AMD's New Radeon HD 6870 and 6850 Cards Debut

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AMD's New Radeon HD 6870 and 6850 Cards Debut

Posted by timothy on Thursday October 21, 2010 @05:52PM from the when-last-month's-card-just-won't-do dept.

MojoKid writes "AMD has officially launched their new Radeon HD 6800 series of graphics cards and the company has managed to drive cost and power consumption out of the product, while increasing performance efficiencies in the architecture. The Radeon HD 6870 and Radeon HD 6850 are new midrange cards that offer similar performance to previous generation high-end offerings, but at significantly lower price points and with an enhanced tessellation engine for better support of next generation DX11 game engines. The cards compete well with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 470 and 460 products, besting them in some scenarios but trailing in others. Word is AMD is readying their flagship high-end Radeon 6900 family for release in Q4 as well."

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Oh wow! New graphics cards! by BadAnalogyGuy · 2010-10-21 17:55 · Score: 5, Funny

I can't wait to see these things in the store! Graphics cards are so cool. You can of course play graphics on them, but you can also do cool stuff like encryption and supercomputer type of stuff.
Man, I can't get enough of these graphics cards stories! Oh yeah!
1. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-21 18:12 · Score: 0
  
  You must run an integrated graphics chipset... :P
2. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Gaygirlie · 2010-10-21 18:25 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Not everyone just gets their kicks out of drooling after graphics cards. Like e.g. I've got HD 4800 and still all the games I play run perfectly well at about 60 fps at max. details. There simply is no benefit in buying yet another card.
  But alas, each to their own.
3. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by gizmod · 2010-10-21 18:25 · Score: 1
  
  I do tons of research before I start buying components for a new rig, especially gfx cards. Last time I checked, their erm, pretty expensive. It might be valuable to hear what the ./ crowd has to say about the new shiny x y or z before making final decisions. I read slashdot for the comments mostly anyway. In my opinion this is "News for Nerds, Stuff that matters".
4. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Pseudonym+Authority · 2010-10-21 18:31 · Score: 0, Redundant
  
  You amd bro?
5. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by erroneus · 2010-10-21 18:43 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Sarcasm appreciated. (Really, you should get yourself a sarcasm sign)
  A co-worker has stated on numerous occasions that it is time for hardware makers to go on vacation for at least a year. Software is not catching up with the advances in hardware. Further, these advances are without any need. Nothing runs slowly on yesterday's hottest new thing.
  Microsoft has already updated beyond any need as can be demonstrated by nearly everyone's reluctance to go beyond Windows XP. MS Office demonstrates the same point. No one wants these advancements and upgrades and it has demonstrably harmed Microsoft's image and business model.
  People are now beginning to realize that they don't simply need the newest whatever there is. They didn't need Vista and don't presently need Windows 7 and certainly don't appreciate the option to stay where they are eroded away from them.
  I predict similar doom on hardware makers who insist on charging even more for the next increment in polygon count. We are reaching a point where a new thing is needed. All we are doing now is updating the old things.
6. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by wvmarle · 2010-10-21 18:45 · Score: 1
  
  I'm honestly not sure whether you're serious or not - it could be both.
  Especially as I was thinking "why aren't these stories in the games section?". I mean who uses dedicated graphics cards, other than hardcore gamers, when nowadays all motherboards come with integrated graphics that proved you with more than enough rendering power for normal office work, web browsing and watching videos.
  The only applications I can think of are games (and only the latest and most demanding ones that are not handled well enough by integrated graphics yet), and maybe some specialised CAD or so that require very high resolutions.
  I can also very much imagine that the rest of us start thinking about other uses of that massive graphics computing power that is most of the times lying idle, actually just like most CPUs.
7. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by obarthelemy · 2010-10-21 18:51 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  If you actually RTFAd, would realize this is actually an "efficiency" launch for AMD, with quite lower costs (and prices) for only slightly lower performance.
  Nice rant, though.
  
  --
  The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
8. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Zuriel · 2010-10-21 19:01 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I've got a 4870 and I've been eyeing these cards. Not for performance, but for power consumption. Particularly idle power consumption. I believe the 6870 uses about the same power under full load as my 4870, but 70% less at idle. Should be almost silent when I'm using Firefox and Word.
9. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-21 19:07 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  You must not have played Final Fantasy XIV yet then. :)
  (not that it's actually worth playing...)
10. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by B1oodAnge1 · 2010-10-21 19:08 · Score: 1
  
  Try a decent dedicated card and you'll be amazed at how much better windows 7 runs...
  Certainly the high end cards are not fully utilized unless you are playing games, but a decent mid range card runs circles around integrated graphics in normal everyday applications in my experience.
  
  --
  RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
11. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Krneki · 2010-10-21 19:14 · Score: 1
  
  Not everyone just gets their kicks out of drooling after graphics cards. Like e.g. I've got HD 4800 and still all the games I play run perfectly well at about 60 fps at max. details. There simply is no benefit in buying yet another card.
  But alas, each to their own.
  I have a HD 4850x2 and I don't get enough FPS.
  But since the prices are dropping maybe I can by myself another 4850x2 and CF them together.
  GPU's are lagging behind games right now, not like the Intel CPU, when you o/c them there is no game yet to need all that power.
  
  --
  Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
12. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by wvmarle · 2010-10-21 19:14 · Score: 1
  
  I'm running Linux, not Windows (except XP in VirtualBox for e-banking).
  Makes me wonder why one would need a dedicated graphics card just for an OS. Then the OS is taking up too many resources.
  In line with that: computer hardware has become hundreds if not thousands of times more powerful over the last decade or so. I still have the feeling that the software I'm running is working slower than 10 years ago.
13. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-21 19:16 · Score: 1, Funny
  
  Not everyone just gets their kicks out of drooling after graphics cards.
  What is this, I don't even.
  We're on /.
  This is a place full of geeks and nerds who *should* be slobbering over the most nonsensical bits of hardware that shows up. Saying "Meh, it's just a graphics card" is going against the very essence of /.
  Would you go to a car expo and go "Meh a Ferrari. My Nissan Cube gets me places fine so I don't need that."
  Also FUCK the Cube. That car looks horrible.
14. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Dr_Barnowl · 2010-10-21 19:36 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Meh a Ferrari
  Well... yes.
  I can appreciate the engineering, even be interested in test driving one, but OWNING one? Too much extra cost for too little extra value.
  The same goes for graphics cards ; I have an nVidia GTS8800, which is getting pretty long in the tooth, but it plays most of the games I own pretty reasonably (could be a bit faster on Crysis, I suppose ;-) ), largely because I haven't been buying new games with heavy 3D needs recently.
  Why not? Well, partly because I'm less interested in playing games as I age ; playing with ideas seems to be more interesting. Partly because the games that do appeal to me are increasingly indie titles that don't need much in the way of graphical grunt. And partly because most of the big titles that do need a powerful GPU are marred by either being a total pile of arse, an MMO game for which I don't have the time, or encumbered with such offensive DRM that I'd rather not let the box near my computer.
  A platform only has value so long as it has a killer app - in the case of new GPUs, I don't have a game that I want to play, or a large set of numbers I need to crunch. I'm guessing that some time next year when Deus Ex : Human Revolution comes out, I might feel a small urge to upgrade.
  I'm guessing that Slashdot attracts a substantial proportion of engineers who also see no practical reason for getting a new GPU beyond the "OOh, shiny!" factor, so I'm not surprised to see so many "Meh." responses to this article.
15. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-21 19:38 · Score: 0
  
  It's nice to know that you are happy with your computer. On the other hand, some of actually run CPU-bound tasks. Often. I have access to clusters to off-load very intensive ones to, but I could make good use of some faster CPUs (admittedly, I am not running super-expensive top-of-the-line hardware, but today's top-of-the-line is tomorrow's affordable).
  Captcha: boycotts...
16. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by WaroDaBeast · 2010-10-21 19:41 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Erm... You do realise that games don't scale well past two GPUs, don't you?
  
  --
  "The body may heal, but the mind is not always so resilient." -- Deus Ex: Human Revolution
17. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Dr_Barnowl · 2010-10-21 19:44 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  It's because Aero uses composited textures to draw the screen, so it's reliant on GPU performance. Compiz does much the same thing, so Linux can do a similar resource-eating trick.
  Turn off the pretty and Win7 will look a little plainer but run a little snappier. I still do this with WinXP, just because the Fischer-Price theme has really chunky title bars that take up extra screen estate.
  I remember when graphics cards sold on their ability to accelerate 2D drawing operations to make Windows go faster...
18. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Krneki · 2010-10-21 19:52 · Score: 1
  
  Erm... You do realise that games don't scale well past two GPUs, don't you?
  Depends on the drivers, the 4850x2 are so exotic there are virtual no benchmarks in CF mode for modern games. But you can get a used one for 120E now, hopefully will be well under 100E once the 6xxx series comes out. The power consumption and case space might be a problem tho.
  
