AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series graphics cards are a series of graphics chips from AMD that were quite popular in their time. Today, these video cards can be used in legacy systems and are low-performance by today's standards. However, the characteristics of the AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series make it possible to use these chips in ordinary stationary computers, which are not tasked with running modern game releases.

Series appearance

People who follow related news know that AMD regularly upgrades its graphics chip series. 2010 was no exception, and then the AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series series of video cards appeared, the characteristics of which were impressive. Models in this series were designed to replace the then flagship Radeon HD 5870 graphics card.

On October 22, the first model from this series was presented. Then during the presentation, she collected positive reviews. Note that it was on this line that the rebranding was completed. Starting from this series, the manufacturer's video cards were called AMD, not ATI.

Let's see what are the characteristics of the AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series and what's new in this line? Recall that there are 2 video cards in the series - HD6850 and HD6870. According to the developers, the number 8 in the name has ceased to denote the flagship ambitions of this series of video cards since the 6900 line appeared.

AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series Specifications

Let's start with the obvious changes. The line used the new Barts processor. Already from the presentation it was clear that AMD is on a different path of development, which differs from the path chosen by Nvidia. If Nvidia developers are chasing the power and performance of their platforms, then AMD prefers a balance between cost and performance.

If earlier ATI set trends in terms of the development of graphic chips, then under the wing of AMD the developer took a step back. The Barts GPU is definitely weaker than its predecessor - both in specs and on paper. The fact is that the developers chose the path of simplifying the architecture to ensure reliability and create a balance between performance, price and speed. Thanks to the simplification of the architecture, Barts has become smaller and simpler in structure, and its performance allows it to be classified only in the low class of AMD video cards. It is the state employees that include video cards with a memory capacity of 1 GB AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series. Their characteristics are as follows:

1. Support for DirectX 11 and shader version 5.
2. The amount of memory on both models of the series is 1 GB.
3. HD6850 and HD6870 GPU clocks: 775MHz and 900MHz respectively.
4. Memory frequency HD6850 and HD6870: 1000 MHz and 1050 MHz respectively.
5. Memory bus width: 256 Bit for both models.

At the time of their introduction, the cards cost $180 and $240 for the 6850 and 6870 models, respectively. Today, these video cards are not manufactured, so their cost is much lower. Yes, and you can buy these chips only with your hands.

Differences between HD6850 and HD6870

In this line, the AMD Radeon HD6850 is the youngest. Here, the characteristics are reduced compared to the older card. And everything is weaker here, including even the cooling system. Given the lower performance and weak cooling system, the temperature of the AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series under load, in particular the HD6850 model, remains the same. And this is an obvious shortcoming of this model.

If we compare the test result of this chip in the 3DMark program with the HD6870 chip, then the result of the latter will be 2-3 thousand points higher. The FPS difference in demanding games like Crysis or Far Cry 2 will be 10-15 FPS, which is quite a big gap. Hence the difference in price between these cards, which averages $60.

The older model HD6870 is a worthy competitor to the flagship of that time - the top video card HD5870. The advantage of this solution is the low price compared to the competitor from Nvidia and the ability to use DirectX11 functionality to the fullest. However, we will tell about the test results of this card and its comparison with the GTX 460 competitor below.

Competitors

Given the cost at the time of release and characteristics, the main competitors of the line can be represented by models from Nvidia - these are the GTX460 and GTX470 video cards. Their performance is slightly better compared to AMD models. For example, the GTX460 and GTX470 have cores that run at 675 and 607 MHz respectively, but the memory clock is higher at 1800 MHz for the GTX460 and 1674 MHz for the GTX470. But the key feature of the GTX470 is the memory bus width - 320-bit GDDR 5, which puts this video card head and shoulders above the competitive 256-bit bus from AMD. However, the difference in performance is minimal. Indirectly, this confirms the excellent optimization of AMD video card components and good software for it.

Testing video cards AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series 1024 MB

The following hardware was used for testing:

1. CPU Core i7 3.3 GHz.
2. 6 GB RAM.
3. Windows 7 64-bit OS.

In the first game we tested, Battlefield Bad Company 2, AMD's solution turned out better. The HD 6800 video card scored 30 FPS at the maximum graphics settings, and the GeForce 460 card showed a result of only 22 FPS. And if 30 FPS can still be called a "playable" result, then at 22 frames per second it will no longer be possible to play comfortably.

However, in Aliens vs. Predator, the situation is in favor of GeForce. Here the graphics from GeForce showed 30 FPS at maximum resolution. And when testing the game on the AMD HD6800 video card, the resolution had to be reduced to 1600x900 to get the same 30 FPS.

The rather demanding game Crysis Warhead ran on both maps only at low screen resolutions. Testing in games gives only an indirect understanding of which video card is better. In this case, there is no clear winner, and both models are worthy options. True, the solution from Nvidia will cost a little more. The characteristics of the AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series in any case allow you to run games released in 2010-2013 at high graphics settings. But modern new video cards of this line will not pull.

Disadvantages of the line

The obvious disadvantage of both boards is the noise during operation, which is associated with an insufficiently efficient cooling system. After all, getting the fan to spin at full power is easy. This allows us to conclude that the developers did not pay enough attention to the cooling system, because when both chips are heavily loaded, the fan makes a lot of noise and barely copes with heat removal. At the same time, you don’t want to load the chip to the fullest, and when the user hears a hum from the system unit, he intuitively tries to reset the graphics settings to an acceptable level.

Conclusion

The new HD 6800 Series turned out to be worthy and ambiguous in its time. Both video cards successfully entered the market and collected positive reviews, as they occupied niches between flagship chips and cheap video cards. Compared to more expensive solutions from Nvidia, samples from AMD looked better than that, and their growth in popularity can be explained. And, of course, it's about the price. Admittedly, AMD has made the best decision to match the price and performance of their products.

Considering not the best cooling system, it is also better to forget about the possible overclocking of these chips. After all, even at peak loads, it is difficult for the fan to remove heat. However, for experiments with overclocking, it is best to use chips from Nvidia - they almost always turn out to be quieter and colder.

AMD regularly updates the line of graphics processors and video cards. 2010 was no exception: the 6800 series was presented to the public. This line was created to replace the flagship 5870 video card.

On October 22, the AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series video card was presented. Feedback on the course of the presentation of the line was only positive. In 2010, AMD was only gaining popularity with its video cards, so everyone was expecting a technical breakthrough from them, or at least a very good flagship series.
It was on this line that the manufacturer's rebranding completely ended: from now on, to this day, video cards were called AMD, not ATI. This was done due to the termination of the contract after the merger of the companies. Perhaps this decision was made to popularize not only graphics chips, but also processors from AMD. The conclusion about this suggests itself due to constant advertising and the presentation of configurations assembled only on the AMD platform (processor + video card).


Let's figure out what the AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series line has brought to the market of video cards for desktop computers, the characteristics of which will be presented below. The entire series is represented by the following video cards: HD 6850 and 6870. According to the creators themselves, the number 8 in the index no longer means belonging to the top line of graphics chips, since the 6900 series has appeared.

AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series Specifications

First, it is worth talking about changing the platform. The new line uses the Barts processor. From the first presentation, it became clear that AMD chose a different development path than Nvidia. If the latter are constantly in pursuit of power and maximum performance, then Radeon video cards are designed to be a balanced ratio, no matter how trite it may sound, price and quality (performance).
Specialists from the former ATI company were often called real innovators. They set trends for the entire graphics chip market. After moving under the wing of AMD, the company took a step back. The new generation of Barts processors is even weaker than the previous one on paper and in specifications. The creators went by simplifying the architecture to achieve an excellent balance between speed, reliability and performance. Barts has become simpler in structure and smaller in size. This processor is the basis for the middle class and budget video cards, which include the AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series. Specifications are shown below.


Both representatives of the series (HD 6850 and 6870) support DirectX11 and version 5 shaders. The cost of video cards is 180 and 240 dollars, respectively. Compared to Nvidia's fast and overclocked competitors, AMD's motherboards are truly budget-friendly, but the difference in performance isn't that great. The amount of video memory on both cards is 1 GB. The series is a direct competitor to the GeForce GTX460 with 1 GB of RAM and the GeForce GTX470.

AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series graphics card: specifications and test results

To test the line of video cards, the following computer configuration was used as a test bench: a Core i7 processor with a frequency of 3.3 GHz, 6 GB of RAM and a 64-bit Windows 7 operating system. All games used are set to graphics quality and detail to test the maximum performance of the tested video cards.
The first test game was Aliens vs. Predator. It immediately becomes clear that the HD6800 series will be hard to compete with the GeForce 460 1GB: only at a resolution of 1600×900 and lower can an AMD card produce playable 30 frames per second.


In the game Battlefield Bad Company 2, the situation is evened out, and it does not seem like such a bad decision to purchase an AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series. Specifications at maximum graphics and resolution settings (6850 and 6870) allow you to overtake GeForce by as much as 8 frames per second (30 versus 22). Recall that the cost of an Nvidia graphics card is from $230. The use of the new line from AMD is becoming more and more attractive. But without jumping to conclusions, let's look at the following tests.
In the very demanding game Crysis Warhead, both video cards hold up decently only at low screen resolutions. STALKER Call of Pripyat gives Nvidia's graphics card a 10fps lead. But do not forget about the significant difference in price.

AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series: pros and cons

The following points can be distinguished from the advantages of this video card. Firstly, good performance in most modern games. Second, low power consumption. You can also note the low cost, for which the buyer will receive good performance and all the "chips" of top-end video cards, such as displaying an image on 6 monitors, compatibility mode with similar video cards.


The disadvantages are hidden in the increased noise of the video card and a frankly weak cooling system. At sufficiently high loads in video games, the chip starts to overheat quickly.

