AMD Radeon HD 6850 & HD 6870 Launch Review - PAGE 1

Last week AMD treated the press to an event that highlighted their commitment to Fusion processing, open source software and how they work with their partners to improve computing on nearly every level. This all proved very impressive and left us excited about AMD’s future APU’s and hardware acceleration, however the real stars of the show were AMD's new graphics cards: the Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 (which utilize the new enhanced hardware acceleration technologies). These new cards are AMD's second generation DX11 products and as such come with a host of new technologies to improve tessellation performance over the HD 5000 series graphics cards.

The launch of the HD 6800 series is a departure from the ordinary, as graphics cards manufacturers usually release the top of the line products first and then cover their bases by moving on to the mid-range and finally low-end product launches. AMD this time chose to launch their mid-range graphics cards first, followed by the release of their higher-end Cayman Architecture later this year. With the 6800 series, AMD is targeting mainstream markets so we are not going to see ground shattering performance that would put NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 480 cards to shame. However, releasing a graphics card into the mainstream first is not necessarily a bad thing as cards in this price range sell at a much higher volume than those for the enthusiast market, giving AMD a stronger product to pit against against the NVIDIA GTX 460 and other Fermi based graphics cards.

Also adding to the confusion is that AMD has decided to change the naming scheme to the 6000 series product from what what has been used throughout the previous generations. Essentially, the names have just shifted and now the mid-range cards fit into the 6800 series and the high-end products will be released under the 6900 series. Honestly it was a confusing at first, but after using the new scheme for a week now I have found it to be so similar to the old scheme that transitioning over was very easy.

Being a mid-range launch, these cards will not command the $400-$500 premium of the high-end products and will instead sell at more affordable pricing. According to AMD, the suggested retail pricing for the HD 6850 is set at $179 and the HD 6870 will sell for $239.  With these price tags, AMD is looking to offer Cypress level performance for in the mainstream market.

A new launch is always an exciting prospect and I can’t wait to get these cards into our test system and see exactly what AMD has delivered. We will be testing both the AMD HD 6850 and HD 6870 in this review, as well as an overclocked version of the HD 6870 from Diamond. Also, since we had some extra time between the cards arrival and the launch, we will even include CrossFire numbers with the HD 6870 and HD 6850 running together.