  --
  Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
19. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Lonewolf666 · 2010-10-21 20:13 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  According to Wikipedia, both use about 150W under full load. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_AMD_graphics_processing_units for a comparison table.
  But at the same time, the 6870 is of course faster. So if you don't need the extra performance, what about a 6850?
  Should still be an upgrade in performance, have at least the same power advantage as the 6870 at idle, and uses only 127W under load.
  
  --
  C - the footgun of programming languages
20. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by _Sprocket_ · 2010-10-21 20:16 · Score: 1
  
  Man, I can't get enough of these graphics cards stories! Oh yeah!
  Just because you're not interested, it doesn't mean someone else isn't. It's like you were driving your car down a highway and you see an exit for a road that's not on your route. You might not care about that exit. But for someone who needs gas at the station on that intersection, that exit is very well timed. That doesn't mean you need to take the exit either. Unless you're just curious and you want to drive around a bit. Then you better fill up anyway because you never know where the next gas station will be.
21. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by GigaplexNZ · 2010-10-21 20:30 · Score: 1
  
  Try a decent dedicated card and you'll be amazed at how much better windows 7 runs...
  I run Windows 7 on both my Intel powered laptop and my ATI powered desktop. The dedicated graphics does nothing for Windows 7 that the Intel one can't do just as well.
22. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-21 20:40 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  A little snappier!? You ever logged the number of WM_PAINT messages to the client windows when using different compositor? Aero doesn't need to send as many re-paint messages since it knows that the HWND haven't been touched, so it can just blit whatever is cached in the texture. THAT is way more efficient than application re-generating the image just because you expose a few pixels of a window, you see, applications rarely respect the RECT parameter of WMP message.
  The "wasteful" part of Aero is that it does blend, which means not-so-good use of the GPU's *internal* memory bandwidth, since it's read-modify-write instead of just write. But this doesn't tax the main CPU, so in my point of view NOT using the GPU is wasting it. The hardware is there, let it do something for ya'. It drains battery faster? That's a good concern.. let's focus on that more; the snappier argument won't fly.
23. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-21 20:49 · Score: 0
  
  Would you rather have yet another story about some new stupid iPhony "app"? Seems that half of the stuff on /. these days is in some way related to Crapple. (Wasn't this supposed to be news for nerds, not news for hipsters?)
24. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by uuddlrlrab · 2010-10-21 20:52 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, it would be interesting to see what the dotslash crowd has to say. Wonder if it'd be anything similar to what the /. crowd has to say.
  
  --
  Odi profanum vulgus et arceo
25. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-21 21:04 · Score: 1, Funny
  
  Microsoft has already updated beyond any need as can be demonstrated by nearly everyone's reluctance to go beyond Windows XP. MS Office demonstrates the same point.
  So then are you saying that you are satisfied with Microsoft's products? To quote a commercial I saw recently: "Really?"
26. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-21 21:08 · Score: 0, Redundant
  
  could be a bit faster on Crysis, I suppose ;-)
  
  When will this joke ever die?
  A little while after Duke Nukem Forever comes out!
  *rimshot*
  Thank you, thank you, I'll be here until Duke Nukem Forever comes out!
  *rimshot*
  Thank you, thank you, I'll be here until Duke Nukem Forever comes out!
  *rimshot*
  Thank you, thank you, I'll be here until Duke Nukem Forever comes out!
  Ad nauseum (as if you weren't nauseous already)
27. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by dimeglio · 2010-10-21 22:04 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  So you don't buy games, don't use high-end graphic cards and don't particularly see the benefits of improved performance and lower power consumption (and cost), yet admire the engineering. Congratulations, you're now an adult.
  
  --
  Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
28. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by ultranova · 2010-10-21 22:31 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Further, these advances are without any need. Nothing runs slowly on yesterday's hottest new thing.
  
  Pov-Ray runs slow on today's hottest new thing. So do various physics simulators. And just try to run a physics simulator and AI on a same machine (to do robot research without having to build actual robots)! In fact, even Dwarf Fortress, and ASCII game, still slows down occasionally!
  Simply because you use a modern computer as a glorified typewriter doesn't mean that we all do.
  
  --
  Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
29. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-21 22:42 · Score: 0
  
  I'm just like you, I still have a GeForce 8800 GTS with 384MB memory. It runs most games very well, even Starcraft 2. I hardly see much difference between medium and ultra quality(I can only see the difference clearly with still images side by side). Medium quality is good enough and the game still has plenty of atmosphere. I might upgrade for Deux Ex: Human Revolutions when it comes, but only if it is a good game and there is a huge difference between the PC and console version.
30. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-21 22:55 · Score: 0
  
  meh. I am an engineer that solves problems. If a GPU solves that problem faster for only a few hundred dollars more, I am going to get it.
31. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by antifoidulus · 2010-10-21 22:59 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  I dunno, the ./ crowd seems to follow me wherever I go. It's almost like they represent my current location.
  
  --
  Monstar L
32. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Pojut · 2010-10-21 23:43 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  From what I read at [H]ard|OCP today, the 6850 is an upgrade for a 5830 and below, while a 6870 is an upgrade for a 5850 and below.
  source.
  
  --
  Living With a Nerd
33. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by hedwards · 2010-10-21 23:51 · Score: 1
  
  And yet OpenSUSE seems to do just fine with an integrated graphics card and moderate graphic effects. Just because MS screws it up doesn't mean that you can't have something that's pretty and snappy.
34. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by hairyfeet · 2010-10-22 00:27 · Score: 1
  
  Hell I'm running an HD4650 and for games like Bioshock II, Wolfenstein, etc it cranks out the pretty as nicely as my 1600x900 max screen size will show. The sweet spot in monitors is 1600x900, and it just don't take nearly as much ooomph to drive a screen at those resolutions. Regardless I'll probably be picking either one of these or the 5xxx series come Feb when I put the liquid cooler in my PC, so I'm all for these new releases as they always cause some seriously nice chips to drop below $100, which is MY sweet spot for GPUs. Go AMD!
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
35. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by FreonTrip · 2010-10-22 00:28 · Score: 1
  
  For everyday desktop usage, that may be true. I'd wager that the Radeon is non-trivially better for DirectX Video Acceleration.
36. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by AmiMoJo · 2010-10-22 00:40 · Score: 1
  
  The 6000 series cards offer little or no performance gain over the 5000s, and are in fact slower in some games. They are really just a refinement of the 5000s rather than an upgrade. They use less power and cost less to produce while giving similar performance in most games.
  I am waiting for some computing benchmarks like Folding@Home and WPA cracking. The 6000s have fewer stream processors (hence lower cost, with the performance made up by architectural changes and improved algorithms) so I have a feeling they might be significantly slower than 5000 series cards for that kind of thing.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
37. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by GigaplexNZ · 2010-10-22 00:43 · Score: 1
  
  The Intel one plays 1080p H.264 with no issues. CPU usage is higher, but unless you're watching task manager while watching your movies you'd never know.
  It's an Intel GMA 4500MDH vs an ATI HD 5670 for those that are interested.
38. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Lonewolf666 · 2010-10-22 00:59 · Score: 1
  
  Well, I was responding to Zuriel who considered one as replacement for his "too noisy in idle" 4870, but said he is happy with the performance.
  So the 6850 would be suitable for him. Even the 5770 might work for reducing idle noise while keeping the performance level of the 4870 (but I'd prefer the 6850 over the 5770).
  
