Just Bought A 6870

[Baff1 0]

My 2 cents....current owner of 2 5870's in crossfire (upgraded in May '10)

I've always had Nvidia cards before this, performance aside, Nvidia is MUCH more user-friendly with drivers (installation, patches etc).

Performance wise, 580 aside ATI had cornered the market on sheer muscle in their cards. BUT, all this power is handicapped by the inconsistent dirvers and ATI cards crippled by any kind of AA implentation.

I have been so frustrated with not only the hassle with installation of drivers but also the inevitable rolling back of said drivers when they seem to do more harm than good.

I have been seriously considering swapping out the crossfire 5870's for one single 580. But there is supposedly a lot of movement in the videocard industry right now with everyone holding their breath to see how ATI responds to the 580 (and 570) and how Nvidia responds in turn. It could mean a drop in the price of higher end video cards.

From what I've seen crossfire is hit and miss in general with gaming and doesn't appear to offer any advantages with ARMA 2. I proved this to myself last night, starting crossfire enabled and disabled resulting in exactly the same benchmarks with both.

Sorry about the lengthy reply, but wanted to give some insight to what I've looked into and learned over the last week or so looking at the different video card options.

This.

I am pleased with my 5870. It was the most powerful available card at the time of purchase and it does what it says on the tin.

If ATI and Nvidia each made a card with equal performance, I would always choose NVidia for the reasons cited above.

I too have given up with SLI. It's not worth it, and the biggest improvements I expect to see with ArmA 2 graphics will come from RAM drives not a bigger GPU.

---------- Post added at 06:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:34 PM ----------

remember these benchmarks of A2 are with old drivers and old game build ...

consider the 6870 bit faster than 5870 especially if HQ AF and AA is used also the MLAA will be faster than on 5870 ...

in short it's improved replacement of 5870 but not new generation, that is 6970 ...

The 6870 is slower than the 5870.

They got sneaky with their new names.

[walker 0]

remember these benchmarks of A2 are with old drivers and old game build ...

consider the 6870 bit faster than 5870 especially if HQ AF and AA is used also the MLAA will be faster than on 5870 ...

in short it's improved replacement of 5870 but not new generation, that is 6970 ...

Err...

...The 6870 is slower than the 5870.

They got sneaky with their new names.

+1

...

A New Naming Scheme

Unlike previous launches, the HD 6000-series opens with the mid-range Barts Pro and Barts XT GPU pairing, despite the historically high-end name. While the HD 5800 was a high-end GPU, and HD 5900 denoted a dual-GPU card, the HD 6850 1GB and HD 6870 1GB are pitched at around £150 and £200 respectively. There will be a HD 6900 card in a month’s time, based around a faster GPU, with a dual-GPU HD 6900 also planned.

Hopefully you’ve stayed with us, and not headed straight off to the forums to flame ATI’s marketing team – we say this because the new naming scheme does make sense, once you accept the situation that ATI was in. The crux of the problem was that TSMC, ATI’s fabrication partner, couldn’t deliver the 32nm manufacturing process that ATI had been betting on. As the smaller process would have allowed ATI to decrease the cost per GPU die (while also potentially allowing higher clock speeds and lower power consumption), it couldn’t deliver a Barts GPU at the £100 to £130 price point it would have wanted.

Rather than leave this hotly contested and highly profitable section of the market barren of ATI choice, ATI has chosen to continue making and selling the Radeon HD 5700. However, ATI won’t rename this range as the HD 6700 series – we suspect that some of the stories on the internet about this proposed move were leaked by ATI and used to judge whether such a re-branding move would be received badly or not.

Whatever the reason, ATI was in the position that it didn’t have a new GPU that would hit the £100-150 sweet spot and would have to continue selling a part called a Radeon HD 5700. Calling the new GPUs the HD 6700 series would have killed HD 5700 sales, so Barts therefore had to be called a HD 6800 GPU – it was the most logically choice and we think the best option given the awkward situation...

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2010/10/22/ati-radeon-hd-6870-review/1

As always follow the link to the original article

It has been discussed in some detail on various hardware web sites, forums and on ATI's own forums.

Kind Regards walker

Edited December 18, 2010 by walker

[Banderas 0]

Santa said i cant have my 6870 till next week :(

Workplace salary said I cannot have one until next spring or summer....:(

[Flash Thunder 10]

Ill keep waiting until prices go down alittle more.

[infiltrator_2k 29]

Ill keep waiting until prices go down alittle more.

There's never a good time to buy a card IMHO. You've got to buy the best you can afford at the best price available. I chose the 6870 because I managed to get a Black Edition for £198 delivered, it's a good price, and the plus side I can now patiently wait for the price to drop before buying a second one to crossfire (not much good ATM for ArmA2 I know). :o

I know I peronally made the right choice buying the 6870 for my machine - I get a good frame rate maxxed out @1920, so I couldn't really ask for more. But saying that, my build isn't too bad, and I've OC'd an i7 920 to 4Ghz so there's no bottleknecking as far as the processor is concerned. The weakness with my PC is the hard drive, so I think I'm going to have to go with SSD :D

[Psilocybe 3]

Sounds like a good time to hangup the 4890 then !

[jumpinghubert 49]

remember these benchmarks of A2 are with old drivers and old game build ...

consider the 6870 bit faster than 5870 especially if HQ AF and AA is used also the MLAA will be faster than on 5870 ...

in short it's improved replacement of 5870 but not new generation, that is 6970 ...

Please look here http://www.hardware.fr/articles/813-11/dossier-amd-radeon-hd-6970-6950-seules-crossfire-x.html

The 5870 seems to be a little bit faster than the 6870 AND the 6970 even with high aa.

[max power 21]

Well, it certainly isn't 300 dollars faster. I bought my 6870 (up from 2 liquid cooled hd3870 x2s in crossfire x) and haven't looked back.

Those results seem like there is a cpu bottleneck going on. The 6970 is outperformed slightly by the 6870, and so many cards with vastly different capabilities are getting around the same score.

Edited December 19, 2010 by Max Power

[kdjac 19]

Santa said i cant have my 6870 till next week :(

:D :D :D

Doubled my FPS on lingor with everything maxed out, went from 4870 512 to 6870 1gb massive difference in the game.

[Shadow NX 1]

As you had exactly the card i still have let me ask, did you also often get flickering polygon spikes when looking in certain directions and extremely low textures and models?

Especially in scenarios like SP mission "counterattack" its extreme on my card, even get it when flying over Takistan sometimes.

If you had that, is it completely gone now?

Also if i may ask, what settings do you have exactly and how well does something like lets say "Counterattack" run for you?

Won a Xperia Mini Pro last days and im undecided if this will be used to buy another phone or a new GPU.

[kdjac 19]

Stopped getting that with around 10.6 ATI drivers.