Outcome

For those who are not looking for breakthrough power and high numbers in tests, the AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series line is perfect. The characteristics of video cards allow you to safely play with high FPS at medium or close to them settings of the graphic component of the game. On the side of video cards from AMD, there is also a low cost compared to Nvidia GeForce 460 and 470. But the performance differs little, so the choice of a mid-range budget video card is obvious.

Introduction

The eternal confrontation between the "reds" and "greens" has been going on for many years, and the situation on the fronts of this war continues to be tense, despite temporary, even if rather long, periods of calm - after all, they are always replaced by new bloody battles. We can still remember the all-encompassing reign of AMD in the sector of discrete graphics with support for DirectX 11, but more recently - by industry standards - Nvidia was finally able to complete the transition of most of its product lines to the new Fermi architecture. But not even a month has passed, and we again have to witness the next duel between the giants of the 3D gaming graphics market - the Radeon HD 6800 enters the arena.

The onslaught of the graphic division of Advanced Micro Devices, the former ATI Technologies, is sometimes simply amazing. In less than six months since the announcement of the first DirectX 11 graphics core, the ATI team has brought 11 graphics cards to market, from the humble Radeon HD 5450 to the mighty Radeon HD 5970, still the world's fastest single graphics card. In fact, AMD didn't really need to update its Radeon HD lines, but the company learned the lesson about the dangers of resting on one's laurels; plus, Nvidia's backlash with the GeForce GTX 460 was big enough to make us think about a symmetrical response as soon as possible. Last but not least, this was influenced by the situation with the performance of modern GPUs when performing tessellation: it is in this area that Nvidia has already managed to demonstrate a significant advantage.

As we already said in one of our previous reviews, the launch of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 family on the market has become a serious threat to AMD, which could shake its dominance in the sector of the so-called "people's gaming cards" - solutions that are simultaneously available to a significant percentage of buyers and at the same time performance to run modern games at a comfortable level of performance. Until recently, the Radeon HD 5830 and Radeon HD 5850 reigned almost undivided in this segment, but the former is too truncated in configuration, uses an expensive printed circuit board, and the Cypress core itself was originally created for use in a higher price segment. As for the Radeon HD 5850, it is good for everything except the price. Thus, AMD urgently needed an adequate response to the threat from the Nvidia GF104, and partly why the company decided to start the announcement of the new generation of Radeon HD, also known as the Northern Islands, with mass solutions, which is not very common, since flagships are usually announced first.

At the moment, AMD's strategy for changing the generations of Radeon HD is as follows:

It is quite obvious that the number 8 in the name of the new line will no longer mean belonging to the most powerful single-processor solutions - now such a privilege is marked with the number 9. The core codenamed Barts has become the basis of AMD's new "main battle tank":

In the process of developing a new mainstream chip, AMD's main efforts were not focused on achieving maximum performance at any cost, which Nvidia often sins: Barts was created with an eye to the optimal combination of price, speed and functionality in its price range. And although the new 40-nm process technology was no longer used, Barts developers were able to increase the packing density of the elements, which, coupled with a reduction in the number of transistors, made it possible to make the new product compact, profitable in production, but with very serious technical characteristics and boasting a number of interesting innovations .

Radeon HD 6800: a place in the family

The developments of ATI Technologies, which later merged into Advanced Micro Devices, were often truly revolutionary and often ahead of their time, which, however, did not benefit them. Can the same be said about the new Radeon HD family, which has changed the highest number in the name from 5 to 6? Let's try to understand this issue.

At first glance, the new AMD solutions based on the Barts core are even a step back in comparison with the Radeon HD 5800 family: the number of ALUs and texture processors has decreased, as well as both fillrates. The new Barts is simpler and smaller than Cypress both in terms of the geometric area of ​​the crystal and the number of transistors included in it. If we follow such a superficial approach to the end, then we can say that the Radeon HD 6800 has only a higher core clock frequency of the older model, reaching 900 MHz versus 850 MHz for the Radeon HD 5870. In other quantitative indicators, Barts is inferior to Cypress.

However, this approach is fundamentally wrong. Firstly, due to its superficiality as such - and we know that the architecture of modern graphics processors is very complex and performance can depend much more strongly on the organization of shader processors than on the direct number of ALUs. Secondly, we should not forget that the previous generation chip, Cypress, was developed as the most productive solution with an acceptable cost, while Barts is by no means the leader of the Radeon HD 6000 family, but is positioned in the price sector, the lower limit of which runs at around 150 dollars, and the top does not exceed 250 dollars; in other words, Barts-based cards will have to compete mainly with Nvidia's GF104-based solutions - both in their current incarnation and, possibly, in future versions with unlocked 384 shader processors.

That is, if you look at Barts from the right angle, it does not look like a step backwards from the Radeon HD 5800 at all, but rather, it is a giant leap forward compared to the Radeon HD 5700 and the most dangerous rival of the GeForce GTX 460. The AMD Barts core outperforms the Nvidia GF104 in all parameters, while being simpler and more economical, at least at first glance. And, of course, in no case should we forget about the innovations, of which there are a lot in the new AMD GPU; anyway, enough to justify the number 6 in the name of the new family of Radeon HD. On the whole, even if we don't go into the details of the Radeon HD 6800 architecture, but limit ourselves to the basic technical characteristics, the new AMD solutions look perfectly balanced. If AMD's official comments are to be believed, they aim to replicate the success of the Radeon HD 4850, which once set a new performance standard in the class of not-too-expensive but powerful DirectX 10-ready gaming cards. a feat in the DirectX 11 sector, thus becoming the new "people's cards", the benefit of which is facilitated by the developer's recommended prices - $ 179 and $ 239, respectively.

Since the architecture of the Radeon HD 6800 contains a number of innovations and improvements, we should talk about it in more detail.

Radeon HD 6800: Compute Processor Architecture

Despite the fact that a number of rumors circulated on the Web about a serious change in the architecture of VLIW computing processors in the new Northern Islands family, in particular, that the developers abandoned the “4 simple and 1 complex ALU per stream processor” scheme (AMD prefers to call similar stream core device) in favor of a simpler and more transistor-saving arrangement of “4 identical ALUs per processor”, in fact, these assumptions were not confirmed. Barts is still based on the TeraScale 2 architecture that was also implemented in the Radeon HD 5000 family. The superscalar design of stream processors still provides for five ALUs per processor, with four of these ALUs for simple instructions such as FP MAD, and the fifth , which had a more complex design, can execute complex instructions - SIN, COS, LOG, EXP, and so on. In addition to the ALU, each computing processor also contains a branch control unit and an array of general purpose registers.

The approach is interesting, but, to some extent, perhaps, controversial, since to achieve maximum performance, it is required to load all five ALUs that make up such a processor, and this, in turn, requires scrupulous optimization of the shader code and the perfect work of the thread manager. However, a huge amount of work on improving the latter has already been done in the design and implementation of the cores of the Radeon HD 5000 family into silicon, and as is already known from the results of numerous studies of the performance of this family, it was done for good reason.

Curiously, a second thread manager appeared on the Barts flowchart. Given that only one Ultra-Threaded Dispatch Processor (UTDP) block is shown on the official Cypress diagram, one would assume that the increase in the number of UTDPs to two, one for each array of SIMD cores, was undertaken in order to further reduce downtime computing power and optimization of the load of stream processors, which, coupled with an increased clock speed, should have provided Barts with the opportunity to fully compete with Cypress.

However, we managed to clarify this issue. The above RV870 block diagram was simplified, while in fact, Cypress also has two UTDP blocks, each served by its own rasterizer. There is also a switch connecting them for optimal load distribution; this whole system, without any visible changes, migrated to Barts silicon. Otherwise, the layout of the new core has not changed much. The basic unit in Barts is still the SIMD core, which includes 16 computing processors (80 ALUs in total). Each such core is serviced by its own logic, has its own local data share (its size, apparently, has remained the same - 32 KB), an 8 KB first-level cache, and is associated with four texture processors. The developers did not touch upon the rather complex cache system, however, the very number of SIMD cores in Barts was reduced, so its volume changed accordingly. At the moment, it is not known how many SIMD cores are physically present in the new processor, we only know that 14 SIMD cores are active in the Radeon HD 6870, and 12 in the Radeon HD 6850.

In pursuit of simplification, the Barts computing part has lost support for double precision calculations, which also indicates that the Radeon HD 6800 is more likely an evolution of the Radeon HD 5700 than a direct replacement for the Radeon HD 5800. This feature, apparently, will remain the prerogative more powerful Radeon HD 6900, the heart of which will be a chip under the aggressive code name Cayman. Thus, the Radeon HD 6800 looks very doubtful as a GPGPU platform, at least for serious calculations. However, since programs for home consumers do not use the FP64 format, but rely on FP32, the lack of support for double precision calculations will not affect the target audience of new products.

Radeon HD 6800: Second generation DirectX 11 tessellator

Since the advent of DirectX 11, tessellation has become a standard feature, but while the Radeon HD 5000's architecture met all the requirements of the new API, it was tessellation that was its weak point from the very beginning. We can say that this feature was implemented in the Radeon HD 5000 "for show". While Nvidia had no DirectX 11 solutions in its arsenal, this was not a significant problem, especially since there were practically no games with tessellation support on the market, however, with the advent of the Fermi architecture, the situation changed, since solutions based on it had a significantly higher geometry processing speed, which was clearly seen in the Stone Giant and Unigine Heaven Benchmark benchmarks, as well as in the Metro 2033 game.

And if earlier tessellation was an interesting, but non-standard and practically unused feature by game developers, then with the release of DirectX 11 it became the de facto industry standard, and in order not to lose to Nvidia in this area, AMD had to work on improving the tessellation unit in the new generation of Radeon HD .

AMD already has 8 generations of tessellation technology, however, it would be more correct to say that the Barts core contains a DX11-compatible second generation tessellation unit, since all generations “before DirectX 11” can be ignored - they have never found wide support by software developers.

