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We have shown the AMD Radeon HD 6850 to be the true competition for the 1GB GeForce GTX 460. On a pure performance and gameplay experience comparison the AMD Radeon HD 6850 overall allowed a better gameplay experience. There were a couple of games that resulted in an exception, but even then, the video cards were still close. In Civilization V we did find the GeForce GTX 460 1GB video card to produce higher framerates than the Radeon HD 6850, and in turn allowing a higher gameplay setting. In Battlefield: Bad Company 2 both video cards were playable at the same settings and the performance so close it could not be identified without analysis. In the other games though, the AMD Radeon HD 6850 produced higher framerates and a better gameplay experience. These two video cards are clearly battling it out for performance, and an OC card from either one may tip the balance.


The AMD Radeon HD 6870 is another story, AMD positioned this video card against the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, however, in our testing it blew it away. In fact, the AMD Radeon HD 6870 was faster than the Radeon HD 5850 in every game. The AMD Radeon HD 6870 is not as fast as the Radeon HD 5870, and it was never meant to be. The Radeon HD 6870 comes in-between the 5850 and 5870 in performance, but the kicker is that it is much cheaper, runs cooler, and uses less power doing it.

Our benchmarks clearly show that the HD6850 and HD6870 easily can keep up with the NVIDIA GTX460. As long as they are priced right, we see no reason why they should not become a success. Not only do they offer great performance at a great price, they also come with some nice features like DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 1.4a.

The fact that Nvidia has already reacted to the GPU's by lowering prices on some of their products indicates that they know that the GTX460 is under threat. It will be interesting to see what AMD's response will be.

Enthusiast gamers should wait a bit longer until the "Cayman" GPU's are released later in November as neither the HD6850 nor the HD6870 really are an upgrade to the HD5850 or HD5870

The Radeon 6850 offers plenty of performance for today's games. We feel it's sweet spot gaming wise is for gamers with a monitor up-to roughly 1600x1200, even 1920x1200. At that resolution pretty much any game will play excellent with good options in image quality settings like AA.

The Radeon HD 6870 is as far as I am concerned, definitely the more interesting card. It does have a handful more shader processors over what we expected initially, and armed with a phat 900 MHz clock frequency this product simply makes really good sense. It will bring a lot of value to the table but will also allow you to play your games at 1920x1200 extremely well. From a price point of view that makes this product really nice. AMD needed two GeForce GTX 460 cards of their own ... and these are it. Bare in mind though, coming from an R5870 you'd be taking a small perf step down.