Radeon HD 6800 series targets NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 460

by Steven Mostyn - Oct 22 2010, 09:59

Arriving as the first graphics processing platform to emerge without the recently dropped ATI branding, chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has formally introduced its new and distinctly gamer-focused Radeon HD 6800 series, both of which carry variants of AMD's 40nm high-end 'Barts' GPU.

According to AMD, the Radeon HD 6800 line offers 30 percent increased performance “than competing platforms” on the market (namely the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460), thanks to the inclusion of Eyefinity multi-display technology, Accelerated Parallel Processing, enhanced power management and efficiency, and support for the latest and greatest computer games via DirectX 11.

“Today, our laser focus on gamers continues with the introduction of what we think is far and away the best graphics card series today, the AMD Radeon HD 6800 series,” trumpeted Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager for AMD's GPU Division.

“With exceptional game performance [and] an unrivaled feature set including breathtaking DirectX 11 gaming... we will have all gamers wanting to get Radeon in their systems,” he added in an official statement.

The Radeon HD 6850 (Barts Pro) will boast a core clock speed of 775MHz, a total of 960 processors, 1.5 TFLOPS of computing power, a frame buffer of 1GB (GDDR5), memory width/speed of 256bits and 4.0Gbps, and display outputs of 2x DVI, 2x mini-DisplayPort, and HDMI.

The slightly more muscular Radeon HD 6870 (Barts XT) includes a core clock speed of 900MHz, a total of 1120 processors, 2.0 TFLOPS of computing power, a frame buffer of 1GB (GDDR5), memory width/sped of 256bits and 4.2Gbps, and display outputs of 2x DVI, 2x mini-DisplayPort, and HDMI.

The Radeon HD 6850 and the Radeon HD 6870, which are built on the performance foundations laid by the Radeon 5000 series, are both available as of today (October 22) and will retail at for suggested prices of $179 USD and $239 USD respectively.

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