Before we jump into Barts' improvements to tessellation, let's take a look at the entire DirectX 11 tessellation pipeline.

In short: the hull shader is concerned with calculating the tessellation parameters for each face of the patch (ranging from 2 to 64), determining how many faces each should be split into; the tessellator calculates the coordinates of each new vertex; domain shader sends all information (texture coordinates, UVW coordinates, etc.) about all vertices down the pipeline. Optionally, the hull shader can convert triangular patch breakpoints to square patch breakpoints, allowing data to be transferred directly from HS to DS.

As you can see, the tessellation process is quite complex in itself, which, as a result, means that the ability of the tessellator itself to split primitives (patches) into several parts is not one of the performance limiting factors.

The new tessellation block of the second (or seventh, according to AMD classification) generation contains a number of improvements, but not for the entire tessellation pipeline. The developers have optimized the flow control for domain shaders and resized the queues and buffers so that the peak performance of the new tessellator reaches its maximum precisely at relatively low tessellation levels. In other words, it is not for nothing that AMD warns so actively about the dangers of excessive tessellation with a polygon size of less than 16 pixels - it seems that the Barts tesselator achieves peak performance at this (or larger) triangle size.

This kind of comment may be an attempt to devalue the lag of Norther Islands GPUs with extremely aggressive tessellation from Fermi-architecture chips, which incorporate many PolyMorph geometry engines. On the other hand, excessive tessellation in games can be harmful, since the generation of each new triangle entails an increase in the calculation of color values, the number of texture fetches, etc. Modern graphics processors work with tiles of 2 * 2 pixels, that is, it is desirable to make each polygon 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 (and so on) pixels in size. As soon as the polygon is less than four pixels, there is a huge slowdown, as the GPU is actually forced to work with a large number of tiles. Thus, with a polygon size of one pixel, the performance drop in modern GPUs can be catastrophic, and the gain in detail is almost imperceptible in real gaming conditions.

According to official statements, the improvements made to the Barts tesselator architecture required a minimal increase in the number of transistors, but at the same time made it possible to achieve a twofold increase in the performance of this unit on some synthetic tasks. This statement, like any other, needs to be verified by practice. If the performance during tessellation has really grown so significantly, and not in synthetic, but in real tasks, then the Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 has only PhysX support and very specific software that uses the Nvidia CUDA platform instead of OpenCL or DirectCompute.

As for the "eighth generation" of tessellators, it is also the third in the correct DirectX 11 classification - it will be implemented only in the Cayman (Radeon HD 6900), and here AMD promises a threefold increase in performance compared to Cypress. It is quite possible that in future chips AMD engineers will focus on increasing the performance of the tessellator itself, perhaps on optimizing the work of hull shaders. In future architectures - Sourthern Islands, Hecatonchires, etc. we should expect changes at the level of organization of the tessellation pipeline itself; for example, in the direction of what Nvidia Fermi offers, where each large array of stream processors has its own tessellator, which optimizes data flows.

Morphological AA - DirectCompute improves graphics quality

Other innovations include support for a new type of full-screen anti-aliasing - the so-called morphological anti-aliasing (MAA or MLAA).

AMD's official presentation does not reveal the details of the new algorithm or any technical details of its implementation in the ATI Radeon graphics processor. However, information about it can be found in the corresponding publication (http://visual-computing.intel-research.net/publications/papers/2009/mlaa/mlaa.pdf) of Intel, which created it for anti-aliasing of images drawn by the tracing method. rays. We don't know exactly how this algorithm is implemented in the Radeon HD 6800, however, the general principles of its operation are the same for CPU and GPU.

According to the publication, the MLAA algorithm finds certain structures on the rendered frame and mixes colors along the edges of these structures using certain rules that depend on the angle of inclination, color, and other features of the structures.
It would be logical to assume that these rules can be set from the driver or even directly by the program. As a consequence, they can continually improve over time.

The MLAA algorithm is somewhat similar to edge-detect CFAA, introduced back in the days of the Radeon HD 2900 XT, however, the essential difference is that MLAA does not detect edges that are very different in color and located at certain angles, but captures all structures with different colors, nearby, and determines the features of these structures. The biggest difference is that edge-detect CFAA uses pixel shaders, which basically means loading the entire rendering pipeline, while MLAA uses compute shaders that don't need to execute texture instructions and use fewer data transactions.

MSAA 8x



MLAA 8x



MLAA 8x + SSTAA

The good news is that using MLAA 4x and MLAA 8x does not blur the textures. The quality of anti-aliasing provided by MLAA 8x is comparable to that of MSAA 8x on many surfaces, with less performance degradation. Without a doubt, MLAA works on all facets.

Unfortunately, the new algorithm has a huge drawback: it does not work with translucent textures. For example, in the case of Fallout: New Vegas, you can see that the fine details of the fence and tree branches are not smoothed, and some of the color information that can be seen when using MSAA is lost. This can be both a fundamental problem of the algorithm as a whole and its specific implementation. Even the demos created by Intel to demonstrate this technology used normal hardware anti-aliasing for alpha textures, which are usually used to simulate vegetation and other objects rich in fine details. Therefore, in order to achieve the maximum quality of anti-aliasing when using MLAA, the activation of transparent texture anti-aliasing (TAA) is also required. As you can see in the corresponding screenshot, the quality of morphological anti-aliasing with TAA enabled is almost perfect. MLAA 8x + supersampling TAA is almost superior in quality to MSAA 8x.

It must also be said that MLAA support is not an exclusive feature available only to owners of the Radeon HD 6800 - due to the use of DirectCompute 11 and local data share, the algorithm works on any other AMD GPU that complies with DirectX 11 specifications. In theory, there are no prohibitions and for its execution on the Nvidia Fermi platform.

Radeon HD 6800: New Anisotropic Filtering Algorithm

The improved anisotropic filtering algorithm also deserves a mention:

Since anisotropic filtering no longer seriously affects the performance of modern GPUs, this allows the use of algorithms in which the quality of filtering does not depend on the angle of the plane. Both AMD and Nvidia have already switched to using high-quality anisotropic filtering, and in the case of the Radeon HD 6800, we are only talking about further improvement of the existing algorithm in order to “soften” transitions between MIP levels so that they are less noticeable on textures with a large number of small ones. details.

Radeon HD 6800 series AFRadeon HD 5800 series AF

Unlike the situation with MLAA, the benefits of the new anisotropic filtering algorithm are clearly visible. Of course, in real games they will not be so obvious, but still any more or less attentive player will see the difference, fortunately, there are a lot of similar scenes in modern games.

Thus, all of the above does not give reason to talk about a "new AMD revolution" - the Radeon HD 6800 is not a radically new development, and, moreover, a "subverter of the foundations", but is a systematic evolutionary development of the successful Radeon HD 5800 architecture.

Radeon HD 6800: DP 1.2, HDMI 1.4a, Stereo-3D and Eyefinity for the masses!

To date, the Radeon HD 5000 display controller has been the most advanced display controller on the market, providing unparalleled switching flexibility, allowing three monitors to be connected to a single card, and up to six monitors on special Eyefinity6 Edition models. Considering that a similar block, which is part of Nvidia's graphics cores, still allows the simultaneous connection of no more than two display devices, there was no particularly urgent need to refine the Eyefinity block. However, the Radeon HD 6800 display controller has received new functionality that makes it completely unattainable for its rival. First of all, it is support for the DisplayPort 1.2 standard, which allows multi-threaded data transfer.

In other words, any representative of the Radeon HD 6800 family now supports the connection of six monitors at the same time, and some of them can be connected via the DisplayPort interface both in the "chain" mode and using a special switch.

There are no special restrictions on the configuration of connected displays: it is permissible to use monitors with different interfaces and resolutions. In addition, DisplayPort 1.2 implements 120Hz refresh rate support for 3D stereo monitors. It is theoretically possible to connect 3D panels via HDMI, since the Barts video controller implements version 1.4a of this interface - however, in practice, at the moment there are neither monitors nor TVs capable of operating in 120 Hz mode via HDMI.

Additionally, the Radeon HD 6800 display controller received a hardware color correction unit that serves to correctly display colors when displaying images on monitors with extended color gamut. In fact, all of the above, coupled with the advanced UVD3 video processor, makes the Radeon HD 6800 the most advanced multimedia solution on the market. At least in theory.

Radeon 6800: Universal Video Decoder 3.0

The new, third version of the Unified Video Decoder video processor is interesting primarily because, in addition to the already implemented support for decoding H.264 and VC-1 formats, full hardware support for DivX / XviD decoding has been added, as well as support for entropy decoding for the MPEG-2 format. In addition, the chip can decode HD video in Adobe Flash 10.1 format. Declared support for hardware decoding Blu-ray 3D, but this is not as clear as it looks in the presentation.

Formally, the ability to simultaneously decode two video streams in 1080p format, required by the Blu-ray 3D standard, is also implemented in Radeon HD 5800/5700/5600/5500 video processors. However, in practice, everything is somewhat more complicated. The fact is that although the MPEG4-MVC codec is based on MPEG4-AVC (H.264), when decoding it is necessary to take into account the dependence of two visible frames on each other. In other words, despite the fact that the cards of previous generations can simultaneously decode two streams of 40 Mbps each, they are not able to synchronize them in hardware to obtain a three-dimensional effect. Obviously, software synchronization is quite possible, however, as AMD modestly hints, UVDs of previous generations were not “qualified” for decoding and playing Blu-ray 3D, which in practice may mean that the company is unwilling to refine the software and / or BIOS for HD 5000 series products .

AMD also claims that the Radeon HD 6800 is capable of scoring 198 points in the HQV 2.0 test with a maximum score of 210 points, but this loud statement needs to be verified, as well as whether the new product outperforms solutions based on the Radeon HD 5000 architecture in this test.