  --
  C - the footgun of programming languages
39. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by gid · 2010-10-22 01:28 · Score: 1
  
  I picked up a 5770 a while ago, nice card and pretty quiet. My first ATI^H^H&^HAMD card actually. I mostly had to upgrade so I could drive this bigger monitor. The deciding factor in my case was what card would work with my current PSU... All NVIDIA cards were power hungry, so it kind of made it a no brainer.
  Although there is one rather annoying bug, which admittedly hasn't showed up in quite a while. Every once in a while the mouse cursor would get all corrupted when shown on my secondary display--making it rather difficult to tell where the arrow is supposed to be pointing. Disabling and Re-enabling the the secondary display fixes it, or rebooting does as well.
  At any rate, AMD cards definitely give more bang for the buck at the moment. And I'm a sucker for lower power/quieter cards.
40. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by T.E.D. · 2010-10-22 02:14 · Score: 1
  
  Try playing the just-released Civilization V without a DX11 card, and you'll be signing this tune for real. I have a pretty good non-DX11 card, and its painful (for a frigging turn-based strategy game!). Pretty much every PC gamer is going to need one of these cards the next time they buy a new game.
  Right now the cheapest decent DX11 cards are Nvidia's 960 series, which tend to go for $200 or so. Perhaps that's no big deal to some, but I have a family to support, so $200 is kinda painful. I've been eagerly awaiting the release of these mid-range AMD cards because the competition is guaranteed to drop the prices for the NVidia cards too.
  So this is really big news for myself and just about any other PC gamer whose last name isn't "Rockafeller".
41. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by T.E.D. · 2010-10-22 02:18 · Score: 1
  
  Oops. Meant NVidia 460. Doh!
42. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by SirMasterboy · 2010-10-22 02:25 · Score: 1
  
  That's great it works for you, but not everyone jsut plays old games. Any new game will bring a 4870 to its knees at the highest detail settings.
  Just check out the benchmarks if you don't believe me:
  http://www.anandtech.com/show/3987/amds-radeon-6870-6850-renewing-competition-in-the-midrange-market/6
  The 4850 is in a few tests, but you can look at the 5770 for the rest, it's quite close to the 4870.
  Also, keep in mind a lot of gamers play in 1920x1200 and now 1920x1080, but even in 1680x1050, the 4870 or 5770 fails to exceed 30-40fps average in any recently game.
  I've got a GTX480 and at 1920x1200 4xAA, it can be brought under 60fps in the newest games which is why some gamers have 2 of them in SLi.
43. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by SirMasterboy · 2010-10-22 02:29 · Score: 1
  
  One game that comes to mind is Starcraft 2. Even my 4.2Ghz Core i7 930 drops down to 30-40fps in games where there are several hundreds of units on the screen at once. It's not my GPU, thats a 480GTX and its under 50% utilization when this CPU bottleneck occurs.
  But other than that, 4Ghz on an i7 is enough to keep any game above 60fps given enough GPU power.
44. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by lymond01 · 2010-10-22 02:42 · Score: 1
  
  Agreed on most points but my old GTS6800 didn't hold up to Dragon Age. So it's upgrade time on March 11.
45. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by fast+turtle · 2010-10-22 02:46 · Score: 1
  
  and yet the new 6xxx series includes more Tesselation Units. This means that games using DX11 and Tesselation become more common, the cards will suffer from fewer performance issues.
  For example, I have a 5670 with 512M onboard, it's an odball card as it's first gen and is in very limited production now. In running the Heaven 2.1 benchmark, the card gained a higher score w/o AA enabled but frame rates went as low as 3.8 while the same test ran with 2x AA gained a lower score showed minimum frame rates of 4.6. As these were real world runs of the Heaven Benchmark, I can understand where people are getting confused because the total score was actually lower with Anti-Aliasing on, yet the minimum frame rates were higher. Which is going to be more important then? IMO it'll be the minimum frame rates as the scores will not be directly comparable between generations. Car Analogy - It's like the performance difference between a 2.4L 4 cylinder and a 2.6L v6 engine. Both may have the same horsepower rating yet the V6 will be slower off the line.
  
  --
  Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
46. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by hairyfeet · 2010-10-22 03:30 · Score: 1
  
  Are you using the driver that came with it, or the latest? Because sometimes it is better to skip the latest for a version or two until they get the bugs ironed out. I had the same kinds of weird little glitches on the 10.3 drivers, so I went back to the 10.1 that came with the GPU until 10.5 rolled out. Currently on the latest and greatest and all is fine except for some weird .NET error that Win7 bitches about in the logs. doesn't actually affect anything so I don't care.
  Personally after bumpgate and Intel rigging the compilers against AMD I dropped Intel + Nvidia from my sales and home and me and my customers couldn't be happier with AMD. As you found out the Nvidia chips have become real space heaters, which I blame on spending so much on the GPGPU side and not enough on the consumer side, and the AMD chips are fast, quiet, and don't heat up my place, so no worries there. One really can't go by the benchmarks anymore since Intel got busted doing a Quack.exe with their compiler, which means ANY app, including benchmarks, compiled with an Intel compiler is suspect. For those that didn't hear Intel was running code in their compilers that looked for "Genuine Intel" in the CPUID, and if it didn't find it was dropping the code to 486 mode even though AMD has had SSE for ages. really dirty underhanded crap. So I switched my shop to AMD only unless the customer specifically asks for Intel or Nvidia, and so far everyone is quite happy. The lower prices and lower cooling bills are just icing on the nice moist cake. Go AMD!
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
47. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by fast+turtle · 2010-10-22 03:30 · Score: 1
  
  If you really want to get into a simple UI go with fluxbox and develop your own theme for it as it's not hard. If I want to simply get things done I use fluxbox as it stays the hell out of my way. Otherwise I'll stick with KDE 3.5.10 as it offers me the features I actually use while staying out of my way as much as possible. Of course I also use Gentoo instead of any of the others - not because of the Ricing Effect but the fact that I decide what Dependencies are installed and how the system is configured instead of someone else making those choices for me.
  
  --
  Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
48. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-22 04:12 · Score: 0
  
  Did you play the last level in the campaign? It nearly fried my 8800 GT card.
49. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by smash · 2010-10-22 04:25 · Score: 1
  
  Real nerds don't ejaculate over incremental improvements to the status quo.
  Which is what we're dealing with here.
  If these were new cards that had some revolutionary new rendering algorithm, then maybe they would be "kicks worthy". As it is, news worthy maybe, but no more so than today's weather. Useful to know, but nothing to get excited over.
  
  --
  I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
50. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by smash · 2010-10-22 04:26 · Score: 1
  
  My 8800 runs dragon age just fine :)
  
  --
  I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
51. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-22 04:28 · Score: 0
  
  Erm, you sure these new cards can play Crysis with full quality at high resolution? :P
52. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by G00F · 2010-10-22 04:38 · Score: 1
  
  I'm actually quite disappointed in the newer power requirements.
  I bought a 4670 not long ago because of power. With a max 59, compared to anything faster at 150-300, they should be embarrassed.
  
  --
  The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
53. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Omestes · 2010-10-22 05:38 · Score: 1
  
  GPU's are lagging behind games right now, not like the Intel CPU, when you o/c them there is no game yet to need all that power.
  I don't see this. I have an older video card (somewhere in the ATI 4600 series) and haven't really noticed any issues with modern games. I haven't bought a game in a long time where I felt prompted to go out and buy a new card. Sure, I could probably squeeze and extra couple FPS out of games with a better card, but I find 40-50 FPS to be perfectly acceptable. Yes, new cards support new technologies, but often these technologies are used as an optional gimmick in one or two games, but never really hit the mass market.
  PC games are now ported console games, for the most part, and are developed accordingly. As long as you have a GPU a generation better than whatever is in the Xbox or PS3, your going to be generally fine.
  But then again I've moved past the "I need to get 80 FPS with all the settings on their highest" phase of my life. The benefit doesn't outweigh the cost. Being able to shift from triple A antialiasing to quadruple ++ A antialiasing isn't worth the rather extreme cost jump. Especially for a benefit that I will immediately cease noticing the second I get sucked into the game. That and I generally stopped playing games that really benefit from having the bleeding edge GPU, FPSs. That genre, IMO, is dead, its nothing but "cover/stealth" now, so what the hell does having the best setting matter if your spending your whole time in a dark brown (in a world made of shades of brown, tan, and grey, except for the ridiculous acid-trip Bloom sky) room hiding behind a wall?
  I actually can't think of a game that made of GPU churn, of late.
  
  --
  A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
54. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-22 05:47 · Score: 0
  
  Because the UI in Vista and 7 no longer really touch the CPU at all. It's all offloaded to the GPU so that the CPU is free to handle your work.
  Here is a quick test. Boot into XP, open up a couple of explorer windows and the task manager. Now grab one of those explorer windows and start shaking it around the screen. See how your CPU spikes in task manager? Now try the same thing under Vista or 7 with a GPU and Aero enabled. Notice how the CPU is barely even touched.
55. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Shikaku · 2010-10-22 06:14 · Score: 1
  
  And if that don't work, use more gun er GPU.
56. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-22 06:59 · Score: 0
  
  What if you're doing stuff in the background? I often watch a film while I'm waiting for something to compile or while batch encoding audio. 1080p video *barely* touches my CPU because I have a decent Nvidia GPU. I don't get any video stutter or slowdown of the background tasks.
57. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Lonewolf666 · 2010-10-22 08:02 · Score: 1
  
  "Anything faster at 150-300" is obsolete. According to a review I found at hartware.de, a 5670 with max. 64W will beat the 4670 clearly on performance.
  According to the same site, a 5570 will beat the 4670 on power (max. 39W for the chip) at the expense of being a bit slower overall.
  Sorry for picking a German review site, but they include the previous generation in their comparisons which helps.
  BTW, according to Wikipedia the (future) 6670 is supposed to be a 60W part too. Might be interesting for PCs that are supposed to go easy on the energy consumption.
  
