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Picture of upcoming Radeon 6870 leaked

by Pete Mason on 8 October 2010, 23:02

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD)

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AMD's Radeon HD 6000-series GPUs are expected to be shown to the press in the next week or so, but that won't stop the rumour mongers from posting fresh leaks on the updated cards.

The latest - predictably from China - claims to be of an AMD PDF fully detailing the HD 6870 and 6850 cards that are expected to be the first to reach the market. As has been mooted, the document seems to confirm that the HD 6870 will be based on the Barts XT core that is suspected to be a beefed-up version of the chip found in the HD 5770.

What's catching everyone's attention is that the reference card seems to have five outputs - two DVI, one HDMI and two Mini DisplayPort. Presumably this could allow someone to run five simultaneous displays right out of the box, though remember that previous cards haven't allowed displays to be connected to both DVI connectors and the HDMI port at the same time.

Otherwise, the card seems to be similar in size to the Radeon HD 5850, though the angle makes accurate estimates difficult. Also note that the ATI sticker on the fan hub has been replaced by one baring the new AMD Radeon logo.

Though the shots of the PDF are in simplified Chinese, all of the previously rumoured features seem to be present, including AMD HD3D. It also lists 'EyeSpeed', though it isn't clear exactly what this is.

While the level of detail makes these slides seem fairly legitimate, something about the fan sticker just doesn't sit well with us. The perspective seems to be off a little, possibly calling the legitimacy of the picture into question.

Either way, the rumours and whispers will soon be put to rest when AMD sets the record straight on its upcoming cards in the very near future.



HEXUS Forums :: 13 Comments

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So if it's set to be a beefed up 5770 is it safe to assume it will be slower than a 5870?
In which case the naming strategy has just gone to pot.
nibbler
So if it's set to be a beefed up 5770 is it safe to assume it will be slower than a 5870?
In which case the naming strategy has just gone to pot.

It's been known for quite some time that the 69xx will now be the high end.
Thanks, fair enough I managed to miss that. That's silly, I thought it was going to be the 6770, not the 6870.
How it compares, performancewise, to the 5870 will depend on clock speeds. The last rumour was that Barts XT would be 1280 shaders running at 900MHz, 64 TUs (keeping the 20:1 ration which always seemed texture-light to me, considering how well the 4670 ran with a higher texture:shader ratio…), and 32 ROPs. All of which put it between the 5850 and 5870 for shading and texturing, but ahead of them for sampling and pixel fill rate.

Unless AMD reckon their previous cards were bottlenecked by pixel fill rate, I'd guess we're looking at not quite as fast as the 5870. It certainly seems odd to bring out a card with such mediocre specs into the - historically - same numbering space as the top end cards previously. It also clashes with the last set of slides leaked (the one I linked to above) which says that Barts XT will be the 6770, so someone's got their rumour wrong somewhere… ;)
rumours rumours rumours - i think this will be the 5870 replacement , as it shows the small speed bump a refresh product would have;


IF they have a super secret surprise , then who can say what they`ve been doing at GF ;)