The AMD Radeon HD 6800 series of graphics cards introduced last week sought to bring a new level of performance to the mid-range market. Now we put Sapphire's factory-overclocked edition of the HD 6870 to the test and see how much more value it brings for this reasonable price range:

Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 Review

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There is no substantial performance increase of HD6870 over HD5870. The same, I believe, relates to HD6850 and HD5850. What we see is nothing more than a new core name, implemented "new technologies" which are effective on marketing paper, not on practice, less power consumption (the main achievement) and AMD urge to retire ATI brand.
Sapphire HD6870 is the very same to the Diamond one, which are both nothing else, but the reference cards with different company stickers on card case.
Nothing impressive...

6850<5850<6870<5870

What we have is a core architecture overhaul, uncore enhancements, better crossfire scaling, lower power consumption, and a smaller die size.

For a mid range part this is very impressive, but nothing groundbraking like the 6950/70 will hopefully be. You're expecting a bit much from a mid range part.

If it weren't for fusion AMD likely wouldn't ever retire the brand as it's so recognizable. But if they say "Hey, new AMD processor with ATI graphics integrated" It doesn't make AMD sound like as strong of a brand to the regular joe schmoe as "AMD APU with an AMD cpu and AMD graphics processor". I'm unhappy about the name change but it's completely understandable from a marketing perspective, especially when they're so far behind intel in sales and market share.

As compared to the diamond you're right that it's nothing impressive but it does reaffirm that diamond still makes shittier products than most other ati partners.

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There is no substantial performance increase of HD6870 over HD5870. The same, I believe, relates to HD6850 and HD5850. What we see is nothing more than a new core name, implemented "new technologies" which are effective on marketing paper, not on practice, less power consumption (the main achievement) and AMD urge to retire ATI brand.
Sapphire HD6870 is the very same to the Diamond one, which are both nothing else, but the reference cards with different company stickers on card case.
Nothing impressive...

I thought it was common knowledge by now, but maybe not - HD 68x0 is the successor to HD 57x0, and it is quite a bit faster. It is also faster than nVidia's GTX 460, which is it's main target. The successor to to HD 58x0 will be HD 69x0.

Nice Review! wonder whats headed our way with the new HD3D features, Can't wait to see, and thanks for the contest, got my fingers crossed could use some awesome news !