In October 2009, we tested the first video card with DirectX 11 support- AMD Radeon HD 5870. Six months later NVIDIA released the answer – GTX 480 And GTX 470 , The chips are very powerful, but expensive and hot. Today the struggle goes to a new level: a fresh series of video cards appeared on sale AMD – Radeon HD 6000. At the moment, there are only two boards in the line – HD 6850 And HD 6870 , And on the tests we have the senior version.
Re -read
Rumors about the emergence of a new series appeared long before the official release. Naturally, everyone thought that AMD was preparing a chip that could overtake the GTX 480. It turned out not quite. "New" series can be called a stretch. Video cards are based on the modified version of the old Cypress processors and are positioned as a mica-end solution. So no FPS records.
The Radeon HD 6870 has a Barts crystal, an exact copy of the CyPress from HD 5870. Oddly enough, but the processor turned out to be cut: compared to its predecessor, Barts “lacks” 450 million transistors. This means that the number of SIMD clusters has decreased – on the new crystal there are only 14 pieces instead of 20. Hence the losses in the number of stream processors (there are 1120 there are 1120 against BARTS) and texture blocks (56 instead of 80).
AMD compensated for the losses simply: the processor frequency increased from 850 to 900 MHz. Plus, the card was equipped with an adult bus at 256 bits and 1 GB of GDDR5 memory with a frequency of 4200 MHz. Did not affect the blocks of rasterization – all 32 rop in place.
Freshness
There are a number of improvements in Barts. First about Tesselia. AMD has two news at once. First: Tessellation engines work twice as fast. Second: with the settings you need to be accurate. As AMD explains, at extreme levels of the teseselia, the model beats for so many landfills that on the screen the triangle occupies no more than one pixel. In this case, the blocks of rasterization begin to slip. For them, the optimal operating mode is 16 pixels on the landfill, otherwise they are idle. Plus such small particles have to be rendered several times, which also reduces performance. The conclusion, however, is joyless, we will not see a better picture, the new landfills do not make out.
The following improvement concerns anti -alias. AMD increased its speed, and also introduced a new Morphological AA mode. Its essence is that the corners are smoothed after the frame has passed the rendering. At the same time, the lands of landfills or alpha-texture are not a landmark for post-outlet, but sharp, contrasting transitions. Thus, anti -aliasing is not used selectively, but to the whole picture at once. The plus of this approach – Shader does not work with geometry, but with a ready -made scene, in fact with a graphic file, so performance compared to traditional multi -cling (MSAA) increases significantly. Minus – with a low resolution of the screen, the picture is blurred.
We finalized the AMD and anisotropic filtering: now its quality and performance do not depend on the angle of rotation of the object. Additionally updated the video acceleration unit – UVD3. In addition to VC-1 and H formats.264, he was taught to work with MPEG-2 (DVD), MVC and MPEG-4 (DIVX, XVID).
Goodbye, ATI
This year ATI She celebrated her twenty -five. From the very foundation, the company was engaged in graphic solutions. At first these were computers chips IBM And Commodore , Then independent video cards appeared both for working with 2D and 3D. The famous Radeon series was released only in 2000. In 2006, the video cards manufacturer was bought by AMD Corporation. The ATI brand was saved for four years, but with the release of HD 6000 they decided to refuse it. The only thing that remains in memory of the "red" manufacturer is the name Radeon.
Pink glasses
Well, the most important thing for us players: AMD graphics cards are now working with 3D STEREO. AMD call this function HD3D , And it is radically different from what NVIDIA offers. Instead of developing your own technologies and launching new iron on sale, AMD took advantage of the help of partners.
To begin with, she found special software developers, which will translate photos, videos and games in stereo -eating. Among the elect were companies IZ3D And DDD – They opened access to the source codes of the drivers Catalyst. Then AMD signed an agreement with manufacturers of monitors and glasses. So if you want to try the HD3D, then the display will need to be bought from LG , Samsung , CMI or ViewSonic , And the glasses at XPAND , Reald And Bit Cauldron. And after all, the most funny, a set from the program and active points should be cheaper than a similar sentence from NVIDIA. And most importantly, support for stereo -assembly is not laid in the cost of the video card, you will not have to overpay for extra functionality.