  --
  C - the footgun of programming languages
58. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by damien_kane · 2010-10-22 08:35 · Score: 1
  
  With regards to GFX cards, it's generally just easier to wait for a hand-me-down from a friend.
  I've got friends that get my old gfx cards when I upgrade. Sure, I could post ads on craigslist to get rid of the old card and maybe make enough for a night of drinking, or I could help out a friend who can't realistically afford a newer card.
  I bought a GTX460OC a month ago, the EVGA one listed often in TFAs benchmarks (they were on sale or something, don't quite remember) for increased framerate in FFXIV and SC2.
  My old 9800GTX/OC went to a friend, it was a welcome upgrade from his 8800GT.
  It's really no skin off my back, as he's usually the DD when we go out.
  His 8800GT then went to another friend of ours who was still running a 7300GTX.
  
  Unless you can justify the expense yourself, it's better more often than not to have friends who can, and then just pay it back with favors and such that don't cost money.
59. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by cynyr · 2010-10-22 10:09 · Score: 1
  
  Also the 6850 is a ~9" card, and it is low wattage, making it great for those of use looking to cram some GPU power into 12L of computer case.
  
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  All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
60. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-22 10:13 · Score: 0
  
  OOPs. And Rockefeller
  Actually I stil run with a 4670 (quiet, low powered (no extra power connex) and its good enough. @ .. 1440x900
  Worried to hear about Civ5, as that is the only Game I'll be buying this year maybe Medal of Honor, second hand.
  Might upgrade to win7 also. But new gfx card? No.. SSD or CPU in preference then more Tb's, then maybe a new Gfx card.
61. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by cynyr · 2010-10-22 10:20 · Score: 1
  
  try to find a non GPGPU daily use case to get your card to draw max power. The 4670 doesn't even have a PCIE power connector, nor does it support DX11 or OpenGL3.0.
  Also the 5670 should be a performance upgrade of the 4670, and only uses 2 more watts(at max load, but i hear the 5xxx series uses a lot less than the 4xxx series when idle).
  All of this brought to you by a nvidia linux user.
  
  --
  All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
62. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by cynyr · 2010-10-22 10:22 · Score: 1
  
  SC2 and WoW get CPU starved very fast. WoW is really bad as addons are not given tier own thread, and 4.x.x can only use 3 cores ATM. Simply running every addon/UI element in it's own thread and letting the OS figure out CPU time would allow the game to scale with core much better.
  
  --
  All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
63. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by cynyr · 2010-10-22 10:38 · Score: 1
  
  8800GT or GTS8800? they are different.
  
  --
  All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
64. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by cynyr · 2010-10-22 11:04 · Score: 1
  
  or doing an encode, compile, or BONIC in the background.
  Some of us do that sort of thing you know.
  Yet my 8600GT will happily decode 1080P H264 level 4.1 High profile @ ~2Mbps while ffmpeg is encoding a dvd to h264 at the same time.
  
  --
  All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
65. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by cbhacking · 2010-10-22 11:09 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, if you have any kind of dedicated GPU (it doesn't have a to be a good, a cheap midrange card for $50 or less is fine) turning off Aero will actually harm performance, because it increases the CPU load. It will probably even increase power consumption; you turn off the GPU but must increase CPU clock rate (Windows, like most modern OSes, dynamically scales down the CPU at less-than-peak load).
  I can understand reverting to the classic theme on an aesthetic basis, especially on XP (I happen to like Aero though) but turning *on* desktop composition on anything better than Intel Integrated GMA 950 is probably going to make it run "snappier."
  
  --
  There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
66. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by GigaplexNZ · 2010-10-22 11:38 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, of course a dedicated graphics card will help for that sort of thing. The original post I was replying to claimed that they would help Windows 7 itself and "normal everyday applications" run better, which is just nonsense.
67. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by T.E.D. · 2010-10-22 13:59 · Score: 1
  
  Well it *could* be that things are much better in DirectX 9 mode (which is what you'll have to use if you are still on XP I imagine).
68. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by smash · 2010-10-22 23:31 · Score: 1
  
  8800GTS with 384meg. on a Q6600 @ stock speed.
  
  --
  I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
69. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by AmiMoJo · 2010-10-23 02:37 · Score: 1
  
  Some people get a low end nVidia card to pair with their main fast one so it can be dedicated to physics processing. Even with two fast cards in SLI there is still significant improvement with a dedicated PPU.
  I don't know if you can do the same with an ATI. Probably down to the game to support it.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
70. Re:Oh wow! New graphics cards! by T.E.D. · 2010-10-25 06:01 · Score: 1
  
  OK, I tried it out over the weekend, and playing Civ5 in DX9 mode definitely makes the difference (as attested to by my now bloodshot eyes).
Price by iamhassi · 2010-10-21 18:06 · Score: 1

"The Radeon HD 6870 and Radeon HD 6850 drop in at $239 and $179 MSRP, respectively. "

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my karma will be here long after I'm gone
up to six LCDs by iamhassi · 2010-10-21 18:21 · Score: 4, Insightful

This is what I'm interested in: "....six display controllers offering six TMDS links. This lets users connect up to six displays to as independent display heads, or span display heads across multiple physical displays using the Eyefinity technology. The new HDMI 1.4a connector standard is made use of, which gives you support for stereoscopic 3D standards such as Blu-ray 3D, the two mini-DisplayPort 1.2 connectors support Multi-Stream technology that let you daisy-chain 3 physical displays per connector, letting you wrap up a 6-display Eyefinity array using just those two connectors."

Sounds great! Tired of selling an old monitor to buy a new one that's 2" larger and a few hundred more pixels, much rather just get a second (or third, or fourth, etc) same-sized LCD and double the pixels.

--
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
1. Re:up to six LCDs by wvmarle · 2010-10-21 18:48 · Score: 1
  
  No matter what that A4-sized page still doesn't fit in a readable manner on the monitor(s)...
2. Re:up to six LCDs by iamhassi · 2010-10-21 19:07 · Score: 1
  
  I was a bit concerned by the large variety of ports, could they all work at the same time or was I stuck using buying a not-yet-available DisplayPort Multi-Stream Transport hub?
  
  Seems this image clears that question right up: two monitors are connected to DVI and 4 are connected through a hub, so I see no reason why I can't purchase two cheap DisplayPort to DVI adaptors and have up to four monitors connected by the very common DVI port.
  
  one $180 video card, one PCI-E 16x slot, 4+ LCDs. Sounds good.
  
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  my karma will be here long after I'm gone
3. Re:up to six LCDs by espiesp · 2010-10-21 19:08 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Actually by the time you get into the 22+" size (non-widescreen) you can fix two A4 side-by side at 1:1 ratio. However, this isn't accounting for tool-bars and the like so my preference is a 20-22" non-widescreen or 22+ widescreen, rotated 90". I've used this in Electronic Document Imaging applications, real world, with a lot of seat time and it's a VERY workable solution. Gives plenty of room for a single A4 page with toolbars on top and side.
  The one catch is that some monitors have asymetrical and or narrow vertical viewing angles which with the monitor 90 degrees rotated means that is now your horizontal viewing angle range and in worst case you can't get a clear picture out of both eyes at once. Good monitors don't have this problem and they look identical no matter the orientation.
4. Re:up to six LCDs by wvmarle · 2010-10-21 19:15 · Score: 1
  
  It would be great if my desk is that big... space comes at a premium in this part of the world.
5. Re:up to six LCDs by GigaplexNZ · 2010-10-21 20:34 · Score: 1
  
  Another problem is with subpixel rendering of fonts - the rendering engines are optimised for the pixels in their horizontal configuration and it doesn't quite look right when aligned vertically.
6. Re:up to six LCDs by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-21 22:59 · Score: 0
  
  Go 16:10. One of the reasons it was designed was for two A4s to fit side-by-side,
7. Re:up to six LCDs by Overzeetop · 2010-10-21 23:43 · Score: 1
  
  I'm running three monitors now. A large central, plus two old-school 4:3 20" turned portrait, one on either side. In fact, I'm reading/posting on /. on the right portrait monitor right now. 1200 pixels is wide enough for practically every reading application, so the sides are for web, email, documents, calendar, note taking, task management, etc. My center monitor is for CAD, two page document editing, engineering analysis, and large format PDFs (architectural drawings).
  It _is_ awesome, though when it's warmer in the office, the heat coming off the screens is a bit disconcerting (~300W TTD +/-).
  
  --
  Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
8. Re:up to six LCDs by oji-sama · 2010-10-21 23:48 · Score: 1
  
  Indeed. I tried keeping a monitor in pivot at work, but couldn't stand the rendering of text. And the viewing angles of the monitor weren't too good either, which didn't really help.
  Works somewhat well if used to examine scanned documents though.
  