Like its predecessors, the Radeon HD 6800 fully supports secure audio streaming and can deliver 7.1-channel audio (192 kHz and 24 bits) at up to 6.144 Mbps in AC3, DTS, Dolby True HD, DTS HD/DTS HD Master Audio, LPCM (Linear Pulse Code Modulation) and others via the HDMI interface for further decoding by an external receiver.

As mentioned above, all the innovations do not make the new AMD graphics core revolutionary - they only complement and expand the capabilities that were originally laid down when designing the Radeon HD 5000 architecture.

On this note, we can complete the theoretical part of today's review and move on to the practical one - acquainting readers with the material incarnations of the new generation of Radeon HD. By tradition, let's start with the older model.

Radeon HD 6870: PCB Design and Cooling Design

Even outwardly, the new generation of Radeon HD differs significantly from the old one - smooth contours and rounded corners have been replaced by a strict, chopped design with sharp corners. It cannot be said that the new design of the cooling system casing has any effect, however, under no circumstances should you confuse the Radeon HD 6870 with the Radeon HD 5870 or HD 5850, besides, the new product is one and a half to two centimeters longer than its predecessor:

Radeon HD 6870Radeon HD 5850

Unlike the Radeon HD 5870, the Radeon HD 6870 does not have a metal heat spreader on the back of the PCB. This part of the novelty looks rather ordinary, and no interesting design features worthy of special mention were found here, with the exception of one CrossFire connector versus two in the Radeon HD 5800 family. Of course, the most interesting is hidden inside. After dismantling the cooling system, the following picture appeared to our eyes:

The first thing that catches your eye is the non-standard, to say the least, layout of the power subsystem. The four-phase GPU power regulator is not located at the rear of the PCB, as usual, but at the front, just behind the DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort connectors. It is built using integrated assemblies that combine power MOSFETs and their drivers. It is possible that such a strange layout was chosen in order to increase the efficiency of cooling of power elements, but, one way or another, such a solution has never been seen in our practice before.

The heart of the GPU power regulator is the CHL8214 controller from CHiL Semiconductor. These controllers are quite rare on board modern graphics cards - until today, we have known the only case in the face of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 480. According to the datasheet, CHL8214 is the top model in the line.

Memory power management is handled by a modest uP6122 chip from uPI Semiconductor. She and the power elements accompanying her are located in a more familiar place on the printed circuit board, in the same place as the connectors for connecting external power. Both connectors are six-pin connectors with a recommended load limit of 75W, and given the simpler design of Barts compared to the RV870, they should be enough to power the Radeon HD 6870, despite the increased voltage of the graphics core to 1.175V. The developers were forced to go for its increase in order to ensure the stable operation of the graphics processor at a frequency of 900 MHz. The design of the printed circuit board does not provide for the possibility of installing eight-pin power connectors with increased load capacity.

If the design of the Radeon HD 5870 used memory chips manufactured by Samsung Semiconductor, then the Radeon HD 6870 is equipped with H5GQ1H24AFR chips manufactured by Hynix. The chips have a capacity of 1 Gbit (32Mx32) and are designed for a supply voltage of 1.5 V, and the T2C suffix in the marking indicates a nominal frequency of 1250 (5000) MHz. In total, eight of them are installed on the board; thus, the total volume of the bank of local video memory is currently standard 1024 MB. With a 256-bit access bus at a frequency of 1050 (4200) MHz, the Radeon HD 6870 memory subsystem has a peak bandwidth of 134.4 GB / s, which practically corresponds to that of the GeForce GTX 470. will.

The Barts crystal has an unusual rectangular shape and is significantly smaller than the RV870. The heat-distributing cover is not used in the GPU design, as in all ATI/AMD solutions; protective measures are limited by the presence of a metal frame on the packaging of the crystal. For the first time in the history of the Radeon family, there is no engraving with the ATI logo on the crystal surface - now the AMD logo flaunts in its place, since, as we already know, Advanced Micro Devices made a decision (in our opinion, quite rashly) to abandon the ATI brand. The tradition of marking, incomprehensible to the average user, however, has been completely preserved - only the date of manufacture of a given batch of crystals can be gleaned from it. In our case, this is the 36th week of 2010, which fell at the beginning of September, that is, by that time, AMD already had solid batches of Barts capable of operating at a frequency of 900 MHz.

The GPU-Z utility version 0.4.7 is already able to work with Barts and correctly recognizes the configuration of the new graphics chip, except for the revision number. The absence of a checkmark in the OpenCL checkbox is due to the fact that the regular version of the AMD Catalyst drivers was used for tests, and not the APP Edition, which adds support for OpenCL. The only noticeable disadvantage of GPU-Z is that the utility does not display the number of texture processors, but their number corresponds to the official specifications on the Radeon HD 6870 - 56 TMU. Another utility beloved by enthusiasts, MSI Afterburner, also quite correctly detects new Radeon HD solutions, but in version 2.0.0 it is not yet able to control the voltage of the graphics core. The diagnostic panel clearly shows that in power-saving mode, the GPU frequency drops from 900 to 100 MHz, and the memory frequency drops to 300 (1200) MHz. This should provide high efficiency in modes that lightly load the GPU.

As mentioned, the new Radeon HD family offers unparalleled connectivity. And indeed, as many as five connectors settled on the mounting plate: a pair of DVI-I and Mini DisplayPort ports and an HDMI connector. Judging by the markings, only the lower DVI-I port provides the possibility of analog connection through the appropriate adapter. As for the DisplayPort ports, they support DP ++ mode, that is, they can emulate the operation of the DVI interface when an inexpensive passive adapter is connected. The configuration of monitors connected to the Radeon HD 6800 can be almost any, as was described in the theoretical part of the review. As far as CrossFire support is concerned, the new cards have only one connector, and it seems that combining more than two Radeon HD 6800s is not supported. Most likely, this feature is reserved for the more powerful Radeon HD 6900.

The design of the cooling system has not undergone fundamental changes, and there are no revolutionary innovations in it. An aluminum plate, equipped with thermal pads in the right places, is responsible for cooling the memory chips and power elements of the power system, and an aluminum radiator on a copper base removes heat from the graphics core.

The radiator has a rather modest heat transfer area, but is equipped with three heat pipes at once, two of which have a diameter of 8 millimeters. The heatsink is not mechanically connected to the above-mentioned frame and is attached to the board by means of four spring-loaded screws and a cross-shaped elastic plate, which ensures a reliable clamping of the base to the crystal. A layer of dark gray thermal paste is applied at the contact point. The picture clearly shows the profiling aerodynamic ribs of the casing, directing part of the air flow towards the side wall of the casing, since the space on the mounting plate for the ventilation slots is limited due to the large number of connectors. It cannot be said that the described design makes an impressive impression, but given that Barts is simpler than Cypress, it should have a lower level of heat dissipation, which means that such a cooling system should be enough for it, despite the increased core supply voltage. The only question is the comfort of the acoustic characteristics.

Radeon HD 6850 PCB Design and Cooling Design

The younger model of the new family is somewhat shorter than the older one, however, the power connector is located not on the top side of the board, but on the end, so with the cable connected, the dimensions of the Radeon HD 6870 and Radeon HD 6850 can be considered the same. The casing of the cooling system is made in the same chopped style.

Both the front view and the rear view do not reveal anything of interest to the researcher, at least until the cooling system is dismantled. Like the older model of the new family, the younger one has only one CrossFire connector.

Unlike the Radeon HD 6870, the Radeon HD 6850 uses a conventional PCB layout, with the power subsystem placed in the tail section. Despite the reduced clock frequency and GPU supply voltage, the power regulator is also built on a four-phase circuit.

The same controller is responsible for its operation as in the older model - CHL8214 manufactured by CHiL Semiconductor.

The element base of the memory power supply stabilizer, which uses the uP6122 microcircuit, also completely coincides. This part of the power subsystem is located in front of the printed circuit board. The Radeon HD 6850 has only one and the same six-pin power connector, which means that the load on the power section of the PCI Express slot promises to be much higher than in the case of the Radeon HD 6870, which is partly offset by the lower core voltage in 3D mode - 1.05 V versus 1.175 V. The design of the board does not provide for the possibility of installing an eight-pin connector.

The memory uses the same microcircuits as in the design of the Radeon HD 6870 - Hynix H5GQ1H24AFR-T2C, capable of operating at a frequency of 1250 (5000) MHz. For the Radeon HD 6850, the use of such chips is like shooting sparrows from a cannon, since the standard memory frequency for this model is 1000 (4000) MHz. With a 256-bit access bus, these parameters provide a throughput of 128 GB / s. The total size of the local memory bank is 1024 MB. In power-saving mode, the memory frequency is automatically reduced to 300 (1200) MHz.

The marking of the GPU chip looks a little different than in the case of the Radeon HD 6870. The last line is made in a different font, and the first one, which indicates the time of manufacture, contains the letter U. Unfortunately, one can only guess what it means. It is only known for sure that this instance of Barts was manufactured a week later than the one described above, installed in our copy of the Radeon HD 6870.

The core configuration is determined correctly, we only add that the Radeon HD 6850 has only 48 texture processors active out of the physically available 56. Just like in the previous case, MSI Afterburner cannot control the voltage of the graphics core, but at least it shows that the energy-saving technologies work correctly: the idle GPU frequency is reduced to 100 MHz, and the memory frequency is reduced to 300 (900) MHz. We remind you that the Radeon HD 6850 core does not need to work at ultra-high frequencies, so its supply voltage is lowered and is 1.05 V.

The connector configuration of the younger model of the Radeon HD 6800 family is the same as that of the older one: the card carries a pair of DVI-I and DisplayPort ports with support for DP ++ and multi-threaded connection, as well as an HDMI port that meets 1.4a specifications. Complementing this splendor is the only CrossFire connector that allows you to combine a pair of Radeon HD 6850 into a single multi-GPU tandem; most likely, asymmetric configurations with the Radeon HD 6870 are also supported.

