AMD's
Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 graphics cards are here, but they might not be what you expect -- though alphanumerics suggest they'd succeed the lauded Radeon HD 5870 and 5850, these new "Bart" chips are actually a pair of solid plays for the PC gaming mainstream. $180 buys you a Radeon HD 6850 with 960 stream processors, a 775MHz core clock and 1GB of GDDR5 memory at a 1GHz effective rate, and $240 nets the HD 6870 with 1120 stream processors and 900MHz / 1,050 MHz clocks respectively. On paper that puts them a good bit behind the finest, but a collection of reviews show they can keep up with the pack, as the 6870 consistently manages to surpass the framerates possible with NVIDIA's $200
GeForce GTX 460, and even the cheaper 6850 can do the same in certain games. Some reports indicate they run a good bit hotter than their predecessors, however, so despite
the bevy of ports they're probably not right for your next HTPC. Hit up the reviews below for some promising benchmarks, and if you aren't turned away by AMD's
lipsticking of the pig, you'll find ten varieties already for sale at our source link. PR after the break.
Update: NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 460 768MB now sells for $170, so there's definitely still some mid-range muscle in the green camp.
Read - AnandTech
Read (1),
(2) - Guru3D
Read - HardOCP
Read (1),
(2) - Bit-tech
Read - PC Perspective
Read - Legit Reviews
Read - Techgage
Read (1),
(2) - TweakTown
Read - Hexus
Read (1),
(2) - TechPowerUp
Read - HotHardware
Read - TechSpot
Continue reading ATI Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 reviewed, deemed worthy of the midrange
ATI Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 reviewed, deemed worthy of the midrange originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Oct 2010 23:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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