  --
  It is what it is.
9. Re:up to six LCDs by digitalsushi · 2010-10-22 01:32 · Score: 1
  
  Ok, I'm curious where you are located.
  Also, for about double the cost of the monitor, you can get a nice vesa mount stand that gives you the entire footprint of your desk back. It was one of those purchases that felt very silly and wasteful, to show off... and then ended up being practical and a great use of the money.
  
  --
  slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
10. Re:up to six LCDs by pz · 2010-10-22 08:52 · Score: 1
  
  No matter what that A4-sized page still doesn't fit in a readable manner on the monitor(s)...
  Take a bog-standard, old 1600x1200 LCD monitor (doesn't even have to be an LCD, but they tend to fare better with what I'm about to suggest) and rotate it 90 degrees clockwise. Some mounts allow this, some do not; you may need to purchase a new mount. Then, assuming you have a reasonably modern driver and video card combination, tick the box to accommodate the rotation. Reboot or restart your display manager as indicated.
  Voila, a very nice fit for a single-sheet of A4 or US Letter paper at essentially life-size.
  I have three monitors on my office desk, one of which is always in portrait mode like this specifically for filling out the endless forms demanded by the bureaucracy where I work. Makes life much, much more pleasant.
  
  --
  
  Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
11. Re:up to six LCDs by espiesp · 2010-10-22 14:08 · Score: 1
  
  Keep in mind the quality of the monitor makes a huge difference as well as the display adapter/drivers.
  A cheapy monitor doesn't look right. That is correct. An IPS monitor on the upper end of the spectrum, on something other than intel integrated graphics, in my real world experience, looks the same in either dimension.
  But it doesn't come cheap :-( :-(
12. Re:up to six LCDs by espiesp · 2010-10-22 14:11 · Score: 1
  
  ABSOLUTELY!!!!
  Getting that monitor stand off the desk is such an amazing experience! It's almost better than the jump from CRT to LCD. It really gets rid of clutter.
  Add a couple wall-mount lamps and some wireless peripherals and the desk is ALL yours. No fuss, no Muss.
13. Re:up to six LCDs by Lord+Kestrel · 2010-10-25 10:22 · Score: 1
  
  Kind of late replying, but you won't be able to do what you want unfortunately. Well, you can but it requires the more expensive active DP DVI adapter, not the passive ones you're looking at. The reason is that the video card only has 2 TMDS units, which are needed for DVI. DP doesn't use that piece anymore, which is why they can hang so many monitors off it.
  There were rumors that AMD was going to release some inexpensive ($30 instead of $100) active adaptors, but I don't know if they ever came out.
Does not compute. by Ken_g6 · 2010-10-21 18:27 · Score: 1

These cards don't have nearly the computational ability I'd hoped for. Even the 5800 series is faster! Fermis are definitely faster for my applications, especially for 32-bit integer multiplication.

--
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
1. Re:Does not compute. by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-21 18:31 · Score: 0
  
  They changed the naming scheme, these are supposed to be mid-range parts rather than the high-end card we've come to expect.
  The HD5870's successor will be named HD6950 or something.
2. Re:Does not compute. by thoughtsatthemoment · 2010-10-21 18:31 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  The replacement of 5870 will be the 6900 series, not 6870. This is confusing as the x900 series used to be dual gpu cards, but this time it isn't.
3. Re:Does not compute. by arkhan_jg · 2010-10-21 18:55 · Score: 1
  
  Price wise, at least in sterling, the 6850 is the replacement for for 5830 @ £150 ish, and the 6870 replaces the 5850 @ £200. Mid-range cards with a moderate performance bump (and cooler and thus quieter).
  As already stated, the 6900 series will be the high-end performance cards, though single gpu. Confusing, though not as bad as intel, yet!
  
  --
  Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
4. Re:Does not compute. by arkhan_jg · 2010-10-21 19:06 · Score: 1
  
  Though now I look at the price drops for fermi based nvidia cards; the 460 1GB is @ £150 and beats the 6850 handily, and the 470 @ £200 definitely out performs the 6870 at the same price. So on bang for buck, the fermi's definitely win this round! I imagine the prices will drop for the 68xx series, or they're going to take a bit of a kicking this time round.
  
  --
  Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
5. Re:Does not compute. by Kjella · 2010-10-21 20:33 · Score: 1
  
  There has been exactly one "x900" card and it's the 5970. Historically, the dual cards used to be called X2 like in 4870 X2 but the 5970 wasn't fully a 5870 X2 (would break the ATX spec) so they gave its own name and series. What is worse is that the 5870 is performing better than 6870 and same for 5850 and 6850. The price reduction is nice, but in all honesty they should have been named either as the 6700 series or as 6850 and 6830 respectively.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
6. Re:Does not compute. by AmiMoJo · 2010-10-22 00:48 · Score: 1
  
  It would be interesting to do a price/performance matrix for computational GPUs. At some point it has to be better to start buying more cheaper GPUs instead of one or two expensive ones. The real limit might be the availability of motherboards with multiple PCI-E slots. Even though 16x cards work in 1x slots most of them physically will not accept 16x cards.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
7. Re:Does not compute. by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-22 07:58 · Score: 0
  
  ... The price reduction is nice, but in all honesty they should have been named either as the 6700 series or as 6850 and 6830 respectively.
  The problem is that the 5700 series is going to continue being made while they stop production on the 5800 series. Basically, their reasoning is that the x700 series is for budget $100, the x800 is the sweet spot $200 and x900 is the high end $300+. Evergreen (5800 series) was an anomaly as it was too expensive for an x800 card and they couldn't get a proper $200 card out of their product lines. Yeah, it sucks that 3800 is less than 4800 is less than 5800 is greater than 6800, but at least they are going ahead with a 6900 and not ignoring a 5870 replacement altogether.
8. Re:Does not compute. by cynyr · 2010-10-22 11:15 · Score: 1
  
  there are boards out there with 4 x16 lanes on them for quad SLI.
  
  --
  All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
hmmmm by thatskinnyguy · 2010-10-21 18:44 · Score: 1

I thought AMD was dropping the graphics card line?

--
The game.
1. Re:hmmmm by Surt · 2010-10-21 18:54 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  No, what you probably heard about was that they are dropping the ATI branding of the graphics cards. The cards themselves are alive and well, just AMD branded.
  
  --
  "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
2. Re:hmmmm by Dr.+Hellno · 2010-10-21 18:58 · Score: 1
  
  Nah, they just dropped the name "ATI" from their graphics cards. Previously, they released their graphics cards under the ATI brand, but I believe this release actually marks the retiring of the name.
3. Re:hmmmm by thegarbz · 2010-10-22 02:12 · Score: 1
  
  Think about that one for a moment. AMD spent $5.4bn to acquire a graphics card manufacturer only to drop the graphics card line :-)
Driven Out Costs? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-21 18:51 · Score: 0

cool - they've driven out costs, so like are they free?
1. Re:Driven Out Costs? by Neil+Boekend · 2010-10-21 21:20 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  And they have driven out power consumption! These must be great in netbooks and the sort!
  
  --
  Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
fantastic side effects. by tempest69 · 2010-10-21 18:52 · Score: 1

ok, I do some CUDA code. So watching ATI make Nvidia up their pace rocks... I like crysis for the exact same reason, I find the gameplay a bit dull, but it sure makes people buy primo video..
I don't get it... by GeekHang · 2010-10-21 19:03 · Score: 1

Why would anyone pay full price to upgrade their graphics card for small improvements like the one this provides? I thought I was a nerd but these 'hardcore gamers' take their names seriously.
1. Re:I don't get it... by B1oodAnge1 · 2010-10-21 19:12 · Score: 1
  
  Hardcore gamers aren't buying these.
  
  --
  RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
2. Re:I don't get it... by afidel · 2010-10-21 19:14 · Score: 1
  
  Nobody would, but if you have an older card and want something reasonably quite and low powered that won't break the bank while playing most current games at 1080p and above resolutions then the HD6850 and the GF 460 1GB are probably your best bets. I don't game as much as I once did so my recent upgrade went to an "underpowered" HD 5750, but mostly because it was passively cooled and hence silent not because I saved $50 vs one of those cards.
  
  --
  There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
3. Re:I don't get it... by vistapwns · 2010-10-21 19:22 · Score: 1
  
  | There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  I've seen this sig of yours for years now, am I supposed to reset to 'soap box' each time I read it then? I smell a gimmick...
  
