AMD Radeon 6 series

Details are coming out about the new cards.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3987/a...

It does seem like more of a refinement and rebalancing of the cards they offer, rather than pushing forwards for higher and higher performance levels, at least with the initial new cards. The current 5770 is being rebranded to 6770, and the 5850/5870 are end-of-line to be replaced by the 6850/6870.

One interesting thing I picked up on at SemiAccurate:

On a more positive note, there is a new anti-aliasing (AA) mode in the 6000 series cards called Morphological Anti-Aliasing (MOO). Instead of the traditional AA modes, MOO is more of a post-processing step. After a scene is rendered, MOO goes over it and looks for edges, and takes out jaggies.

Because of this, it should work everywhere, on any game, or even with non-game software. Even if a competitor decides to lock ATI out of AA modes and put contractual wording in their brib^h^h^h^h paperwork to prevent a company from doing the right thing, MOO should work.

It seems a nice way to short-circuit any silly dealings like was (allegedly) seen with Nvidia exclusive anti-aliasing on Batman:AA. There seems to be a emphasis on better image quality with these cards too, I'm not sure if that's rectifying shortcomings in previous cards though.

I couldn't find the part in the article where it said they were rebranding the 5770 as the 6770?

What i saw was that the new lines are slower than the 5800 line but they'll (supposedly) drop in price very quickly and that AMD plan on continuing to sell the 5700 series separately.

[edit]
So what is effectively happening is that AMD are able to put out new cards at lower price points but keep their prices high on the existing cards.... if it works, i think it'll pay off in dividends for them.

To be honest i think both companies are crazy - AMD for releasing a new line with a higher number listing that is slower than the lower number listing and having them run side by side..... and NVidia for pushing non-standardised overclocking.

I'm glad i'm not in the market this generation because there's a lot of confusion going around and not that much reason to want to get 'the latest' thing.

[edit] Had written 5000 instead of 5700.

Duoae wrote:

I'm glad i'm not in the market this generation because there's a lot of confusion going around and not that much reason to want to get 'the latest' thing.

To be fair, I think it's been the case for ages that they want to confuse you into the hardware you buy. You need to do research which kind of stinks.

As far as the 'latest greatest' thing, it's a problem for them as they're tied to the software market that creates demand for upgrades, which at the moment is mostly leading on consoles. If you were to get a card to play at 1280x720 and at comparable detail levels, you would be looking several generations ago.

I think it makes sense given the competition and current state of the market. There just isn't a whole lot going on at the high end anymore to justify $500 video cards. It looks like this market is very much a reactive market with each company trying to jockey for price and performance in the $200 and sub market. It does appear the 6870 is a whole lot of card for the money as is the 6850. I also really like the idea that AMD is trying to reduce power and heat/noise

It seems they put out new set of cards that are more energy efficient while model number compared, are same or worse as the previous model.
What!?
IMAGE(http://media.bestofmicro.com/D/E/266162/original/unigine%20heaven%20noTess.png)

6850 rates lower than 5850. by quite a bit. while the 6870 is slightly better than the 5850, no mention of the 5870 in that chart...why?

I'm pissed at them for f*cking up their naming scheme. Idiots.

tl;dr version of reviews: these are midrange cards, and very unexciting.

So I guess I'll wait till they come out, wait for the 5000 series price drop and get the 5870 like i planned to. lol.
I wonder how the 6870 compares to the 5870.
Assination!
why didnt they do that comparison!!??

It seems we are on a transition phase. From bit-tech:

A New Naming Scheme
Unlike previous launches, the HD 6000-series opens with the mid-range Barts Pro and Barts XT GPU pairing, despite the historically high-end name. While the HD 5800 was a high-end GPU, and HD 5900 denoted a dual-GPU card, the HD 6850 1GB and HD 6870 1GB are pitched at around £150 and £200 respectively. There will be a HD 6900 card in a month’s time, based around a faster GPU, with a dual-GPU HD 6900 also planned.

Hopefully you’ve stayed with us, and not headed straight off to the forums to flame ATI’s marketing team – we say this because the new naming scheme does make sense, once you accept the situation that ATI was in. The crux of the problem was that TSMC, ATI’s fabrication partner, couldn’t deliver the 32nm manufacturing process that ATI had been betting on. As the smaller process would have allowed ATI to decrease the cost per GPU die (while also potentially allowing higher clock speeds and lower power consumption), it couldn’t deliver a Barts GPU at the £100 to £130 price point it would have wanted.

