Comment Thread for AMD Radeon HD 6870 & HD 6850 Review

[SKYMTL]

Originally Posted by geokilla

From what I heard, Apoptosis isn't allowed to keep most of the GPUs he gets for reviews.

NVIDIA doesn't ask for reference versions back. Neither does AMD.

If anything, Nate's review gives a different perspective considering the prices OC'd GTX 460 cards have dropped to.

[Sagath]

I'll bite.

Why are there no overclocking benchmarks? Both here and Anandtech.com dont have OC results. Do I smell something fishy, or am I just wearing Technix's Tinfoil hat?!?

(Guru3d shows a 6850 hitting almost 900mhz from stock 775, but the 6870 is downright pitiful with a lousy 50mhz overclock. Legitreview for what its worth seems to agree, they got 850 and 940 out of their cards.)

I understand not everyone eeks out every last mhz, but for us 'enthusiasts', it should be noted how well a card can overclock. I know it influences my buying habits.

[_dangtx_]

so it was clocks hey?

oc? if you touch the vcore, well..actually gpu, some say over 1ghz is not difficult on stock cooling ;)

[SKYMTL]

Originally Posted by Sagath

I'll bite.

Why are there no overclocking benchmarks? Both here and Anandtech.com dont have OC results. Do I smell something fishy, or am I just wearing Technix's Tinfoil hat?!?

Because both Ryan and I have high standards when it comes to benchmarking and overclocking. We don't run a script to run our benchmarks for us to save time and then walk away from the computer.

In terms of overclocking, in a bid to find truly stable overclocks literally hours of testing are needed. That isn't usually possible with launch-day reviews.

[Dark-Colonel]

Great review SKY, very thorough and detailed.

I'll wait until the 6900 series gets reviewed but I'll definitely be pulling the trigger on one of these 6870s, hopefully a Vapor-X version by Sapphire by Christmas time. My 4850 just wants to kill itself at 19x12 :D

I'd like to point something out from the conclusion in LegitReviews review:

Originally Posted by LegitReviews

NVIDIA made some rather drastic price cuts today and lowered their Suggested Etail Pricing (SEP) on the GeForce GTX 460 768MB to $169.99, the GeForce GTX 460 1GB to $199.99 and the GeForce GTX 470 to $239.99.

A GTX 470 for $240? That'd be ridiculous!

[Sagath]

Originally Posted by SKYMTL

Because both Ryan and I have high standards when it comes to benchmarking and overclocking. We don't run a script to run our benchmarks for us to save time and then walk away from the computer.

In terms of overclocking, in a bid to find truly stable overclocks literally hours of testing are needed. That isn't usually possible with launch-day reviews.

Assuming we ignore almost every other review you've ever done, I guess this would be true?

I'm not trying to be confrontational, but I find this pill hard to swallow when the 57/5800 series and all the 400 Fermis have OC results, and thats not even going back to previous 200 series or 47/4800 cards...

Were the cards in hand THAT much shorter then normal?

[SKYMTL]

Originally Posted by Dark-Colonel

A GTX 470 for $240? That'd be ridiculous!

Here is part of the NVIDIA email:

We’d like to inform you of new suggested etail pricing (SEP) for one of our most popular GPUs, the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. The new SEP for the GTX 460 1GB is $199.99. As always, the SEP is just a suggestion and you’ll likely find retail boards from our partners at multiple price points. We expect many standard boards to sell in the $180s-$190s, and OC boards to sell for $209+.

In addition to the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, we’d also like to mention new pricing on the GeForce GTX 470. The SEP of this GPU is now $259.99. The GeForce GTX 470 offers more tessellation engines than GTX 460, making it ready for the most demanding DX11 games on the market today, and just as important, the games of tomorrow.

These new SEPs will be reflected at the e-tail level in the next couple of days.

[SKYMTL]

Originally Posted by Sagath

Were the cards in hand THAT much shorter then normal?

Usually I get about 10 days with a card. Here is what I got this time:

Reference cards: 4 days
XFX: 3 days
ASUS: 3 days
Sapphire: 6 hours

If you must know.

Add to that the fact that I won't sacrifice my 9-5 job for a review and there you have it.

[geokilla]

Originally Posted by Dark-Colonel

I'd like to point something out from the conclusion in LegitReviews review:

A GTX 470 for $240? That'd be ridiculous!

Enjoy! =P

Newegg.com - ZOTAC ZT-40201-10P GeForce GTX 470 (Fermi) 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
Newegg.com - EVGA 768-P3-1360-TR GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 768MB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GV-N460OC-1GI GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

AMD 6000 series pricing seems to be more or less the same in USA and Canada on Newegg. Maybe I'll buy my GPU in USA then pick it up the next time I go to Buffalo shopping, which would probably be when America has their Thanksgiving...

[Sagath]

Originally Posted by SKYMTL

Usually I get about 10 days with a card. Here is what I got this time:

Reference cards: 4 days
XFX: 3 days
ASUS: 3 days
Sapphire: 6 hours

If you must know.

Add to that the fact that I won't sacrifice my 9-5 job for a review and there you have it.

Like I said, i really wasnt trying to be rude. Just wanted to know why these cards weren't OC'd vs almost every other card ever. Maybe including a clause of something to the above in the review would help others asking the same questions?

I really need to return this tinfoil hat I guess. Technix and I are talking too much nowadays, he must be wearing off on me