  --
  "...I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease." - Linus Torvalds
4. Re:I don't get it... by Ecuador · 2010-10-21 21:33 · Score: 1
  
  What don't you get? If you have any 2 year old card or a low-end 1 year old card, these cards will give you a big improvement at a price that is considered "mid-range". In fact, thanks to this release you can now get for $180 (HD 6850) a bit better performance than $230 gave you up to 2 days ago (GTX 460 1GB). If you already have a good card, I guess you have to wait for next month's high-end release, but that comes with a price.
  Since it is always about price/perf, all reviews correctly state that this launch was very beneficial to the consumer (look at nVidia's price drops).
  Of course if you are like me and only play Civilization 5 on an otherwise HTPC (it being the only Windows machine in the house), the good ole' HD4650 is fine and will be until you want to e.g. check out a 3D blu-ray in a couple of years when 3D projectors/displays are better priced, which is when you will pick up something like an HD6650 or HD7650 for $50...
  
  --
  Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
5. Re:I don't get it... by PitaBred · 2010-10-22 07:16 · Score: 1
  
  I've got a pair of Radeon 4670's right now. A 6850 would give me a performance boost over those even in CrossFire, and it will be quieter and use less electricity. If I already owned a 5870, there's no way. But not everyone buys everything in the latest generation. Most people skip a generation or three.
  
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  My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
6. Re:I don't get it... by cynyr · 2010-10-22 11:17 · Score: 1
  
  what if i have a 4 year old midrange card you insensitive clod!
  
  --
  All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
Nice card shame about the price. by awjr · 2010-10-21 19:38 · Score: 1

Review is here
And for those who don't want to rtfa, the author did a cost per fps evaluation:
"Somewhat surprisingly, it's the 5850 that trips up being the worst offender here – effectively costing you £5.06 for each frame per second on average across our tests at 1,920 x 1,080.
The new cards, the Radeon 6870 and 6850 meanwhile roll in at £4.35 and £3.86 respectively, which looks pricey compared to the GTX 460's £3.36 per fps."
Personally I was going to hold fire on the purchase of a new machine to see if these cards are worth considering, but I might as well get on with buying it with a GTX 460 configuration.
1. Re:Nice card shame about the price. by iamhassi · 2010-10-21 20:22 · Score: 1
  
  FPS is over-rated. Cards are so fast now days they have to throw everything at them plus the kitchen sink just to get them down to 30fps.
  
  Here's the 5850 still pulling off 23fps at 1920x1200 4x AA 16x Aniso running the newest game possible (released Feb 2010), Aliens vs Predator. I'm a mild gamer and I'm even sure what the 4x AA and 16x Aniso is, does something with making it look nicer, turn them off and the fps improves significantly. If you're like me and you're stuck playing a game released way back in Nov 2009 then enjoy 58fps
  
  I'm more interested in the ability to run half a dozen monitors. That I'll use every day, that 23 or 58fps, maybe a few hours a week.
  
  --
  my karma will be here long after I'm gone
2. Re:Nice card shame about the price. by awjr · 2010-10-21 21:00 · Score: 1
  
  But isn't that the point. This card is aimed at the gamer who wants run 23 or 58fps for 4 hours every day and wants to make an investment that will be good enough for the next 2 years.
  What the new 68 series cards indicate is that they don't cut the mustard or more precisely are expensive for what they do and that there are better cheaper cards out on the market. That is a real shame.
  You are right however. I am particularly interested in is cards capable of running 3 screens.
3. Re:Nice card shame about the price. by Ecuador · 2010-10-21 23:36 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  This seems to be one of the worst reviews out there, looks like it comes directly from the nVidia PR department. The main reason, apart from the benchmark selection and lack of any methodology details, is that it only pits the new cards against an OC card that nVidia strategically priced yesterday and had EVGA send it to the reviewers asking for this to be the AMD competition. Also, I don't see the prices that the article uses, because even the sites that did try out the EVGA card (along with others of course, unlike this site here) stated it is competitive but did not notice a price/perf advantage.
  The point is that while the OC cards vary in price and availability (since the good ones use hand picked GPU's, at their introduced price points the AMD cards have the best price/performance, and absolute performance over the regular 460 versions. In fact, all other reviewers seem to say that even at yesterday's price cuts the regular GTX 460 is a bad buy, while interestingly if you can go to the GTX 470 price that is the only point nVidia now leads.
  Unless in Great Britain there is some weird pricing going on hence the article...
  
  --
  Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
4. Re:Nice card shame about the price. by cheesybagel · 2010-10-22 04:24 · Score: 1
  
  If you are interested in using CUDA for high performance computing, or are a GPU software developer, the GTX 460 is worth it. The AMD development tools suck donkey balls compared to those of NVIDIA. But if you only want the card for gaming or video the GTX 460 isn't worth it.
5. Re:Nice card shame about the price. by Ecuador · 2010-10-22 05:48 · Score: 1
  
  IIRC the GTX 460 is the lowest-end nVidia card that supports FP64, and if that is the case it is definitely the cheapest CUDA development platform for those who are into that.
  Then again, I am personally hoping OpenCL picks up and we get good dev tools and support since it is a much more exciting technology. Compare developing a program to run on a number of specific manufacturer's GPUs, to developing a program to run on a heterogeneous system taking advantage of the specific strengths of available GPUs, CPUs, APUs etc and at the same time does not tie you to a single manufacturer.
  
  --
  Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
6. Re:Nice card shame about the price. by GameboyRMH · 2010-10-22 07:20 · Score: 1
  
  Crysis and Just Cause 2 with the graphics maxed out (at 1080p) can both bring my SLI'd twin GTX 260s down to 30fps at times...
  
  --
  "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
7. Re:Nice card shame about the price. by cheesybagel · 2010-10-22 10:14 · Score: 1
  
  There is a lot more to Fermi than that. It has 64-bit memory addressing, hardware debugging support, L2 cache which can be used as for shared communications between processing threads, ECC support. None of this is particularly important for games rendering, but it is important for other workloads.
Re:Classic Index? by Ezel · 2010-10-21 19:41 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Sorry for the offtopic. Didn't know what I was talking about it seems. I have the classic index but the discussions where messed up.
I unchecked somthing about "Dynamic" under Discussions in the preferences (can't see exactly what since that page now doesn't look the same) and I got slashdot back to the way I wanted.

--
Prosp long and liver.
Power consumption and Gbps vs GB/s by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-21 19:53 · Score: 1

I am at a total loss for understanding when a firm releases a new power effecient graphics card that draws 19 watts of energy continuously when doing absolutely nothing at all. Something is fundementally wrong with the industry here not just AMD.
Also what the hell is with the consistant Gbps vs GB termonology for memory bandwidth throughout the entire article. It is so totally wrong it leaves one to question their own sanity.
"4Gbps data rate or 128GB/s"
This just is not a typo...They use the same terms throughout everywhere even in the fancy graphics.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_rate_units
Gbps = gigabits per second
GB/s = gigabytes per second
How can a lower number of Gbps equal a higher number of GB when each GB is 8 times more than the equivalent Gb?
1. Re:Power consumption and Gbps vs GB/s by XDirtypunkX · 2010-10-21 20:18 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  That's 4Gbps per bus line, apparently. The card has a 256bit bus, which works out at exactly 128GB/s.
2. Re:Power consumption and Gbps vs GB/s by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-22 03:23 · Score: 0
  
  I must say I agree somewhat... Memory bandwidth is all people care about not some esoteric arrangement of arrays of memory chips and controllers which in reality mean nothing to the end user. Bandwidth is huge for determining realitive awesomeness of cards yet this figure is totally absent. How are people supposed to know the difference when the figures (bandwidth and speed) are in the same terms? Memory speeds are ususally conveyed in mhz or requests/operations/transactions per seconds.
3. Re:Power consumption and Gbps vs GB/s by Macman408 · 2010-10-22 04:34 · Score: 1
  
  I am at a total loss for understanding when a firm releases a new power effecient graphics card that draws 19 watts of energy continuously when doing absolutely nothing at all. Something is fundementally wrong with the industry here not just AMD.
  That's actually not bad at all. The problem is that a transistor that's turned "off" is no longer off. As semiconductor manufacturing processes get smaller, transistors become worse and worse at being insulators when off, both through the gate (which, in an ideal MOSFET transistor, never conducts current) and through the junction (in an ideal transistor, it conducts when on, and insulates perfectly when off).
  These days, about 50% or more of a chip's power is lost to leakage - these transistors that are burning power just through their existence. It's a huge problem that has several workarounds, but no solid solution. So far, the best thing you can do is turn part (or all) of the chip off; if you're not doing video decoding, turn off the video decoder (ie literally cut power to that area of the chip). If you're not doing 3D, turn off those areas of the chip. Of course, you turn off power using what? More transistors! So there's still leakage, it's just much less.
  Finally, keep in mind that "idle" != "doing absolutely nothing at all". The graphics card is still in regular communication with both the CPU (giving it commands and data) and video RAM (holding the working data, and everything that's visible on your screen), and sending data to your monitor for it to display. Pixels on a display aren't a set-it-and-forget-it thing; they get continually refreshed. So on a 1440x900 60 Hz screen, the video card is sending about 78 million pixels to the display every second. So not only is it doing something, but the power to various parts of the chip (PCIe interface, memory interface, video output, and anything in between) can't be powered down, meaning there's a leakage penalty too.
Modest price/performance improvement in Germany... by Lonewolf666 · 2010-10-21 20:24 · Score: 1

Looking at the specs, it seems the 6870 might be about equal to the 5850 in performance. Also, power consumption under load is the same.
Looking at the prices at alternate.de, the 6870 is about 10-20% cheaper than the the 5850. So we have a 10-20% improvement in performance/price. Better than nothing, but no spectacular improvement.