In general terms, the design of the Radeon HD 6850 cooling system resembles the design of the Radeon HD 6870 cooler described above, however, it is noticeably simpler: the radiator has a significantly smaller heat transfer area and is equipped with a single flat U-shaped heat pipe at the base. The dimensions of the radiator do not inspire respect at all. As with the Radeon HD 6870, the shroud has aerodynamic fins that direct some of the airflow towards the side cover of the system case.

An additional element of the cooling system is a figured plate with low finning, which removes heat from the memory chips and power assemblies of the power stabilizer, for which there are heat-conducting pads in the right places. This plate is attached to the board separately from the heatsink and plastic shroud. This cooling system does not look capable of any serious feats, especially since its design uses a less powerful and more compact fan, however, the Radeon HD 6850 graphics core operates in less stressful conditions than its twin installed in the Radeon HD 6870. We will try to find out how efficient the cooling systems of the new Radeon HD family are in the next chapter of our review.

Power consumption, thermal conditions, noise and overclocking

The electrical characteristics of any new graphics solution are of great interest, and we always pay close attention to this aspect. The new Radeon HD models did not pass the traditional testing either - they were subjected to a standard testing procedure on a measurement platform with the following configuration:

Processor Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (3 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB x 9, LGA775)
Motherboard DFI LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R/G (ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200)
Memory PC2-1066 (2x2 GB, 1066 MHz)
Power supply Enermax Liberty ELT620AWT (power 620 W)
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
CyberLink PowerDVD 9 Ultra/Serenity BD (1080p VC-1, 20 Mbps)
Crysis Warhead
OCCT Perestroika 3.1.0

This stand is equipped with a special measuring module, described in the review " Power consumption of computers: so how many watts do you need?". Its use allows obtaining the most complete data on the electrical characteristics of modern graphics cards in various modes. As usual, the following tests were used to create a load on the video adapter in various modes:

CyberLink PowerDVD 9: FullScreen, hardware acceleration enabled
Crysis Warhead: 1600x1200, FSAA 4x, DirectX 10/Enthusiast, frost map
OCCT Perestroika GPU: 1600x1200, FullScreen, Shader Complexity 8

For each mode, with the exception of the simulation of the ultimate load in OCCT, measurements were taken for 60 seconds; To avoid card failure due to power overload, for the OCCT: GPU test, the test time was limited to 10 seconds. Using this technique, we were able to obtain the following results:

As expected, the Radeon HD 6870 turned out to be significantly more economical than the Radeon HD 5870, but the increased GPU voltage was not in vain for it - in 3D mode, the power consumption level turned out to be almost the same as that of the Radeon HD 5850. where the load on the core is not too strong, the efficiency of the novelty is much higher. The load on the +3.3 V power line turned out to be unexpectedly high, which has not been used in modern graphics cards for quite a long time. Otherwise, the behavior of the Radeon HD 6870 in terms of power consumption is quite predictable; in particular, from the very beginning we assumed approximately equal load on the power connectors. And so it turned out; a small excess attributable to the connector, indicated in the table as "12V 6/8-pin", can be ignored.

With the Radeon HD 6850, the picture is more interesting: numerous repeated measurements in 2D mode invariably gave results in the region of 30-33 W, despite the fact that the core frequency, according to MSI Afterburner, really dropped to the required 100 MHz. Apparently, in the pre-sale sample of the card that fell into our hands, PowerPlay was not working correctly; for example, in idle mode, the system could not reduce the GPU voltage, which led to an increased level of power consumption in the absence of a real load. The same applies to loads like high-definition video decoding - the result was also higher than that of the Radeon HD 6870. But in 3D mode, where the core voltage is maximum, correct results were obtained. Here, the Radeon HD 6850 consumes significantly less than its counterpart, which is quite natural given the lower frequency, lower supply voltage, and fewer active GPU units. The nature of consumption on individual lines in the Radeon HD 6850 is similar, however, due to the presence of only one power connector, this single connector is loaded much more heavily and in the synthetic OCCT test, the power consumption on this channel reaches 80 watts.

So, from the point of view of efficiency indicators, the new Radeon HD family turned out to be very successful, except for an unpleasant failure in the PowerPlay logic of the Radeon HD 6850 in some modes, but this behavior is unlikely to be observed in serial cards supplied to retail chains. But even with this correction in 3D mode, the younger model consumes a little more than the much more modest Radeon HD 5770 in terms of performance. As for the older model, it is at least as efficient as the Radeon HD 5850, being, according to AMD's promises, faster than the latter. in modern games. Not a bad claim for leadership in its class, especially since the Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 1GB is a significantly less economical solution.

The new Radeon HD models demonstrate a very intense thermal mode of operation, which is not least the merit of not very efficient reference cooling systems. The merit is doubtful, but, in fairness, it should be noted that most reference coolers of powerful graphics cards are characterized by such behavior, while non-standard systems often demonstrate much more impressive performance. Thus, the Radeon HD 6870 and Radeon HD 6850 do not differ in coolness, but this is true only for the reference versions of these cards. They will probably be followed by solutions equipped with more successful cooling systems. In addition, values ​​in the region of 75-80 degrees Celsius have long been the norm for modern GPUs, and they should not be afraid in any way.

The situation with the noise level is ambiguous: if in the absence of a serious load, the new Radeon HD 6800 models behave very quietly, practically merging with the background noise of a running system (38 dBA for the test lab), then when running resource-intensive applications that actively use the graphics processor, their fans quickly increase the speed and the cards become clearly audible. The younger model of the family, according to the sound level meter, is somewhat quieter than the older one, but there is no noticeable difference by ear, at least according to our feelings. It cannot be said that the noise level is too high - after all, any high-performance gaming cards make quite a lot of noise, but it should be understood that when purchasing a Radeon HD 6870 or Radeon HD 6850, you will not get a solution that is silent in all modes, at least when it comes to We are talking about models equipped with a reference cooling system.

Exploring the capabilities of the Radeon HD 6800 in HD video playback

The already traditional improvement of the UVD engine with each new generation makes it clear that the developers are positioning the AMD Radeon HD 6800 also for HD video lovers. Let's see how good the Barts GPU is for multimedia tasks in theory and in practice.

So, UVD 3.0 allows hardware decoding of streams in DivX/XviD, MPEG2-HD, MPEG4-AVC, MPEG4-MVC, WMV-HD, VC-1, Adobe Flash 10.1 and some other formats. It also supports many HDMI audio formats, as well as hardware post-processing for SD and HD video. In other words, the UVD 3.0 video engine is not much different from its predecessor and is its logical evolutionary development.

At first glance, it seems rather strange to introduce support for DivX/XviD hardware decoding and add entropy decoding support for MPEG2 in 2010. However, it must be understood that UVD 3.0 was primarily developed not only for graphics cards with a maximum consumption of more than 100 W, but for further integration into various mobile graphics or central processors. When decoding video, the consumption of UVD 3.0 should be less than the consumption of a higher performance CPU. One can only be surprised that the Radeon HD 6850 consumes almost 40 watts when playing HD video: not a very serious load for a desktop system, but significant for a mobile one.

Obviously, the owner of a desktop PC is hardly as important as power consumption as such. A low cooling system volume and a generally comfortable acoustic level are necessary (alas, the reference Radeon HD 6850 is not a really quiet graphics card), but video playback quality is equally important, both HD at native resolution and SD when interpolated to 1080p resolution .

In this part of our article, we will look at how well UVD 3.0 and Radeon HD 6850 can decode Blu-ray discs, as well as play high-definition video and interpolate standard video to FullHD level.

Test platform configuration and testing methodology

The study of the quality and performance of Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 and other graphic processors during playback and decoding of video streams was carried out on a test system with the following configuration:

Processor Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 (3.16 GHz, 6 MB cache, 1333 MHz bus)
Motherboard Gigabyte EG45M-DS2H (Intel G45)
Memory OCZ Technology PC2-8500 (2x1 GB, 1066 MHz, 5-5-5-15, 2T)
Western Digital hard drive (640 GB, SATA-150, 16 MB buffer)
Chassis Antec Fusion 430W
Monitor Samsung 244T (24”, maximum resolution [email protected] Hz)
Optical drive LG GGC-H20L (Blu-ray, HD DVD, DVD)
ATI Catalyst 10.6/10.9/10.10 for ATI Radeon
Nvidia ForceWare 197.45/258.96/260.63/260.99
CyberLink PowerDVD 10
Microsoft Windows Performance Monitor
Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit

The following graphics cards took part in the study:

AMD Radeon HD 6850
ATI Radeon HD 5750
ATI Radeon HD 5670
ATI Radeon HD 5570
ATI Radeon HD 4770
Nvidia GeForce GTS 450
Nvidia GeForce GTX 460
Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT/GTS 240
Nvidia GeForce GT 240

The following tools were used to evaluate the quality of video playback in standard (SD) and high (HD) resolutions:

IDT/Silicon Optix HQV 2.0 DVD
IDT/Silicon Optix HQV2.0 Blu-ray

The driver settings remained unchanged. However, in accordance with the requirements of the HQV test suite, the levels of noise reduction and detail enhancement were increased to medium (50-60%) in drivers, which did not affect the results of multi-cadence tests.

Given the interest of owners of expensive sound systems in the results of playback of uncompressed audio streams, we included DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby Digital TrueHD (where available) to increase the load on the CPU in all played passages.

Taking into account the fact that tests are carried out on the Windows 7 operating system without disabling background services, spikes in the maximum level of CPU usage should not be taken critically. The most important parameters are the average parameters of the level of busy processor time. As a result, it makes sense to remember that a difference of 1-2% does not indicate an unequivocal advantage or disadvantage of one or another accelerator in comparison with a competitor.

