Which to choose between Radeon 6850 and 6870 card

[Nipmuc]

What is the difference between ATI Radeon 6850 vs ATI Radeon 6870. After searching many sites the most suitable card for my Gigabyte motherboard I found the ATI Radeon 6000 series as the best one. Now I have some of my friends who are using this two models. I played some games just for testing in both of the cards. I does not find any major difference, the only thing I can assume that as the other one is higher in series so it might have some more power. The graphics card is now a specific need for today's 3D applications, even the operating system. So it is actually a fixed hardware. I believe that it is better to save a little money on the processor or memory and use the same to buy a good graphic card. Now buying is a big confusion today due to the wide range of models and features. I choose this too and need help to select one among this. I want more on performance related to power consumption and compatibility. I know that there are Radeon 9000, Radeon 9500 and Radeon 9700 models too but there are quiet out of my budget. Because adding them will need to upgrade my system also, and that I am not in a mood to do. On the other hand nvidia is also a proper choice but I found buggy issue with the driver while ATI is clear in the picture.

[Ojibwe]

You are not aware that the Radeon HD 6850 and 6870 is a optimized versions of Radeon HD 5800. What you get in this is that a much higher improvement in the power consumption and a attractive price. First let discuss about the first model which is quiet recommended for most of the system. Like Radeon HD 6850. This graphic card is clocked at 775 MHz, with 960 stream processors and 48 texture units. While the other one Radeon HD 6870 a bit higher improvement. In that you get a 900 MHz of the clock speed with 1120 processors and 56 texture units. Now what is the similarity between both the cards. The first is that both wil give you a 1GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus operating at 1000 MHz or 1050 MHz which normally depends. If see from the consumption point of view the the HD 6870 is quiet a better. The one thing which I forgot to mention above is that this both cards have a new benefit. That is you get a Radeon HDMI 1.4a and DisplayPort 1.2 upgrades. The cards stand with other companies too in competition where you might get a higher clock rate and some addition features related to ports and drivers. Mostly the drivers which is much more important here to deal with the different types of operating system and then comes the updates which is released by the company at a prescribe interval of time for the bugs generated after the launch of product. It is not important that only the manufacturer works for the development but other companies much also collaborate with the same specification prescribed for the product.

Sapphire AMD Radeon HD 6850

[Erubiel]

When you buy a graphic card you must considered some points related to your system specifications. Like you must consider the graphics memory. If you surf online then you will find that more the of the current games are generally optimized to a specific graphics memory size. So if you buy a graphics card with less than the average memory then you might waste your investment. Most of them give you minimum specification to run the game or application. So just for this reason you must briefly know that how much memory you will need in the future. It is also correct that there are some low range cards which might not have enough video memory, but your motherboard has some additional support for that which actually improves the performance. In my system I have Radeon 6870 in which I am currently playing Aliens vs. Predator. The game works fine and I had run some tools to test the performance. I found that his one is low for the costs and consumption also. That means it is worth buying and if you use the same on CrossFire then you can can increase performance by almost at double rate. Some graphic cards offers a twice a higher memory. But that really does not matter, because memory is expensive and graphics card vendors have nothing to give. You must have a proper combination of everything to get a stable system for a longer period of time. Like for example a 128 MB version of the memory is more effective at 600 MHz clock rate.

[Felix46]

The 6000 series card by AMD is launched before and after that there are quiet a higher version of card released. This model of card what you are talking about has the second generation of DirectX 11 chip. The HD 6850 gives you a unique feature of 6-pin PCI-Express power connector. And on the same hand you will get two connectors on Radeon HD 6870. Other than this you will get two DVI, a HDMI and two DisplayPort. So that makes it more than enough for you. What I heard about this card that it is equipped with fastest graphics chip on it. The code name is some Cayman for the chip. The price of the card is quiet acceptable and there are other two smaller variants of the graphic card in the same range. The model for that is Radeon HD 5830 & 5850. So if you need a lower range with some similar features then you can go for the the other two models. This still remains the fastest chip solution from AMD. What comes in comparison to this if you go for other company then I will recommend GeForce GTX 460. The card has reached to a great price level and these two card are really not expensive. They gives you more than expensive graphics chip and high-quality board layouts. So rather spending a large amount of money is making a entire new pc with new gpu, motherboard, cpu and case you can fix this gpu on your existing system. I will not say they will give you a very high end support like running 6 monitors at a ultra high resolution but what you will get what you expect for for gaming.

[Filiberto]

I have a Radeon HD 5700 series card. What HD refers here is high definition. That means good amount of video on your screen. This card a lower version of chip but it is also not bad. Bart is a low end chip on GPU while Cayman is a high end chip on the graphic card. This plays with the cost more. If a card which is equipped with Cayman chip and the same which is equipped with Bart then you will get the other one much cheaper. There will be a difference with the performance also. In the same way in 6000 series of Radeon you will notice the high end ship while in lower model the chip specification is set to lower. What you get in the high end system is that individual chips are designs to see the number of hardware units and on the same had there is also a difference between the clock speeds. This variation gives the card a good power to perform. If you go through the specification of Radeon HD 6870 you can see 1120 shaders and 56 texture units. One the samr hand if you read the specification of Radeon HD 6850 you will get 960 shaders and 48 texture units.In Radeon HD 6850 you will get full 32 ROP units. In comparison to that the HD 5850 is limited to 16 and that where you can count the performance. You can also judge the same when you run some games on the old and newer cards and notice the difference. Go for a higher model at once only so that the same can be utilized for the coming technology also. Anyhow the manufacturer company will release the updates for the cards every time whenever needed.

[Aandaleeb]

My choice is HD 6800. Choose whichever model you like. This is because of the improvements in the card. What you get in Radeon HD 6800 series you will not get in HD 5000 series. What is a best point in buying a new card is that it has advantage in the ROP performance, less computation of powrer and high texture support. And if you plan for a other company then the best card you can compare with is GeForce GTX 460 1024MB. The only things which will trouble you here is the price where nvidia is costly. But I had noticed that these days the price of GeForce GTX 460 1024MB is lowered. This is nearly identical to the price range of the Radeon HD 6850th. Now if you go for Nvidia then you will not be satisfied with Radeon HD 6850 performance. Nvidia is a market leader in this stuff and it gives you a much better, stable and high end technology. There is really a vast difference in price, power consumption, etc. ATI advantage in price and somewhat to the performance also. Since Nvidia rumors have a GTX 580 plans in multiple versions of the same series with different support. Compared to the Radeon HD 5850, the GeForce 6870 a little more performance for the same price. Radeon HD 6800 series and new image quality features. The Series 6900 by AMD is a much higher version of card. Now it is possible to get some type of filter quality where your graphic is quiet nicely improved. But the same is not going to work with older models of motherboard. You will need a good hardware support for that.