--
C - the footgun of programming languages
Where is your sense of adventure? by rts008 · 2010-10-21 21:16 · Score: 1

*start sarcastic attempt at humour*
Oh dude, you NEED one of these cards, like yesterday, man.
I pre-ordered one, stood in line last night, and today am the proud owner of one of these new shiny cards!
I'm just finishing the benchmarks now...wait a second...HAH!
Eleventy gajillion fps in Tuxracer! W00t!
And only for a $buck three-eighty!
*end sarcastic attempt at humour*
All joking aside...
I started my 'gaming' experience[semi-hardcore] around 1999-2000 with a PIII 800mHz w/ 512 MB RAM, and a nVidia TNT2-64(32 MB VRAM) AGP card.
For whatever reason, I had a lot of trouble caused by the gfx card. I switched to an ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 7000(64 MB VRAM) and loved it.
I stuck with that setup for Battlefield 1942, and all of the expansion packs.
I had to upgrade again for Battlefield Vietnam...ATI 9550, 128 MB. When that failed 2 years later[in the meantime, I had went from Win98SE, to a PIV, 3 GHz/2 GB RAM w/Win XP Pro, and dual-booting into GNU/Linux], I replaced it with another ATI 9550 card, only this time with a whopping 256 VRAM!
By now, I had learned the drill.
Think as far ahead with the motherboard/cpu socket/RAM slots and type/expansion slots as your budget allows.
Second priority...the hard drive. %00 GB minimum nowadays.
Fill in the blanks with lower to medium price components-these can be upgraded piecemeal as your finances allow.
ALWAYS look at 'bang for the buck' for all of the above. Here YMMV, depending on your own definition of best 'bang for buck'. Different needs/desires/goals change the definition.
Now I recognise your /. UID when I hit 'preview', you are not a stupid fscker...think it through.
Currently I am running an AMD Athlonx2_64 5200 w/ 4 GB 1066 DDR2 RAM, and an ATI 5670 1 GB VRAM PCIe-16 gfx card, and dual boot Win7_64 Ultimate, and Kubuntu 10.10, and found no unsatisfactory behavior.
Keep in mind though, that I am currently frantically searching my surplus pile for a machine of PII or PIII vintage that will run Win 98SE, has hardware drivers still available, will run Connectix Virtual Game Station(Sony PS1 emulator) and Front Mission 3.
My taste in PC games is old!
Look at the 'minimum required' spec's, look at the 'recommended spec's', then form some sort of comparison/ratio.
That is all I can say, as the vodka is taking over. You know, quit while y...

--
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
1. Re:Where is your sense of adventure? by Lonewolf666 · 2010-10-21 23:52 · Score: 1
  
  Think as far ahead with the motherboard/cpu socket/RAM slots and type/expansion slots as your budget allows.
  Second priority...the hard drive. %00 GB minimum nowadays.
  Fill in the blanks with lower to medium price components-these can be upgraded piecemeal as your finances allow.
  ALWAYS look at 'bang for the buck' for all of the above. Here YMMV, depending on your own definition of best 'bang for buck'. Different needs/desires/goals change the definition.
  Specifically for CPUs, I'd like to add a that a medium price CPU ("medium" defined as half the price of the fastest on the market) often offers more than 80% of the performance of said fastest part.
  In GPU cards, the performance seems a bit more in proportion to the price. But even there, you tend to get more "bang for the buck" if you go for one step below the maximum performance parts. The current AMD release (yes we get back on topic ;-) is a bit special as AMD did not release the high end parts first, despite the 68xx version number.
  These are more like "upper midrange" parts that count as cheaper alternative to the 58xx cards of the previous generation.
  
  --
  C - the footgun of programming languages
2. Re:Where is your sense of adventure? by Omestes · 2010-10-22 06:07 · Score: 1
  
  This is my general buying strategy on all things; always shoot for the high middle. The high end is generally over priced, since your paying some form of status tax. You are absolutely correct when it comes to CPUs, you could spend $2000 for the top of the top, or you could spend $500 for a chip that does around 80% of the same. The cost/quality ratio gets more and more skewed the higher you get, towards cost.
  At the bottom you generally have cheap crap, and get exactly what you pay for.
  The only benefit of buy at the very top is that you don't have to go shopping for awhile, since they generally last longer between upgrades. A benefit often undone by personalities of the type of people who NEED the best of the best damn the cost, since they can't let their CPU/GPU/Whatnot sit long enough to see this benefit, needing an upgrade when there is a new, shiny 400 core processor sitting at the top end, which is, obviously, more shiny than their 399 core CPU. Arbitrary benchmarks prove it!
  The one problem with this is that you could upgrade when you need it, since that same $3000 CPU will cost as much as the $500 one in a year or two. So it is still a strange decision, unless your expecting inflation to REALLY take off.
  I used to have the irrational compulsion to have the best of the best, reguardless of the fact that I'm pretty much paying extra JUST for that distinction, and often the improvements are minimal. The cost thing didn't get to me, the fact that I was on a Sisyphean treadmill did. With computing, there ALWAYS will be a better widget coming out in a month. You will never hit the top and stay there, you need to cough up huge amounts of cash every couple months just to say you have "the best rig money can buy". You "1337" gaming rig with be the standard, run of the mill, rig in a year or so. You need to pay the "cutting edge" tax yearly, for the rest of your life to stay up there. This stuck me as dumb.
  Build a computer that slightly exceeds your current needs. Stick to the middle high end of things, avoid that taunting voice in your head saying "but it has .0001 more GHz, and is only $200 more!" Upgrade judiciously, with an eye towards deals and sales. And only upgrade when there is a feature you need, or you actually start to notice performance degradation.
  I can play any game I want to play at around 40-50fps, with max settings. I don't need anything above my ATI 4600 family GPU right now. The second I find a game that suffers unduly (currently Starcraft 2, but people have problems with much better GPUs right now, so...), then it is time to do some heavy comparison shopping. Same reason why I didn't upgrade to DDR3 when I was building my last computer, no one could tell me that I would notice an actual noticeable performance improvement, so it wasn't worth spending another $300 for.
  
  --
  A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
3. Re:Where is your sense of adventure? by Lonewolf666 · 2010-10-22 07:40 · Score: 1
  
  This is my general buying strategy on all things; always shoot for the high middle. The high end is generally over priced, since your paying some form of status tax. You are absolutely correct when it comes to CPUs, you could spend $2000 for the top of the top, or you could spend $500 for a chip that does around 80% of the same. The cost/quality ratio gets more and more skewed the higher you get, towards cost.
  At the bottom you generally have cheap crap, and get exactly what you pay for.
  Even more importantly, know what you need, where exactly the "cheap crap" is lacking and where it may actually do what you need.
  Since we're on the topic of GPUs, an example from the graphics cards world:
  I would in good conscience recommend an ATI 5450 for an office PC that only needs to display Word (and that only if no suitable mainboard graphics with digital output are available). Of course, this card sucks for gaming, but that does not matter for the office.
  BTW, your ATI 4600 family looks like a good choice to me - if I needed a new graphics card now, I would go for a 5570 which is the current equivalent. With passive cooling of course, I hate the crappy fans many GPU vendors seem to use :-)
  
  --
  C - the footgun of programming languages
Re:Classic Index? by Terrasque · 2010-10-21 21:38 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Just so you don't feel like a complete idiot, the same thing happened to me :)
Also, unchecking "Dynamic" under discussions didn't work for a period after it happened. It just turned itself on again :(
But, its back to the way it should be now!

--
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
I've worked for SGI, ATI, and nVidia by DoofusOfDeath · 2010-10-21 21:48 · Score: 1

I've worked on some of the most cutting-edge GPU designs on the planet, from the low-level software stack down to the design changes needed to accomodate die shrinks. After looking at the HD 6870's design, one thing is clear. It needs more cowbell.
1. Re:I've worked for SGI, ATI, and nVidia by Bitmanhome · 2010-10-22 00:34 · Score: 1
  
  Well, the HDMI port carries audio, so that's pretty easy.
  
