AMD’s launch of Radeon HD 6000 is getting close and in about two weeks we will see Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 in stores. The leaks from Asia keep pouring out and now we have benhcmarks from 3DMark Vantage.
A forrum entry at PConline shares some results with both Radeon HD 6870 andRadeon HD 6850. The choice of benchmark was Futuremark 3DMark and the benchmarks follows the indications we have been getting for a few months now with AMD Barts targetting NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 with performance on par with the precursors Radeon HD 5850 and HD 5830.
With a test system built on an Intel Core i7 940 CPU (2.93 GHz) the user Prince OC reached the following scores in 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark06.
| Graphics card | 3DMark06 | 3DMark Vantage (Peformance) |
| AMD Radeon HD 6870 | 19480 | 16270 |
| AMD Radeon HD 6850 | 18750 | 14872 |
If these results are genuine, which we can’t confirm, it would hint that the cards are capable of beating GeForce GTX 460, while being uncomfortably close to its own HD 5800 models. A quick run gave us 3DMark Vantage points at 17349 and 15482 respectively with Radeon HD 5850 and Radeon HD 5830, but we used the more powerful Core i7 980X CPU with six cores and higher clock frequencies. Reducing the more powerful test platform we see the numbers are fairly similar. GeForce GTX 460 1GB gets 14797 points on the same platform.
These results are with a 3.46 GHz Core i7 980X CPU.
According to the information in the forum thread the specifications for the two graphics cards matches those with our previous stories, but all other information is unconfirmed and should be considered with a pinch of salt.
| Specifications | Radeon HD 5770 | Radeon HD 5850 | Radeon HD 6850 | Radeon HD 6870 |
| GPU | Juniper XT | Cypress Pro | Barts Pro | Barts XT |
| Node | 40nm | 40 nm | 40 nm | 40 nm |
| GPU frequency | 850 MHz | 725 MHz | 775 MHz | 900 MHz |
| Stream processors | 800 | 1440 | 800 | 960 |
| Memory frequency |
4 800 MHz | 4 000 MHz | 4 000 MHz | 4 200 MHz |
| Memory bus |
256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Memory buffer |
1 GB GDDR5 | 1 GB GDDR5 | 1 GB GDDR5 | 1 GB GDDR5 |
| Power consumption | 108 watt | 151 watt | ~ 120 watt | >150 watt |
What we can say for certain is that AMD is out to undermine NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 460 in the mid-range segment and if the performance figures that has appeared are reliable it looks like it has done a good job. Now all that remains is the prices and other features built into the circuits, but 3D support and more monitors looks like a priority.
The forum thread also has pictures of what is claimed to be a Radeon HD 6850. We see what looks like a single 6-pin power connector, and an older ATI-branded cooler. The card has to settle for dual DVI, HDMI and a DisplayPort output, while HD 6870 also gets two new mini-DisplayPort outputs.
Source: PConline
