Review – AMD Radeon HD 6850: Same Technology, Lower Price

AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series

The Radeon HD 6000 series is AMD’s second-generation DirectX 11 graphics chip lineup. Unlike the previous HD 5870 and HD 5850 flagships that were targeted at the high end market by the time of launch, both the HD 6870 and 6850 are intended for the mainstream audience. However, these two HD 6000 series cards are by no means less interesting. We’ve seen what the HD 6870 is capable of, but what about its “smaller” cousin, the HD 6850? In the table below, you can see where the HD 6850 is positioned in terms of technical prowess compared to AMD’s other offerings.

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	960
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

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 movie contents in 3D visuals. 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 and 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, enabling the graphics card to output various contents in 3D display mode, 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 allows 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.