  --
  Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
Quick highlights of this 6870 launch by mykos · 2010-10-21 22:22 · Score: 2, Informative

1. This is a midrange; high end parts come next month
2. $239 for the 6870, $180 for the 6850
3. 5870 > 6870 > GTX 470 > 6850 > 5850 > GTX 460
4. Crossfire scaling (for those who are dual-GPU inclined) is around 90%+ in most games
5. Brand-new Anti-Aliasing filter: ATI has invented some edge-smoothing shader that looks incredible in most games and even works where in games that don't have AA or where AA would give a huge performance hit. This "morphological AA" costs almost nothing in framerate.
Not "invented", "implemented" by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-21 23:30 · Score: 1, Informative

ATI hasn't invented MLAA. Intel recently made it popular with a paper, but image-space anti-aliasing techniques have been aroung since at least the early 90s.
Please don't casually use the word "invented".
Status of linux drivers by TheSunborn · 2010-10-21 23:49 · Score: 3, Interesting

Does anyone know what the status of the Linux drivers are(Both open and closed). Do I still have to buy a nvidia card if I hard to use OpenGL with Linux, or did Amd finally release drivers with performance as good as the ones on Windows?
1. Re:Status of linux drivers by armanox · 2010-10-22 01:38 · Score: 1
  
  Guess it's been a few years for you and ATi? Since about the middle of 2007 I haven't had any real issues with ATi's closed source driver. I don't recommend the open source driver for the most recent cards (FGLRX does a much better job).
  
  --
  I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
2. Re:Status of linux drivers by TheSunborn · 2010-10-22 01:42 · Score: 1
  
  That sounds about right. I don't switch graphics card that often :}
  But is the performance for ATI's closed source drivers as good as the windows version? (And can they be installed on Fedora 13 without wasting to many hours)?.
3. Re:Status of linux drivers by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-22 02:35 · Score: 0
  
  For desktop use, open-source drivers beat the official ATI drivers. There are issues with the official drivers where you get screen corruption like leftover letters when scrolling in a browser, and flicker while playing flash video in a window. The open-source drivers show a cleaner image, and are also faster. For OpenGL, wine, games, just get an NVIDIA like everyone else, the framerates with ATI are horrible.
4. Re:Status of linux drivers by armanox · 2010-10-22 03:02 · Score: 1
  
  I haven't noticed too much difference in the Windows vs Linux versions, but I also haven't done a whole lot of gaming on Linux recently. I have a Radeon HD 4550 on an Ubuntu/Windows box and a Radeon HD 3200 on a Fedora/Windows box. I do think that the my last round of updates broke FGLRX on Fedora 13 (I think X upgraded, haven't looked too much into it, will reply again later after checking). Installing the driver has been a simple matter of download, run the installer, startx. I guess I could try some benchmarking of the ATI cards on Linux if you would be interested in some numbers (if you have an idea for a good benchmark for comparing Windows performance to Linux performace let me know).
  
  --
  I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
5. Re:Status of linux drivers by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-22 03:14 · Score: 0
  
  Based on my experience running Ubuntu 10.04 with a Radeon 5770, I would say the proprietary radeon drivers are basically functional. However there is a significant performance gap between windows and linux versions (at least for Starcraft 2) and some bugs that make installation troublesome in some cases.
  I have not used nvidia, so don't know how they compare.
6. Re:Status of linux drivers by rwa2 · 2010-10-22 05:23 · Score: 1
  
  Phoronix is the site that cares about that sort of thing. I can't seem to find their most recent article on Windows vs. Linux closed drivers, but I remember there being one within the last year or so.
  http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=category&item=Display%20Drivers
  (There was still a big gap in 2007)
  All I know is that nVidia is really making a killing on all the Linux graphics clusters for government/defense sims that are replacing all the older SGI and SUN workstations. And it's still even difficult for them sometimes supporting certain API and driver options and wiping out graphics glitches between releases... I can only imagine how much work ATi would have to do to get into that rather lucrative field.
  I want to like ATi, but I got burned big time the last time I bought an ATi Radeon 7500 All-in-Wonder way back when, just prior to the cutoff for their initial closed driver support. Have been pretty happy paying a small premium for nVidia cards and solid Linux support ever since.
7. Re:Status of linux drivers by SheeEttin · 2010-10-22 07:24 · Score: 1
  
  I don't know what the performance is with the proprietary fglrx driver (ATI/AMD stopped supporting my X1600 Pro a while ago), but I think the current status of the open-source driver is "works, but don't expect anything amazing".
  Last I knew about the proprietary driver was that it performed better than the OSS ones, but still not as good as Windows.
  
  For reference: http://wiki.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature and the pages linked to from there.
Drivers stable yet? by Bigbutt · 2010-10-22 00:22 · Score: 1

Honestly, when I can't even keep my 4870's working reliably, why would I bother shelling out any money for these things? Call me when they hire folks who can create a driver set that works without having to purge and upgrade every month or so.
[John]

--
Shit better not happen!
1. Re:Drivers stable yet? by moeluv · 2010-10-22 01:29 · Score: 1
  
  I was having that issue with the newest drivers as well. I found that rolling back to the 10.5 driver version on my 4870 fixed all the stability issues for me.
2. Re:Drivers stable yet? by Bigbutt · 2010-10-22 02:54 · Score: 1
  
  I upgraded to a version 9 set last year I guess and had to roll back to an earlier version 8 because rolling back to the previous version 9 still crashed the system.
  [John]
  
  --
  Shit better not happen!
3. Re:Drivers stable yet? by moeluv · 2010-10-22 06:14 · Score: 1
  
  If you can I would try the version 10.5 drivers then. They have been stable on all my applications. Also you mention running more than one. They do have special downloadable profiles for running on crossfire in certain programs.
4. Re:Drivers stable yet? by Bigbutt · 2010-10-23 09:01 · Score: 1
  
  I just finished installing 10.10 after several crashes yesterday and today. I had to use Drivesweeper to clear out all the ATI cruft but finally got it totally cleared out (this is the "purge" I mentioned before). After installation it all seems to have worked without any issues. We'll see how it goes but I'm a bit happier. StarCraft II specifically will be a good test :)
  Thanks for the heads up though. Appreciate it.
  [John]
  
  --
  Shit better not happen!
5. Re:Drivers stable yet? by Bigbutt · 2010-10-24 02:54 · Score: 1
  
  While Starcraft II worked fine, I just spent the past 20 minutes going through four atikmpag.sys BSOD and one mysterious one where the system just rebooted while coming up.
  Honestly, I'm never buying a video card from AMD again and I'm certainly not recommending one.
  [John]
  
  --
  Shit better not happen!
Wow by MBGMorden · 2010-10-22 01:38 · Score: 1

I know you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, but I was kinda interested when I read that these are now uber-efficient and such. Then I open the article and both are the massive structures that I'm not sure will even clear the hard drive bays in my case, and the 6870 requires not one but TWO dedicated graphics card power leads with a 151W power draw under load.
"Efficient" just don't mean what it used to.

--
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
New AA mode by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-22 01:38 · Score: 0

Forget the haters here, if you're an image quality freak like me, you know there are some games that simply WILL NOT use antialiasing where supersampling is the only possible option, and even then, that doesn't always work. Nvidia doesn't even support SSAA officially (though it can perform it) and performance-wise it will bring almost any card to its knees.
AMD's new Morphological AA sounds awesome, a cure-all for games where AA doesn't work properly. I'll have to see it to believe it though, can't wait to see some more screenshot comparisons.
YukaKun by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-22 03:14 · Score: 0

Just go read Anand's and Tom's reviews also. They're quite better reads.
And these cards are quite nice engineer'ed out. With a lot of new bling bling, I'd say AMD did it's job on this one. Waiting for the 69xx series to come out and see some higher end competition.
Cheers!
Linux by RAMMS+EIN · 2010-10-22 05:51 · Score: 1

But ... does it run Linux?
I mean, I'm sure there will be a driver to use the card under Linux. But can you run Linux on the card?

--
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
sorely disappointed by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-23 00:09 · Score: 0

Although the number of problems in s/w content for multidisplay are still significant, I have been wondering when the unrealistic prices for the samsung md series are going to come down - after all they are just 24" monitors and the stands not significant at all given a 3 monitor system. Bezels are still archaic as vendors and resellers wait to diminish their non-new stocks. This release of midrange cards is entirely disheartening as pressure for the 5970 or the second 5870 prices (to put in my system) will probably mean enjoyment of a multimonitor system is still far away. I would have rather targeted a 6k series card and 3 x 27" asus monitors rather than be squeezed into some upgrade path designed to get one to spend more money. fkn greedy industry.