On the table
Radeon HD 6870 sent AMD itself to tests, so we will talk about the reference version. The video card differs from the predecessor (3 cm shorter) and the appearance. The casing of the cooling system has become more angular, the red strip and “exhaust holes” on the rear end of the video card disappeared.
The board is cooled on the principle of the turbine: a 75 mm fan tightens the air under the casing, drives it down the map and throws it outside the computer case. On the crystal itself there is an aluminum radiator scored by 30 plates and pierced by three copper heat pipes. During the load, the card consumes only 151 watts (37 watts less than HD 5870). In 2D mode, HD 6870 requires 19 W. Food is provided with two 6-pin forks. Thanks to low heat release, half the slot on the input/output panel is enough to eject hot air, the rest of the space is occupied by new video branches.
By default, Radeon HD 6870 is equipped with two DVI, one HDMI 1.4a and a pair of mini-displayport 1.2. Behind all these numbers are a bunch of interesting technologies. In DisplayPort 1.2, for example, the throughput has increased. Now you can connect two monitors to one connector at once. To do this, you will need either a special bias or display with the entrance and output for DisplayPort. Plus in version 1.2 Support Blu-Ray 3D and sound output as Dolby Truehd and DTS-HD Master Audio.
The new version of HDMI also learned to play Blu-Ray 3D and, moreover, display a stereo for 3D TVs. True, the last function is more likely for a show. TV manufacturers have not yet come to a single specification of stereo, so no one gives one hundred percent guarantees of compatibility.
What is my name?
Radeon HD 6000 is far from the first time when the old architecture is released under the new name. NVIDIA tested such a scheme at one time when she released the modified GeForce 8000 Under the guise of a new series GeForce 9000 , And the senior versions then generally renamed GTS 250.
Why is it necessary? The answer is simple – to attract the attention of the press and buyers. Well, seriously, the new video cards could be called Radeon HD 5860 and HD 5840. But in this situation, AMD would not have been able to attract the tenth fraction of the attention that is now paid to new cards.
But you should not grieve about the deceased line. Very soon AMD will officially announce data on Radeon HD 6950 , 6970 And 6990. This will already be a real top, on a completely new processor called Cayman.
We test
It was not easy to choose competitors for a new video card. At the time of delivery of the magazine, the board has not yet appeared on sale, so I had to focus on an AMD recommended price of 8000-8500 rubles. This means that HD 6870 costs cheaper than HD 5870, but more expensive than HD 5850. Plus, it falls into the price category GTX 460 1 GB and its dispersed versions. GTX 465 is sold for the same money, and even more expensive, somewhere for 10,500 rubles, you can buy GTX 470. After a little thought, we decided to take all the video cards at once and compare the results.
To do this, we have collected a powerful test stand based on the motherboard Foxconn Renaissance , Installed on it Intel Core i7-920 and added 6 GB of RAM gained by three strips Kingston Hyperx DDR3-1666. Unfortunately, the list of tests turned out to be short. Since we tested the Radeon HD 6870 with beta version of the drivers, we were not able to launch a benchmark Colin Mcrae Dirt 2. So we evaluated DX11 performance only in Aliens vs. Predator and synthetics Unigine Heaven Benchmark 2.0. But there were no problems with projects on DX10. Standard Resident Evil 5 And Devil May Cry 4 – In place. We carried out a general assessment of performance using 3DMark Vantage.
Balance
Synthetic test from Futuremark It very accurately determined the position of HD 6870: it does not reach the level of HD 5870, it works a little slower GTX 470, overtakes GTX 460 and GTX 465. In Unitine Heaven Benchmark 2.0, evaluating the performance in DX11, the work done by AMD on the Tescelya engines is clearly visible. In the synthetic test, Radeon HD 6870 overtakes a more expensive HD 5870, but still lags behind all competitors from the NVIDIA camp.
In real gaming applications, the picture is preserved. Radeon HD 6870 confidently overtakes not only HD 5850 and GTX 460, 465, but also https://candy-land-casino.co.uk/ GTX 470. With DX11, this superiority does not work: GTX 470 by 19%faster, which is quite logical.