This means that the new 6800 series doesn't equate to "5800 series, but with more power". The 5800 series still incorporates the most powerful single GPU line from AMD. The 6800 are new 150$-250$ options, which is something I'm really interested. However, they have saturated that price range with many options.

5870 is included in these benchmark tests.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...

And the 5870 is outperforming most of the cards, not including the 470.

sweet.

We'll see if the prices drop. fingers crossed.

OK, it looks pretty balanced.
The 5870 still out performs most of the other cards in FPS tests. I guess they didnt include it due to the price point except in the FPS tests.

groan wrote:

It seems they put out new set of cards that are more energy efficient while model number compared, are same or worse as the previous model.
What!?
IMAGE(http://media.bestofmicro.com/D/E/266162/original/unigine%20heaven%20noTess.png)

6850 rates lower than 5850. by quite a bit. while the 6870 is slightly better than the 5850, no mention of the 5870 in that chart...why?

Not quite. Looking at the graph you see that the overall performance of the 6850 is probably better because it has a higher minimum fps than the 5850 (27 compared with 21) while the average fps is lowered by 4.

Looks more likely that the 6850, while less capable of punching out higher numbers, keeps minimum fps (which tend to be more important) higher than the previous generation. 4 less Avr fps isn't really a big deal whereas the difference between dropping to ~30fps during a segment of a game compared to ~20 fps is a big difference in playability terms.

[edit]
I wonder how much weight 3DMark gives to high fps numbers as opposed to average and minimum?

groan wrote:

OK, it looks pretty balanced.
The 5870 still out performs most of the other cards in FPS tests. I guess they didnt include it due to the price point except in the FPS tests.

Yeah, i've been looking at the rest of the tests though and they show a different picture.

I guess that's what you get when you cherry pick one example

So, yeah, i wouldn't get a 6850 over a 5850 if money was no object.

If money was no object, I wouldn't get a computer for entertainment.

That's good analysis, Duoae, thanks. Minimum FPS is indeed important.

I think I've seen people refer to studies saying that people don't really notice the average framerate so much as they notice changes in framerates, so if you're fluid one second and dropping down drastically every other second then it's a problem. It seems to be as much a software problem as hardware, as you do get games that haven't sorted themselves out and stutter like crazy when they want to load something or something complex happens.

Malor wrote:

That's good analysis, Duoae, thanks. Minimum FPS is indeed important.

It's just unfortunate for groan that in many of the other tests over at tomshardware, the minimum fps for the 5850 beats that of the 6850. :D

oMonarca wrote:

If money was no object, I wouldn't get a computer for entertainment.

Yeah, but you're from Portugal though...

j/k!!

Heheh, I was joking also.

Although, if money really wasn't object, I would play the most dangerous game of all.

Naming conventions aside.. and honestly there is no reason to get worked up about names.. since its all so meaningless.. I would assume at some part we will see a higher end 6800 series..or even a 6900 that will ultimately replace the 5870/5900. So perhaps a 6890 that replaces the 5870's and a 6900 that replaces the 5900.

TheGameguru wrote:

or even a 6900 that will ultimately replace the 5870/5900.

I think that's where they're going.

The 6950 was mentioned in both articles. The.... why don't i just post it?

IMAGE(http://images.anandtech.com/doci/3987/Sweet-Spot.jpg)

The Barts are the mid range parts, though they look a little more expensive than mid-range usually is, and Cayman will be the 6900 series. The only problem with the new naming convention is there's no space to bring in improved or doubled (x2) parts during the mid-cycle of this gen... though i suppose they could go back to using x2 again though they appeared to have shied away from that nonmenclature.

Duoae wrote:
groan wrote:

OK, it looks pretty balanced.
The 5870 still out performs most of the other cards in FPS tests. I guess they didnt include it due to the price point except in the FPS tests.

Yeah, i've been looking at the rest of the tests though and they show a different picture.

I guess that's what you get when you cherry pick one example

So, yeah, i wouldn't get a 6850 over a 5850 if money was no object.

Ya, i noted after i posted that one image that the 5870 was a huge over-performer over the other cards in the other tests. That and I still don't fully understand what all the terms/numbers/tests are. I just know that faster is usually better, and that in most cases, except temperature and noise, that the larger the number the better

I'm still leaning towards the 5870 in my build simply because of the performance. Of course I could wait till the 6900's come out and see how they do compared to the 5870, but I fear my impatience will get the best of me and my wallet will explode.

What do you think when you see this?
6850 in crossfire looks pretty sweet.
source

IMAGE(http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/1659/42001385.png)

Why no 5870 in Crossfire in that chart? but yeah the 6850 in Crossfire looks like an unbeatable combo/deal

edit

What's up with the GTX480? These numbers seem odd..

