The most awaited AMD Radeo HD 6870 is upcoming and luckily we have already an idea what it looks like. A Chinese site has leaked a first press photo of AMD Radeon HD 6870 graphic card. This new monster card is powered by the 40nm Bartx (XT) GPU and supports DirectX11. The new Radeon HD 6870 can control five monitors at the same time!
Here is what the Radeon HD 6870 would look like. Photo courtesy of it.com.cn
Here are some of the specifications of the new Radeon HD 6870:
- 256-bit memory interface
- 1GB of GDDR5 VRAM
- AMD HD3D Technology for 3D Gaming
- Third Generation Unified Video Decoder (UVD)
- Eyefinity multi-monitor solution
- CrossFireX Support
- 5 display outputs: 2 DVI, 1 HDMI 1.4, 2 mini DisplayPort 1.2 so that makes it 5 in all
Can NVDIA cope up with the 6000 series? I don’t think so. The 6000 series can pretty much cause a stir. And from what I have heard the 6000 series can easily beat Nvidia’s GTX400 series graphic cards. Now the question is What happens to Nvidia?
I have qouted here an article by Nebojsa Novakovic from his “With AMD Radeon 6000 series GPUs coming, what happens with Nvidia?”
“But the HD6870 might cause even more of a stir. Even if it’s just a quarter faster than the reference HD5870, it will be hitting benchmark scores above those of all GTX480 cards. And as we’ve seen many times before, a win at the top of the GPU sweepstakes has a ‘waterfall’ effect that benefits the lower-end product sales for the ‘champion’ vendor, too.
So, what can Nvidia do to counter this AMD attack? At the GTX460 level, enabling more shaders – up to 384 – on the GF104 die might help quite a bit as long as Nvidia doesn’t lower the clock frequency to reduce the heat. If a GTX480 GF100 die has up to 512 shaders, then the three-quarters of that on the GTX460 should allow for up to 384 shaders.
Of course, Nvidia had no intention to enable those earlier, partly to keep the yields up and also not to cannibalise GTX470 sales. The extra 13 per cent or so speed-up from the extra shaders would keep the competition quite even with any HD6770 part.
The situation is more complex for Nvidia on its competitive approach to the expected HD6870. There is nothing to replace the GTX480 GF100 die until well into next year, so a combination of tweaks like a bit of extra clock speed and an improved memory controller, as well as enabling all 512 shader cores in selected GTX480 chips, that is, GTX485 or such editions, would make good sense.
Even if the combined advantages only bring, say 10 per cent extra real performance, it would help Nvidia stay close to AMD. But, unlike the GTX460 versus HD6770 case, the high end battle here would likely still be won by AMD whatever the case. Yet, the difference would be so small that Nvidia shouldn’t have a major problem selling the updated GF100 to its faithful fans.
However, the same might not be the case with the dual-GPU twin GF104 card part, with the Radeon HD6970 expected sooner or later. The dual-GPU twin GF104 card will start to look less and less appealing, as a pair of GF104s will be no match for even an AMD reference dual-GPU part.
Nvidia will have to work out another approach for the top-end dual GPU market, but it probably won’t be able to do that until its next generation 28nm chips are ready.”
The battle continues between the two. It seems that for the past quarter and past releases, AMD has beaten NVidia’s graphic cards.
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