The following movies were used to estimate CPU usage when playing FullHD video (1920x1080), as well as FullHD video with Picture-in-Picture enabled (BonusView in the Blu-ray Disc Association classification):

"Alien Vs. Predator": MPEG2 HD Part 18
"Constantine": VC1 PIP Part 25
"Dark Knight": VC1 Part 1 (Uncredited)
Death Race: MPEG4-AVC/H.264 PIP Part 14
"The Day After Tomorrow": MPEG4-AVC/H264 Part 14

Video playback quality

HQV 2.0 test packages provide an opportunity to subjectively assess the quality of performance of a number of video processing operations by a graphics processor. As already mentioned, the test is very detailed and focused on comparing Blu-ray/DVD players (built on the basis of specialized video processors), as a result of which modern GPUs are far from always able to show really good results.

HQV 2.0 DVD

The specifics of the current situation on the video market is such that few people watch ordinary DVD movies on TVs with a "native" resolution for DVD, and more and more - on screens with FullHD (1920x1080) resolution. Thus, the main task of the video processor is not so much the correct display of content, but the ability to qualitatively interpolate, correct movements, reduce noise, increase the clarity of details, and so on. The video excerpts presented in the HQV 2.0 DVD are aimed precisely at understanding how well modern chips can perform the above operations separately.

At the announcement of UVD 3.0, AMD did not say anything about increasing image quality. Apparently, not in vain: the interpolation quality of the Radeon HD 6850 fully corresponds to its predecessors.

HQV 2.0 Blu-Ray

Very similar to the HQV 2.0 DVD, the HQV 2.0 Blu-ray test suite gives you the opportunity to subjectively explore similar video processor capabilities at high resolutions.

As in the previous case, we do not see a single difference from the test results of predecessors, which is generally not bad. The results of the Radeon HD 5000/6800 are traditionally higher than the competing Nvidia GeForce solutions, and most of its shortcomings (test results with 0 points) relate to low quality content. It is unlikely that users who watch HD movies from Blu-ray discs, and not try to stretch the pseudo-HD image from iTunes or similar services to full screen, will be dissatisfied with the image quality on the Radeon HD 6800.

With the release of the Radeon HD 6850 series and the Catalyst 10.10 drivers, AMD began to set the noise removal and edge enhancement settings to a rather aggressive default level. We find it difficult to say why this was done, but it is obvious that this maximizes the results of the corresponding test videos in HQV 2.0. Unfortunately, AMD's custom noise reduction technology is far from perfect, even at 50% it doesn't so much eliminate noise artifacts as it blurs the picture, making many 720p videos look like VHS tapes.

Given the fact that real-life films contain many scenes shot in different locations with different lighting and sometimes different cameras, the value of video processors lies in the ability to adjust themselves to a particular scene on the fly. In this regard, we would recommend users to check the noise reduction and sharpness settings in the default drivers.

Interestingly, the HQV 2.0 Blu-ray test did not work on the Radeon HD 6850 graphics card without being updated to the latest version. At the same time, all films were played perfectly. A new version of Cyberlink PowerDVD 10 with support for AMD Radeon HD 6800 and Blu-ray 3D is due out this month.

When considering the results of HQV tests, it should be remembered that the method of scoring is extremely subjective and therefore a small difference between the final scores of different cards can hardly be considered critical.

Blu-ray playback

Consider how successfully the Radeon HD 6800 is able to offload the system's CPU from decoding high-definition video.

The novelty does not show any special changes when playing the films "Dark Knight" and "Constantine": it shows very good, but not outstanding results.

The average CPU load when playing our MPEG4-AVC movies for the Radeon HD 6850 is at a very decent level - about 7%. Moreover, the maximum performance is somewhat reduced, which reduces the possibility of jerks during playback.

Judging by the received data, decoding MPEG2 HD entropy by GPU significantly reduces the average and maximum CPU load times. As you can see, the HD 6850 is a clear leader among the Radeon series in this indicator.

Multimedia capabilities: what is the result

Like most predecessors, the AMD Radeon HD 6850 chip is an exceptional home theater graphics card.

Supporting hardware decoding of video streams in DivX/XviD, MPEG2-HD, MPEG4-AVC, MPEG4-MVC, WMV-HD, VC-1, Adobe Flash 10.1 and a number of other formats, being able to transfer all common types of audio formats via HDMI 1.4a, and with quality SD and HD video hardware post-processing, the AMD Radeon HD 6850 is the most advanced card on the market in terms of multimedia capabilities. Unfortunately, the Radeon HD 6850 consumes a lot of power and is quite bulky, so you should not hope for the appearance of such passively cooled graphics cards. The HD 6870 is so long that it won't fit into any reasonably sized HTPC case.

The quality of Blu-ray playback and DVD interpolation of the Radeon HD 6850 is better than competing solutions in the same class, but still not perfect according to HQV 2.0. Apparently, the developers will have to modify the Avivo engine in the chip or the drivers in order to show significantly better results in the HQV 2.0 tests.

It should be noted separately that the 3D stereo output technology - AMD HD3D - supports the output of Blu-ray 3D movies on a very wide range of TVs and projectors without the need to purchase additional software (except for a player like Cyberlink PowerDVD Deluxe with Blu-ray 3D support). In the case of the competing 3D Vision, you also need to buy a special driver from Nvidia.

Test platform configuration and performance testing methodology

Testing of the new Radeon HD 6800 models under conditions as close to real as possible was carried out on a universal test platform with the following configuration:

Processor Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition (3.33 GHz, 6.4 GT/s QPI)
Cooler Scythe SCKTN-3000 "Katana 3"
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme (Intel X58)
Memory Corsair XMS3-12800C9 (3x2 GB, 1333 MHz, 9-9-9-24, 2T)
Samsung Spinpoint F1 Hard Drive (1TB/32MB SATA II)
Ultra X4 850W Modular Power Supply (Rated 850W)
Dell 3007WFP Monitor (30”, maximum resolution [email protected] Hz)
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

The following versions of the ATI Catalyst and Nvidia GeForce drivers were used:

ATI Catalyst 10.10a (with hotfix) for ATI Radeon HD
Nvidia GeForce 260.89 WHQL for Nvidia GeForce

The drivers themselves were configured as follows:

ATI Catalyst:

Anti-Aliasing: Use application settings/Standard Filter
Morphological filtering: Off
Texture Filtering Quality: High Quality
Surface Format Optimization: Off
Wait for vertical refresh: Always Off
Anti-Aliasing Mode: Quality

NVIDIA GeForce:

Texture filtering - Quality: High quality
Vertical sync: Force off
Antialiasing - Transparency: Multisampling
CUDA-GPUs: All
Set PhysX configuration: Auto-select
Ambient Occlusion: Off
Other settings: default

The test package included the following games and applications:

3D First Person Shooters:

Aliens vs. Predator (1.0.0.0, Benchmark)
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (1.0.1.0, Fraps)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (1.0.182, Fraps)
Crysis Warhead (1.1.1.711, Benchmark)
Far Cry 2 (1.03, Benchmark)
Metro 2033 (Ranger Pack, 1.02, Benchmark)
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (1.6.02, Fraps)

Three-dimensional shooters with a third-person view:

Just Cause 2 (1.0.0.1, Benchmark/Fraps)
Lost Planet 2 (1.1, Benchmark)

RPG:

Mass Effect 2 (1.01, Fraps)

Simulators:

Colin McRae: Dirt 2 (1.1, Benchmark)
Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. (1.03, Benchmark)
Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. 2 (1.01, Benchmark)

Strategy games:

Battle Forge (1.2, Benchmark)
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty (1.0.2, Fraps)

Semi-synthetic and synthetic tests:

Futuremark 3DMark Vantage (1.0.2.1)
Final Fantasy XIV Official Benchmark (1.0.0.0, Fraps)
Unigine Heaven Benchmark (2.0)

Each of the games included in the test software suite has been tuned to provide the highest possible level of detail. Applications that support tessellation have taken advantage of this feature.

The fundamental refusal to manually modify any configuration files means that only the tools available in the game itself to any uninitiated user were used for configuration. Testing was carried out at resolutions of 1600x900, 1920x1080 and 2560x1600. Except where noted otherwise, standard 16x anisotropic filtering was complemented by 4x MSAA anti-aliasing. Activation of anti-aliasing was carried out either by the means of the game itself, or, in their absence, was forced using the appropriate settings of the ATI Catalyst and Nvidia GeForce drivers.

In addition to the Radeon HD 6870 and Radeon HD 6850, the following graphics cards were tested:

ATI Radeon HD 5870
ATI Radeon HD 5850
Nvidia GeForce GTX 470
Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 1GB
Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 768MB

To obtain performance data, we used the testing tools built into the game with the obligatory use of original test clips, and, if possible, fixing data on the minimum performance. In the absence of the above tools, the Fraps 3.2.3 utility was used in manual mode with a three-time test pass, fixing the minimum values ​​and then averaging the final result.

Playtests: Aliens vs. Predator

The improved tessellation block performs well. Of course, the new Radeon HD 6800 cannot reach the GeForce GTX 470 with all the desire, however, the older model quite successfully reaches the level of the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, and in resolutions from 1920x1080 it outperforms it in minimum performance; however, only indicators in 1600x900 can be called more or less comfortable. Thanks to architectural improvements, even the Radeon HD 6850 is ahead of the Radeon HD 5870 in this game. But this is just the beginning.

Playtests: Battlefield: Bad Company 2

The results are in good agreement with AMD's claims. With a smaller number of functional blocks, the Radeon HD 6870 successfully competes with the Radeon HD 5850, however, this merit is almost entirely due to a serious difference in the frequency of these graphics card processors. The junior model of the new family, the Radeon HD 6850 successfully exceeds its plan, outpacing the GeForce GTX 460 768MB and reaching the level of the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. Considering the lower price, this makes the Radeon HD 6850 a very attractive solution. But while this is only the second game test, what will happen next?

