AMD Radeon HD 6870 And 6850: Is Barts A Step Forward?

Power, Temperature, And Noise Benchmarks

The power usage numbers don't present any particular surprises, although we would have expected lower idle power from the new Radeon HD 6800-series cards. The Fermi-based GeForces are known to be power-hungry, and the results are no surprise. Note that the Radeon HD 5830 reference card we have on hand uses a Radeon HD 5870 PCB; this may account for the relatively high power usage.

GPU temperatures are fairly close across these products. Keep in mind that the GeForce cards we test here do not use the reference coolers.

The Radeon HD 6870 generates more noise than we would have expected, but the non-reference GeForce GTX 470 manages to out-do it. The rest of these cards were a pleasure to live with under load.

  • SteelCity1981
    Yeah I agree. I don't get AMD's marketing on the 6000 series. One would think that the 6870 would obv performan better then the 5870 at first glance but instead it yelds less performance then the 5870. That just doesn't make any sense from a consumor standpoint.
    Reply
  • TheRockMonsi
    I like where AMD is going with the 6000 series, not so much with naming, but pretty much everything else about it. Can't wait for the 6900's, those are going to be beasts!!!!!
    Reply
  • Randomacts
    Its here.....
    Reply
  • Poisoner
    I think AMD did a great job with these cards. Its just sick at what performance you can get for 200 bucks.
    Reply
  • Super review. but i think HD6850 is faster than 1gb gtx 460....
    Reply
  • duk3
    Nice benchmark suite!
    I am looking forward to the 6900 series and 22nm gpus later on for some real performance improvements.
    Reply
  • takeapieandrun
    Not exactly powerhouses, but I do believe they will be great for market competition.
    Reply
  • agnickolov
    This is what happens when a company is left with no competition for so long...
    Reply
  • forces
    nice but... where is Crysis!!!? they can play Crysis i know but how well can they play it? everyone has Crysis and have played Crysis and will play it... :(, its a nice game to compare perfomance...
    Reply
  • rottingsheep
    6850 vs 1gb 460. i would pick 460 because it overclocks a lot better
    Reply