HIS AMD Radeon HD 6870 1GB – Our First Review

The Radeon HD 5000 series gave ATI a 6-month lead over the competition, during which they only saw little challenge from everyone else. When NVIDIA released its own DirectX 11 capable GPUs, things get a bit tougher. Now, ATI a.k.a AMD has returned with a brand new product and strategy. The Radeon HD 6800 series that we received represents the first wave of second-generation DirectX 11 graphics cards from AMD.

AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series

AMD used a slightly different approach for the launch of their second-generation DirectX 11 graphics chips. Unlike the high-end Radeon HD 5870 and HD 5850 that shocked the world when they arrived around a year ago, the Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 –AMD’s first second-gen Dx11 chips- are both targeted at the mainstream market. There could be a little confusion here, but the products intended to replace the previous HD 5800 flagships should be the HD 6900 series, due to be released somewhere in Q4 2010. Nevertheless, judging from the technical specs, this mainstream duo should still pack quite a punch. Let’s see what they got inside.

Specification

	AMD Radeon HD 6870	AMD Radeon HD 6850	AMD Radeon HD 5870	AMD Radeon HD 5850
Codename	Barts XT	Barts Pro	Cypress XT	Cypress Pro
Fabrication Process	40 nm	40 nm	40 nm	40 nm
Transistors	1.7 Billion	1.7 Billion	2.15 Billion	2.15 Billion
Die Size	225 mm2	225 mm2	334 mm2	334 mm2
Core Clock	900 MHz	775 MHz	850 MHz	725 MHz
Stream Processors	1120	960	1600	1440
Texture Units	56	48	80	72
ROPs	32	32	32	32
Memory Type	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5
Memory Size	1024 MB	1024 MB	1024 MB	1024 MB
Memory Clock (effective)	4200 MHz	4000 MHz	4800 MHz	4000 MHz
Memory Interface	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit
DirectX Version	11	11	11	11
Shader Model	5	5	5	5
Power Connectors	2x 6-pin	6-pin	8-pin + 6-pin	2x 6-pin
Min Recommended Power Supply	500 Watt	500 Watt	500 Watt	500 Watt
Bus Support	PCIe 2.1 x16	PCIe 2.1 x16	PCIe 2.1 x16	PCIe 2.1 x16

The GPUs on both AMD Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 are codenamed “Barts” (we’re not sure if it has anything to do with that popular cartoon character). Contrary to previous rumors suggesting that AMD would be stepping ahead to 32nm fabrication, the Radeon HD 6800 series is still manufactured using the now-matured 40nm process. It appears that such move was motivated by a necessity to avoid production failures that may be caused by a newer fabrication technique. As for the next generation of chips, it seems like they will go straight to 28nm fabrication, skipping 32nm altogether.

Features

• AMD HD3D – This is one of the new features, first introduced in the AMD HD 6000 series of graphics chips. It allows the corresponding graphics card to display games and movies in 3D. The new Catalyst 10.10 driver enables Blu-ray 3D support exclusively on the Radeon HD 6000 series.
• UVD 3 – The UVD (Unified Video Decoder), is a feature that moves out video decoding processes from the processor to the graphics card, thus removing some significant weight off the CPU, leaving it with enough processing power to carry out other operations. In UVD 2, the decoder supports VC-1, H.264, dan MPEG-2 (IDCT Profile) formats, while in UVD 3, some additional formats, including Multi-View Codec (Blu-ray 3D), MPEG-2, MPEG-4 part 2 (XviD/DivX), are also supported.
• HDMI 1.4a – The HDMI port on AMD Radeon HD 6800 series has been improved to version 1.4a, allowing the graphics card to display various 3D contents, such as Blu-ray 3D.
• AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) Technology – This particular feature isn’t exactly new. It’s previously known as ATI Stream and enables the graphics card to execute non-gaming tasks, such as video encoding and the likes.
• Display Port 1.2 – This latest version of the Display Port offers wider bandwidth and the capability to channel the display to 3 different monitors simultaneously. Therefore, you can use up to six monitors by utilizing the two display port available on Radeon HD 6000 series graphics cards.