TheGameguru wrote:

Why no 5870 in Crossfire in that chart? but yeah the 6850 in Crossfire looks like an unbeatable combo/deal

edit

What's up with the GTX480? These numbers seem odd..

The review on techspot.com has GTX 480 and a 5970 numbers for comparison. The 5970 is fairly similar to 5870 Crossfire performance.

IMO that performance chart from tweaktown is not a good indication of real world performance. It takes into account synthetic benchmarks. Also, I don't see an explanation as to how they combine their numbers... for example, do they weigh every benchmark equally? From what it sounds like, they simply add up all the numbers. For example (my numbers are very made up): 5000 3dmark score + 150 fps in LFD2 + 60 fps Crysis = 5210 performance score. Anyways, I don't like this chart at all.

That being said, the crossfire performance looks really really good on these cards... approaching the scaling quality of nVidia.

And the 6850 is so cheap! Xfiring them is far tooa ffordable!
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...

I still don't like Crossfire or SLI very much. I think you're mostly better off with a single-card solution if possible.

Malor wrote:

I still don't like Crossfire or SLI very much. I think you're mostly better off with a single-card solution if possible.

I would agree at lower resolutions.. for 1920X1200 and above you pretty much should just plan on SLI/Crossfire if you want eye candy at max details with newer titles.. I'm debating swapping out my mobo and going with a 3rd 5870 if the newer 6890/6900 don't end up being significantly faster to upgrade from 2 5870's for my main system.

I love my 460 GTX's but I can't imagine gaming with them in SLI on anything higher than 1920X1200 they struggle at that resolution with the newer games especially once you flip 3D on.

edit.. I'm also tempted to go triple 3D monitor setup soon.. and for my main PC 3 30" LCD's and try some uber resolutions.

groan wrote:

And the 6850 is so cheap! Xfiring them is far tooa ffordable!
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...

That's actually not super impressive after Nvidia dropped prices on the GTX460. The 768mb cards are down in the $160 range and the 1GB cards are down to $200 even.

Based on those benchmarks a pair of either in SLI will outperform the 6850 in Crossfire.

That said I expect really good numbers from the higher end stuff when it shows up soon though. Looking forward to seeing numbers for the 6900 series cards.

Thin_J wrote:
groan wrote:

And the 6850 is so cheap! Xfiring them is far tooa ffordable!
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...

That's actually not super impressive after Nvidia dropped prices on the GTX460. The 768mb cards are down in the $160 range and the 1GB cards are down to $200 even.

Based on those benchmarks a pair of either in SLI will outperform the 6850 in Crossfire.

That said I expect really good numbers from the higher end stuff when it shows up soon though. Looking forward to seeing numbers for the 6900 series cards.

I dont think the 768MB in SLI at higher resolutions with AA on would do as well as a 6850 in Crossfire simply due to the memory differences.. I dont think the 768MB at $160 when you can get a 6850 for $170 makes any sense...

Still probably getting the GTX460 for mid range SLI and the 5870 for high end crossfire.

The newest beta drivers that enable morphological anti-aliasing on the 6800 cards have been tweaked to work on the 5800 cards too, and it's really quite cool.

Instructions here.

I've been playing around with MLAA in a couple games that don't work very well with regular AA and the results are pretty impressive. Mass Effect 2 (and any other Unreal Engine 3 game, I would assume) really benefits from anti-aliasing but forcing it on through the drivers resulted in a pretty bad framerate on my 5850. Turn on MLAA and I get smooth edges and good performance. Same goes for SC2.

Because the MLAA technique is a post-process effect it does have the unfortunate side effect of anti-aliasing 2d elements like text and HUD so they come out a little blurry.

MLAA also seems to be completely separate from any other forms of AA you may or may not have enabled through the game or drivers, so you can use it separately or on top of other AA. Unfortunately you have to open up the CCC if you want to toggle it off and on for any particular game you want to use it with.

TheGameguru wrote:

I dont think the 768MB in SLI at higher resolutions with AA on would do as well as a 6850 in Crossfire simply due to the memory differences.. I dont think the 768MB at $160 when you can get a 6850 for $170 makes any sense...

True enough about AA on the 768mb cards.

I admit I tend to forget about its effects since I never bother to turn it on.

Still though, I'm much more excited about the 6900 stuff than I am at this point about the 6850 or 6870. The naming scheme made the buildup to the release and then the post release benchmarks really confusing and a little disappointing.