Playtests: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

In the third test, the Radeon HD 6870 was able to fulfill AMD's promises - to show the same as the Radeon HD 5850 - only at a resolution of 1600x900, and starting from 1920x1080, it began to slightly lag behind the Radeon HD 5850 more and more. Fortunately, the average and minimum values ​​remained at a comfortable level even at 2560x1600. Given the different price ranges, hardly anyone would seriously want to change the ATI Radeon HD 5850 to the AMD Radeon HD 6850, given that there are not so many games that use tessellation yet. However, it is significant that the 6800 series is sometimes slower than the 5800.

Playtests: Crysis Warhead

This game, despite the heaviness of its engine, does not use tessellation, so Barts has nowhere to fully reveal their talents. As a result, the older model of the new family is content with the role of the heir to the Radeon HD 5850, while the younger one competes very successfully in high resolutions with the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. Not bad, but taking into account the exactingness of the game, it makes no sense from a practical point of view - close to acceptable performance is demonstrated by cards of this class, except perhaps at a resolution of 1600x900.

Playtests: Far Cry 2

Interestingly, despite the 900 MHz core frequency, the Radeon HD 6870 begins to lag behind the Radeon HD 5850 as the resolution increases, and at 2560x1600 this lag reaches already 7%, which may indicate insufficient memory bandwidth; Fortunately, we are talking only about average performance, and the minimum does not change, and in general, both cards have enough headroom to provide acceptable conditions for the player. The fate of the Radeon HD 6850 in this case is competition with the cheaper GeForce GTX 460 768MB, and even then, at a resolution of 1600x900, it does not do very well. However, a resolution of 2560x1600 is also available for the younger model of the new Radeon HD 6800 family.

Gaming Tests: Metro 2033

This game is tested without anti-aliasing. Tessellation is enabled.

The use of the new test with enabled tessellation makes it clear how demanding Metro 2033 is. Even at 1600x900, only the GeForce GTX 470 manages to show over 40 frames per second, with a minimum speed of no more than 12 frames per second, that is, one can only dream of completely comfortable conditions. As for the Radeon HD 6870, the minimum performance advantage over the Radeon HD 5850, which is about 1-3 frames per second, is absolutely not enough to objectively judge the capabilities of the new tessellation unit or other optimizations in Barts.

Once again, we can state that the Radeon HD 6800 is slower than the Radeon HD 5800.

Playtests: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

This test uses DX10.1 and DX11 modes for capable cards. Tessellation is enabled.

In another post-apocalyptic shooter, the new products manage to show more or less the same performance as the Radeon HD 5000. Bearing in mind that S.T.A.L.K.E.R .: Call of Pripyat uses tessellation very conditionally, it cannot be said that the new chips show their potential power here. Quite the contrary: a large number of Radeon HD 5800 executive devices successfully compete with the high frequencies of the Radeon HD 6800.

AMD's Radeon HD 6870 manages to keep up with the performance of the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, whose official price is $40 less, which is not a convincing position. The junior representative of the new line looks good, showing a similar speed to the GeForce GTX 460 768MB.

Playtests: Just Cause 2

The integrated test tools don't output minimum performance information, so we use Fraps to get it.

Tessellation is not implemented in Just Cause 2, however, the option of simulating the behavior of water surfaces by GPU is used. The core of the Radeon HD 6870 operates at a frequency of 900 MHz, which accordingly affects the geometry processing speed. Even if the architectural improvements in Barts touched only the tessellation block, without affecting other blocks related to processing geometry, the difference in such frequency alone is enough to achieve performance in this game almost at the level of the Radeon HD 5870. Considering the price difference of the Radeon HD 6870 and the Radeon HD 5870 is a great result. The Radeon HD 6850 also feels good, but it doesn't set any records anymore, being content with parity with the GeForce GTX 460 768MB in the first two resolutions and providing the ability to comfortably play at 1600x900.

Playtests: Lost Planet 2

The advantages of Barts when performing tessellation are clearly visible: at a resolution of 1600x900, the Radeon HD 6870 is ahead of even the Radeon HD 5870 in minimum performance. provides the same amount, and its counterpart, equipped with 1 GB of video memory, generally maintains a minimum speed at a level close to 30 frames per second, which is beyond the power of either the younger or even the older Radeon HD 6800 model.

Playtests: Mass Effect 2

In this test, full-screen anti-aliasing is forced using the technique described in the Contemporary Graphics Accelerators in Mass Effect 2 review.

Both Radeon HD 6800 models demonstrate impressive results, especially at 2560x1600, where only they and the more expensive (officially $259) and hot GeForce GTX 470 demonstrate a sufficiently high minimum speed. The Radeon HD 5800 family cannot boast of such a thing, despite its superiority over the Radeon HD 6800 family in a number of technical characteristics. Its minimum performance can be called conditionally acceptable, but they do not reach 25 frames per second.

Playtests: Colin McRae: Dirt 2

For cards that support DirectX 11, the appropriate mode is used. Tessellation is enabled.

Despite the new tessellation unit, the Radeon HD 6800 family does not perform as brilliantly in this test as in some others, simply because the tessellation speed is not a bottleneck in this game. Here, the older model naturally competes with the Radeon HD 5850, and not at all with the Radeon HD 5870. The younger representative, the Radeon HD 6850, unfortunately, is quite inferior to both versions of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 460, with the exception of a resolution of 2560x1600, where it manages to achieve parity with the GeForce GTX 460 768MB. However, the lag behind the GeForce GTX 460 1GB is minimal, and the overall performance level demonstrated by the Radeon HD 6850 is quite sufficient for the practical use of this resolution.

Game tests: Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.

For testing, the tools built into the game are used, which do not provide for fixing the minimum indicators. DirectX 10/10.1 modes are used.

In the first part of H.A.W.X. new Radeon HD models once again prove that they are not in vain referred to the next generation - in particular, the Radeon HD 6870 easily catches up with the GeForce GTX 460 1GB at 1920x1080 and even the GeForce GTX 470 at 2560x1600, and this test has always been considered "Nvidia territory". The Radeon HD 6850 is not so successful, but starting from the 1920x1080 mode, it is quite capable of competing with cards based on Nvidia GF104.

Game tests: Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. 2 Preview Benchmark

Before the H.A.W.X. 2, we must note that this application was distributed by Nvidia until October 22, 2010.

This test uses tessellation to render the ground surface. Tessellation increases the number of primitives to 1.5 million per frame, not counting aircraft, trees, and buildings, while the size of a typical primitive is 6 pixels, which is very suboptimal from a number of points of view.

Pretest H.A.W.X. 2 (not the game itself, which hasn't been released yet) returns undeniable leadership to Nvidia's solutions. Yes, the Radeon HD 6870 is ahead of the Radeon HD 5870, and quite significantly, but despite the improved tessellation unit, it is far from even the GeForce GTX 460 768MB, not to mention the more powerful Fermi solutions. The only consolation is the good absolute performance of new products, which allows you to play even at a resolution of 2560x1600.

It should be noted that the preview benchmark H.A.W.X. 2 is heavily criticized by AMD, who claims that this "pre-production" does not show performance comparable to other applications using tessellation. In particular, according to some Internet resources, AMD claims the following:

“It has come to our attention that you may have received an early build of a benchmark based on the upcoming Ubisoft title H.A.W.X. 2. I "m sure you are fully aware that the timing of this benchmark is not coincidental and is an attempt by our competitor to negatively influence your reviews of the AMD Radeon HD 6800-series products. We suggest you do not use this benchmark at present as it has known issues with its implementation of DirectX 11 tessellation and does not serve as a useful indicator of performance for the HD 6800 series. benchmarks will demonstrate how unrepresentative HAWX 2 performance is of real world performance.

AMD has demonstrated to Ubisoft tessellation performance improvements that benefit all GPUs, but the developer has chosen not to implement them in the preview benchmark. For that reason, we are working on a driver-based solution in time for the final release of the game that improves performance without sacrificing image quality. In the meantime we recommend you hold off using the benchmark as it will not provide a useful measure of performance relative to other DirectX 11 games using tessellation".

AMD's annoyance is understandable as H.A.W.X. 2 preview benchmark uses tessellation beyond measure, making it the main performance bottleneck. It's quite interesting to see that H.A.W.X. 2 benchmark runs faster than a real H.A.W.X. game, and also draw certain conclusions based on this.

Game Tests: BattleForge

For cards that support DirectX 11, the appropriate mode is used.

Alas, the problem with the minimum performance of the Radeon HD has not disappeared even in the new generation based on the Barts core. Although the average performance of the Radeon HD 6870 and Radeon HD 6850 is quite high, but the minimum speed is below any criticism, while at 1600x900 even the GeForce GTX 460 768MB is able to maintain this parameter at a level of at least 30 frames per second.

Playtests: StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty

The main achievement of the Radeon HD 6800 in this test is a rather serious breakthrough in minimum performance, especially in comparison with the Radeon HD 5850. Moreover, even the GeForce GTX 470 managed to outperform the older model of the new family at a resolution of 1920x1080. remained closed due to insufficiently high minimum values, although the Radeon HD 6870 came close to the coveted 25 frames per second.

Semi-synthetic and synthetic benchmarks: Futuremark 3DMark Vantage

To minimize CPU impact, 3DMark Vantage uses the “Extreme” profile for testing, using 1920x1200 resolution, FSAA 4x, and anisotropic filtering. To complete the picture of performance, the results of individual tests are taken in the entire range of resolutions.

The Radeon HD 6870 managed to overcome the bar of 8,000 points, at least in the overall standings. The final result turned out to be even higher than that of the GeForce GTX 470. But the Radeon HD 6850 did not quite reach the level of the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, although it outperformed its younger brother.

In the second test, the Radeon HD 6800 family performs much better than in the first one, especially the older model. Since the performance of the geometry engine is important in this test, the result is quite natural. But, as we already know from the results of gaming tests, this is far from enough for a confident victory over rivals from the green team.

