I LOL! Now all I need to see is something like a true-12V rail in PSU's and I'll be ready to sh*t bricks.

[Don Katsu]

Also don't forget that nvidia leaked the GTX580, which should be coming out soon.

Of course they did. Anything they can do to try and stay competitive they will. It's not launching till at least late Q1 2011.

[Amastacia]

6870 is basically better than the GTX 460, but worse than the 5870. AMD seem content on confusing consumers, the 6870 is no longer high end, and the "replacement" for the 5870 is going to be the 6970 which comes out around December and that will be their flagship high-end card, and i guess 6990 will be their dual-GPU card. As of right now, the GTX 480 is still the most powerful single GPU card out, we'll see if that changes come December.

Both AMD and nVidia change up their modeling every other week just to fuck with us.

So going forward apparently it's going to be:
x700 - value
x800 - mainstream performance
x900 - high-end performance

Not sure where that's going to leave the dual-GPU line, unless all high-end parts will be dual-GPU. I was under the impression that the 6970 was going to be a single Cayman GPU, and that doesn't leave much room other than a 6990 for a dual Barts or dual Cayman board.

That said, 6850 and 6870 look nice. Hit their price targets on the head with very respectable performance. Nice to see that they didn't lose the touch of building a fully-featured GPU on a die-size constraint. They pulled it off magnificently with the 4000 series, and look like they've done it again.

The best part about the launch has to be the 6850. It aimed right at the GTX460 and kicked it square in the balls. Easily sub-$200 price point, good overclocking headroom (some initial reviews getting 200MHz+ on stock voltage), good CrossFireX performance, and very respectable power draw.

Healthy competition is always a good thing, and the 6800 series makes life excellent for a performance-minded mainstream gamer. It will be interesting to see how nVidia responds. AMD just grabbed the lead on price : performance pretty handily, with a lot more wiggle room to fight a price war to boot.

I'm psyched to see where the 6900 series and 500 series cards will be. My bet is on a similar scenario to the 400 series vs. the 5000 series, with nVidia chips being faster but still costing too much, sucking too much power, and creating too much heat.

Edit: Let's be honest though, things are great right now, but nVidia is on the ropes.

AMD has been consistently out-executing nVidia in the GPU space since the 4000 series. nVidia has put out some decent products, but never a slam-dunk (at least not for long). AMD has been much better at keeping to their release schedule, without putting out stinker products just to release something. Fermi slipped and slipped, and that pushed back its successor. I don't know that nVidia can afford to sit out a round to rein in their release schedule, but I don't know that they can afford to keep giving AMD a serious advantage in time to market in the short term.

AMD and Intel are both releasing CPUs with very decent on-package GPUs in the next calendar year, and there's no reason to doubt that their performance will continue to improve over time, very conceivably to the point where integrated graphics will be sufficient for day-to-day use for most people. Enthusiasts will still want more, so a discrete GPU market will remain, but it will continue to shrink. nVidia has no CPU strategy, and no counter to on-package and eventually on-die GPUs. Plus, their chipset business is dead, further marginalizing the company in the CPU space.

The Ion platform is pretty cool, but the mobile space is incredibly cutthroat and has very slim margins, there's no way nVidia can count on that business to keep the company afloat.

nVidia is betting big on GPU compute and there are undeniably some cool applications for the technology, but I highly doubt the situation there is as rosy as nVidia portrays it to be. TAM (total addressable market) is an easy term to throw around, but just because you can sell someone a product doesn't mean they're going to buy it.

The writing's been on the wall for a while, and while it's great that nVidia is soldiering on and continuing to design and sell good products, it's really only a matter of time before they go the way of 3DFX and the dodo.

[Don Katsu]

Right now there are two GREAT values

6870 $239
470 $259


If you can't afford that
6850 $179
GTX 460 $179
5850 $199

Otherwise the 5870 ($299) is overpriced by about $20-30 and the GTX480 ($449) is overpriced by $100 but they can charge that because both cards are the fastest single cpu solution from both companies.

[Denchi]

I enjoy my 5770.....can run MW2, WoW, SC2 all on the highest settings!!!

.....but srsly, do people still shell out 1000 bucks for 8xAA?

[Shojin]

I enjoy my 5770.....can run MW2, WoW, SC2 all on the highest settings!!!

.....but srsly, do people still shell out 1000 bucks for 8xAA?

People have been paying and still are paying $1000+ on 250gb/500gb SSD drives, you'd be surprised at how much money people throw at this kind of shit. SLI/Crossfired high-end cards are not uncommon anymore these days.