* * *
Radeon HD 6870 performance is fully consistent with the price of 8500 rubles. The card successfully fits between the HD 5870 and the dispersed versions of the GTX 460, and in some cases even works at the level of the more expensive GTX 470. If you are ready to spend 8500 rubles on the video card, then the Radeon HD 6870 is the right choice, she has no competitors.
Table 1
Comparative table of technical characteristics
Characterization of Radeon HD 6870AMD Radeon HD 5870AMD Radeon HD 5850NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 465NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 460
NucleuspressSScyPressgf100gf100gf104
The number of transistors1.7 billion2.15 billion2.15 billion3 billion3 billion1.95 billion
TECHROUND PROCESS40-NM40-NM40-NM40-NM40-NM40
The number of stream processors1120 pcs.1600 pcs.1440 pcs.448 pcs.352 pcs.336 pcs.
The frequency of the graphic nucleus900 MHz850 MHz725 MHz607 MHz607 MHz675 MHz
Frequency of stream processors900 MHz850 MHz725 MHz1215 MHz1215 MHz1350 MHz
Type, memory volume 5.1 GBGDDR5, 1 GBGDDR5, 1 GBGDDR5, 1.28 GBGDDR5, 1 GBGDDR5, 1 GB
Memory frequency 4200 MHz4800 MHz4000 MHz3348 MHz3200 MHz3600 MHz
Data tire256 bit256 bit256 bit320 bit256 bit256 bits
The number of texture blocks56 pcs.80 pcs.72 pcs. 56 pcs.44 pcs.56 pcs.
The number of rasterization blocks32 pcs.32 pcs. 32 pcs.40 pcs.32 pcs.32 pcs.
InterfacePcie 2.0 x16pcie 2.0 x16pcie 2.0 x16pcie 2.0 x16pcie 2.0 x16pcie 2.0 x16
Price for November 20108500 rub.12 000 rub.7800 rub.9500 rub. 7000 rub.7000 rub.
Table 2
Technical characteristics
Synthetic tests
3DMark Vantage
Model of the video card carduoverallllLLLLLLIARY
AMD Radeon HD 687015 13116 49315 450100%
AMD Radeon HD 587017 40217 32617 383113%
AMD Radeon HD 585014 83217 59715 427100%
Nvidia GeForce GTX 47013 65645 93716 566107%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 46511 67442 63614 26492%
Nvidia GeForce GTX 46012 55640 96315 18898%
Palit GeForce GTX 460 Sonic Platinum (900 MHz/4000 MHz) 14 58643 66017 500113%
Unigine Heaven Benchmark 2.0
Model of the video card of the performance of performance
AMD Radeon HD 687013,8348100%
AMD Radeon HD 587011,428883%
AMD Radeon HD 585011,428883%
Nvidia GeForce GTX 47019,9502144%
Nvidia GeForce GTX 46516.7421121%
Nvidia GeForce GTX 46016,9426122%
Palit GeForce GTX 460 Sonic Platinum (900 MHz/4000 MHz) 19,6494142%
Table 3
Game tests (personnel per second)
Название игры, настройкиAMD Radeon HD 6870AMD Radeon HD 5870AMD Radeon HD 5850NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470NVIDIA GeForce GTX 465NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460Palit GeForce GTX 460 Sonic Platinum (900 МГц/4000 МГц)
Resident Evil 5 (DX10)
High, 1680×1050, AF 16X, AA 8×96,1105,892,49783,78397,4
High, 1920×1080, AF 16X, AA 8×89,699,490,588,276,476,287.5
Performance ratio100%110%98%100%86%85%100%
Devil May Cry 4 (SC2, DX10)
Superhigh, 1680×1050, AF 16X, AA 8x-12295,8101,3118.6
Superhigh, 1920×1080, AF 16X, AA 8×126.33131.5114.8110,493,392,9104.7
Performance ratio100%104%91%87%74%74%83%
Aliens vs. Predator (Demo, DX11)
Veryhigh, 1680×1050, AF 16X, AA 2×39,647,232,247,233,13237.1
VERYHIGH, 1920×1080, AF 16X, AA 2×35,442,333,342,329,328,532,9
Performance ratio100%119%87%119%83%81%93%
Review ratio 100%141%92%112%82%82%96%
Performance ratio 100%111%92%102%81%80%92%