Introducing the codename Northern Islands

You know it’s winter when the sun sets earlier, the air feels a little cooler, and when a graphics giant releases new video cards.

In the immediate aftermath of the launch of NVIDIA’s GTX 460 and GTS 450, AMD is back with a completely new architecture. To be honest, I was just expecting a frequency boost and a few tweaks, but what AMD is releasing definitely qualifies as “new.”

Yes, the new naming convention can be confusing. The performance of the 6850 and 6870 models greatly outshines that of the Radeon HD 5750 and 5770. In fact, they are close to the performance of the 5850 and 5870 models and, in highly tessellated situations, may even exceed them. So for this version, AMD has decided not to call them 6700 series. But having a part that performs only “as well” as the last generation does not make sense, right? Well, AMD is greatly reducing the price of the 6800 series versus the 5800 series, and it is also phasing out the 5800 series altogether, so there aren’t many objections we can make about that right now. The direct replacement for the 5800 series will end up being the 6900 series, so once those cards hit the market, the naming convention will definitely make more sense.

The Radeon HD 5700 series onwards remains in its current form. I have no information on any rebranding. This makes sense, as these parts are excellent price / performance products and still have a place in the market. But the $ 200- $ 300 window is where AMD was suffering the most and the Radeon HD 5830 didn’t serve it well, so the 6800 series will fill the gap and should do well.

I learned of a real curveball that will alter the way I was going to write this review. I found out, quite late and to my surprise, that NVIDIA was going to slash the price of the GTX 460 and 470 cards, making them far more worthy opponents than what AMD is going to unleash today. So much so that I’m quite upset that I didn’t have time to include the GTX 470 in the mix to get a better picture.

We’re going to dive into the specs and then talk about some of the feature enhancements.

Versus 5800 series

With lower computing power, shader count, and memory bandwidth, it will depend on optimizing drivers, shader clusters, and the programmer to give the 6800 series a chance to outperform the 5800 series. But AMD knows this and says that in some cases the 6800 series will work against the 5800 series in certain situations.

Versus 5700 series

The 6800 series erases the 5700 series line on paper. So instead of being just an incremental part of the 5700 series, we are seeing massive performance gains. This should be a great addition to any custom PC and its graphics processing power. So I can see where AMD decided to leave the 5700 series where it is, put the 6800 series where IT is and leave the 5800 series. And furthermore, AMD will soon give us a true replacement for the 5800 and 5900 series.

So better get this over with now, put up with a bit of fanboy teeth grinding and let the rest of the product pile fill up, where I’m sure the whole line will make sense.

All that matters is performance per dollar. It doesn’t matter what the name is if you understand it before making a decision.

New display options

A cool new feature of these cards is the ability to have six displays connected to one Radeon HD 6800 series card at the same time. With the addition of DisplayPort 1.2 technology, it is now possible to daisy chain compatible DisplayPort 1.2 displays, for up to 4 DisplayPort monitors and a combination of two DVIs or one DVI and one HDMI monitor. It is important to note that HDMI is limited to 1080p and DVI single link connection is limited to 1920×1200 resolution. So be sure to plan your multi-monitor goals in advance; You may need to buy two Radeon HD 6800 cards to get the resolutions you need based on the monitors you have.

AMD EyeSpeed ​​Technology

To the layman, EyeSpeed ​​is pretty much “anything but 3D games” that AMD wants you to know about. That includes the built-in universal video decoder that lets you watch Blu-ray movies without tying your CPU to 100% usage, DirectCompute and OpenCL GPGPU technologies, the ability to speed up video transcoding or upsampling, and stereoscopic 3D support, which AMD calls AMD. HD3D. It is important to note that AMD HD3D is an open standards-based technology with all the advantages and disadvantages. It’s not as mature and controlled as NVIDIA’s 3D Vision, but it’s great to see AMD making the necessary moves to embrace 3D. It is important to note that AMD is equipping these cards with HDMI 1.4a ports, which is necessary for 3D. God bless you for keeping up with that terrible, cancerous standard. All custom A / V installers know what I’m talking about.

They did WHAT?

I must tell you, I had this whole review figured out as I jotted down the numbers … until noon today, when I found out that NVIDIA did what it does best: massive retaliation.

It turns out that they lowered the price of the GTX 460 AND GTX 470, to $ 199 for the 1GB model and $ 259 for the GTX 470.

Yes, this is a wrench! I wish I had a GTX 470 to add to this combination, as the graphics would look very different, but it would still be higher than the retail price of the Radeon HD 6870 1GB at $ 239. Also, we know the performance of the GTX 460 1GB, and its price dropped to $ 199, or $ 209 for overclocked boards from partners like ours, which is even higher than the $ 179 AMD is asking for the phenomenal Radeon HD 6850 1GB. .

So AMD did what it set out to do: make a real number on the market in this price range and for gaming computers in general. And especially with the Radeon HD 6850, which is the fastest PCI-E power cord accelerator I’ve ever seen, they’ve done it. I’m glad I was able to take the time to gather some of these numbers and spend time on the product. It is an amazing time to be a gamer.