AMD ATI Radeon HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 PCIe

Overview

The AMD ATI Radeon HD 6870 measures 25cm long and weighs roughly 1kg. The GPU has been fabricated using the 40nm process, except it features 454 million less transistors than the Radeon HD 5870's Cypress XT core. This allowed AMD to shrink the die from 334mm2 to 255mm2, making the Radeon HD 6870 more fuel-efficient. The core is clocked at an impressive 900MHz, the HD 6870 has 1120 SPUs, 56 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

TechSpot Metascore

Based on 21 expert reviews

Excellent:

11
Good:

9
Average:

0
Bad:

1

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Last revision on October 18, 2012

Reviewers Liked

Fast, Decent cooler, Overclocking
Decent performance for the £200 class price, DX11 enhancements, new features, cool and low power draw at 150W top power
Largely excellent midrange gaming performance. Improved technologies and video quality over previous-generation cards. Competitively priced
Stellar general performance for the price, Great power efficiency
Excellent mainstream DX11 graphics performance, Barts GPU Introduces stereoscopic 3D functionality, Reduced heat output enables nearly silent cooling fan, Fan exhausts all heated air outside of case, UVD3 Adds multiview CODEC for 3D Bluray playback
Great gaming performance for the price; stereoscopic 3D support with compatible monitors and HDTVs; five ports makes connecting multiple monitors easier

Reviewers Didn't Like

Power hogYou can find more expert reviews of this card at testseek.com
Can't quite beat selected GTX460 overclocked parts, should have been named HD6860 as it's not faster than HD5870
Slightly less powerful than same-priced, overclocked competing cards. Only one dual-link DVI port
Fledgling 3D support
Limited initial AMD HD3D product support, Fails to fix anisotropic texture filtering, Barts GPU yields minimal overclock
Doesn’t best Nvidia’s GTX 480 (or even AMD’s own previous-generation HD 5870); requires two six-pin power connectors; blocks adjacent slot

Expert reviews and ratings

Putting the new Radeon naming scheme aside, we'd like to focus more on the Radeon HD 6870's price and performance. The GeForce GTX 460 clearly got under AMD's skin, as the company created a product specifically to compete with it. At $239,...

By TechSpot on October 22, 2010

What's in a name? We see if ATI's mid-range graphics card can dominate the marketRating: 4Average: 4 (1 vote) Since ATI last launched a new range of GPUs, the graphics worlds has a distinctly red tinge to it rather than the green we’ve...

By Channel Pro on January 23, 2012

Thee successor to AMD's popular Radeon HD 5850, the Radeon HD 6870 is the larger, more capable member of AMD's new 6800 series lineup. This midrange graphics card manages to outpace its closest relative--the Radeon HD 5850 --while doing minimal...

By GamePro on April 28, 2011

Both the AMD Radeon HD 6850 and Radeon HD 6870 offer great performance for the prices and being able to drive multiple displays with one card via DisplayPort is great. While these cards might not appeal to the enthusiast gamer, they still offer up...

By Gaming Nexus on January 24, 2011

100

A very good mid-end card, at easy with all video games. Note however that it has a misleading name: it is not a substitute for the brand's old...

By DigitalVersus on December 23, 2010

If all AMD wanted to do by releasing the Radeon HD 6870 was call Nvidia onto the carpet, it succeeded. That the outcome was essentially a draw, albeit one that left AMD just a bit more sore, doesn't call...

By ExtremeTech on November 03, 2010

After all, the shaders run faster at 900MHz versus 850MHz, and the efficiency is improved too. The 1,120 stream processors are joined by 56 texture units, 128 Z/stencil raster-ops (ROP) units and 32 color ROP units. Looking at single precision...

By The Inquirer on November 03, 2010

The AMD Radeon HD 6870 represents some major improvements in the sub-$250 video card space, but Nvidia solutions can provide a bit more performance for the same price....

By PC Mag on November 03, 2010

Overall, this choice is a no brainer. AMD's Radeon HD 5850 had a good run, but it's outclassed by a newcomer that delivers superior performance, comparable power efficiency, and a lower price tag. A great card may be riding off into the sunset,...

By PC Advisor on October 25, 2010

The arrival of the HD 6870 1GB is causing a total reshuffle of GPU pricing from both red and green camps, so you’ll have to forgive us if inevitable price-shifts change the situation post-publishing this article. At time of writing the HD 6870 1GB...

By Bit-tech.net on October 22, 2010

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