Semi-synthetic and synthetic benchmarks: Final Fantasy XIV Official Benchmark

Since the FF XIV Official Benchmark initially gives a meaningless result in points, Fraps is used to obtain data on the performance of graphics cards. The test only supports 1280x720 and 1920x1080 resolutions.

Testing did not show anything new: this test still remains the domain of the Radeon HD, where it dominates almost undividedly. We only note that the Radeon HD 6870 is not inferior to the Radeon HD 5870 at 1920x1080, not being its direct rival.

Semi-synthetic and synthetic benchmarks: Unigine Heaven benchmark

The test uses tessellation in the "normal" mode.

Despite the reinforced tessellation unit, the Radeon HD 6800 family did not show a fundamental improvement in the results in this test, except that at 1920x1080 the older model was able to outperform the Radeon HD 5870 in the minimum performance. Is it Barts' insufficiently high efficiency when performing complex tessellation, or is it performance limited by other factors? In any case, the promised breakthrough in this test did not happen, but the results shown by the Radeon HD 6800 cannot fail either.

Radeon HD 6870: advantages and disadvantages

Advantages:

High level of performance in modern games
May outperform Radeon HD 5870 in some tests

Wide choice of FSAA modes






HDMI 1.4a support
DisplayPort 1.2 support

Flaws:

Noticeable noise level

Radeon HD 6850: advantages and disadvantages

.
Advantages:

Good performance in its class
Fast tessellation performance compared to Radeon HD 5800
Wide choice of FSAA modes
Industry-leading anisotropic filtering
Support for output to six monitors
Full hardware support for HD video decoding, including DivX and 3D
High-quality post-processing and scaling of HD video
Integrated audio core with support for HD audio formats
HDMI audio output support
HDMI 1.4a support
DisplayPort 1.2 support
Low energy consumption for its class
High efficiency in energy-saving modes

Flaws:

Inferior to GeForce GTX 460 768MB at low resolutions
Noticeable noise level
Not very efficient cooling system
Fewer GPGPU-accelerated software choices than competing solutions

Conclusion

So, we tested the new Radeon HD 6800 family in 19 different gaming and synthetic benchmarks. What can be said by looking at the results of these tests?
Overall, AMD's older Radeon HD 6870 performs very well: it's faster than the more expensive ATI Radeon HD 5850 in most cases, while boasting a number of improvements, including better tessellation unit performance, which was evident in several tests. This is well illustrated by summary charts.

It should be noted that at 1600x900 the fight against the GeForce GTX 460 1GB lasted with varying success, but already at 1920x1200 the new AMD started to lead quite confidently, and at 2560x1600 the average superiority of the Radeon HD 6870 over its rival reached 16%. Moreover, in most tests, the Radeon HD 6870 not only showed performance at the level of the Radeon HD 5850, but also outperformed it, in places quite significantly. In fact, this is a sentence for the latter, as, in fact, it is planned by Advanced Micro Devices itself. However, given the price of the Radeon HD 6870, those who are looking for an inexpensive but powerful graphics card for use in modern games, it makes sense to take a closer look at the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, especially versions with factory overclocking to 750-800 MHz in core frequency. Such a solution will prove to be in practice no worse than the Radeon HD 6870, and in addition, it will provide the player with support for minor improvements like PhysX in a number of games. As for the owners of the Radeon HD 5870, they don't have to worry for now, at least until the announcement of the Radeon HD 6900.

Everything is more complicated with Radeon HD 6850. It is inferior to its older brother, on average, about 15%, but in some cases the lag can reach 20-40%. Against the Radeon HD 5850, this new product also has no serious chances. Although the Radeon HD 6850 can lead quite a lot where high speed is required when performing tessellation, there are still few such games on the market. But as for the rivalry with the GeForce GTX 460 768MB, there is reason for pessimism. Just look at the pivot charts.

At low resolutions, Nvidia's solution is unequivocally faster; The Radeon HD 6850 wins only in a small number of tests, and this gain is extremely insignificant. As the resolution grows, the situation levels off, however, in 1920x1080 the battle goes on with varying success, and here everything depends on the specific game, and the 2560x1600 mode is not initially intended for use with cards of the Radeon HD 6850 or GeForce GTX 460 768MB class. Should I upgrade from Radeon HD 5830 to Radeon HD 6850? In our opinion, definitely - the new solution is much better balanced in terms of technical characteristics and performance. But if you choose between it and the GeForce GTX 460 768MB, you should be guided by a set of favorite games.

In general, both models of the Radeon HD 6800 family should be recognized as successful, both in terms of price, and in terms of technical characteristics and performance. The Advanced Micro Devices graphics development team did a good job removing one of the bottlenecks of the Radeon HD 5800 architecture - slow tessellation and overall poor geometry processing speed. In addition, a number of innovations related to the field of multimedia, made new items truly unique. These innovations include support for DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI 1.4a, a new video processor that supports DivX hardware decoding, as well as the ability to connect up to six monitors or TV panels, and in almost any configuration.

Considering the power consumption and dimensions of the Radeon HD 6850/6870, it is difficult to recommend such solutions for home theater PCs. However, if we are talking about an HTPC aimed at gaming, then the 6850 model has every chance of becoming the best choice.

The assets of the Barts chip support all possible high-definition formats, including Blu-ray 3D, the highest, although not ideal, quality of playback of Blu-ray content and DVD video interpolation, according to HQV 2.0 tests.

As a result, Nvidia, which at one time delayed the launch of its own architecture with support for DirectX 11, although it was able, in the end, to complete the transfer of its product lines to it, but did not receive a long respite - by the time the company could Finally, to enjoy the fruits brought by Fermi, the former ATI Technologies has already prepared a new blow, and this blow turned out to be very sensitive. Now all we have to do is wait for the announcement of the Radeon HD 6900 "Cayman" to see if it can reclaim AMD's lead in the world's fastest single-socket graphics cards.

GeForce GTS 450 SLI: Featherweight Champion?

(or ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6830) is a high-performance notebook card that supports DirectX 11. Technically, this adapter has the same features as the Mobility Radeon HD 5830, but with a higher clock speed. Like all cards of the Mobility HD 5800 / 6800M series, the HD 6830M video adapter is based on the HD 5770 (RV840) desktop chip.

The HD 6830M's memory interface consists of two 64-bit controllers that lead to a 128-bit memory bus. It provides access to 1024 MB of DDR3 memory. Due to the small bus width and the lack of GDDR5 support, memory performance can be considered the "weak link" of this card.

The card has 800 MADD-cores (the so-called stream processors), which are assembled in 160 five-dimensional groups. The cores support DirectX 11 hardware features (tessellation, OIT, post-processing, shadows, HDR texture compression) and have a theoretical compute power of 0.92 TFLOPS. In addition, 16 ROPs (rasterization and blending operations units), 40 TMUs (texturing units) and 40 TAUs can be found on the chip. ATI Stream, OpenCL and DirectCompute 11 can help with general computing.

By gaming performance card 6830M located between HD 5830 and 5850M/6550M with DDR3 memory. This suggests that the GPU power for demanding games (Metro 2033, Call of Duty Black Ops or Mafia 2) will not be enough. You won't be able to play the above games on high settings. However, at a resolution of 1366x768 pixels, without AA (AntiAliasing - an image smoothing method that eliminates the "staircase effect"), games should work fine.

Series Mobility Radeon HD 6800M equipped with an old UVD2 video processor, which is used to decode HD video using a graphics card. It "accepts" only VC-1, H.264 and MPEG-2, while the new UVD3 in the 6900M series adapters supports DivX. With Flash 10.1, the 6800M series can help accelerate Flash HD video (YouTube).

Just like the HD 5830, the 6830M can transmit eight-channel HD audio (Dolby True HD and DTS HD Master Audio) over HDMI 1.3a. The 6830M still supports the initial version of Eyefinity (rather than the improved Eyefinity+), which is used to connect 6 monitors to the graphics chip. This is only possible if there is enough DisplayPort in the laptop.

The power consumption is about the same as the old one (about 24 W), so the adapter is installed in laptops with a diagonal of 15-17 inches.

Manufacturer:	AMD
Series:	Radeon HD 6830M [email protected]
The code:	Granville-LP
Threads:	800-unified
Clock frequency:	575* MHz
Shader frequency:	575* MHz
Memory frequency:	900* MHz
Memory bus width:	128 Bit
Memory type:	DDR3, GDDR3
Maximum Memory:	1024 MB
Common memory:	No
DirectX:	DirectX 11 Shader 5.0
Energy consumption:	24 W
Transistors:	1080 million
Technology:	40 nm
Notebook size:	big
Release date:	07.01.2010
Link to the manufacturer:	http://www.amd.com/us/products/notebook/graphics/amd-radeon-6000m/amd-radeon-6800m/Pages/amd-radeon-6800m.aspx#2

* Specified clock speeds are subject to change by the manufacturer

AMD Radeon HD 6800 a popular series of video cards, which at one time was quite popular with gamers and fully met all user requirements. For the video card to work, you need to install the driver on the computer, after which the system will be able to detect the board and bring it into working condition. The driver installation process is quite simple and almost any computer user can handle it. WITHdownload driver for video card AMD Radeon HD 6800 series and the entire line for free at the link below.

Driver installation order:

1. Run the installation file;
2. Choose if you want let;
3. We agree with the user rules;
4. We are waiting for the end of the installation.

The link below provides the following drivers for the Windows operating system:

• driver for x32bit and x64bit operating system Windows 10 / Windows 8.1 / Windows 7;
• driver and additional software Catalyst x32bit and x64bit operating system Windows 7 / Windows 8 / Windows 8.1 / Windows Vista;
• Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 Libraries Component;
• driver for operating system Windows XP x32bit and x64bit.

Download AMD Radeon HD 6800 series driver:

Windows 10 x32bit:
Windows 10 x64bit:
Windows 8 x32bit:
Windows 8 x64bit:
Windows 7 x32bit: