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Official AMD Radeon 6000 Series Discussion Thread

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Radeon 6850 could run fine with 6870 BIOS


Guru3D.com ImageCurrently we are testing a handful of R6800 cards from AMD's board partners and we ran into a curiosity yesterday.

One of the 6850 cards we tested was showing above baseline performance, which made us wonder as to why and how that was happening at reference clocks. This morning we had an inquiry in our mailbox of that board partners with the report that the 6850 card they had send out has 1120 active shader processors instead of the 960 shader processors that should be active for the 6850.

This means that there are no laser cuts on the Barts GPU for the 6850, and that also means that it's very likely you can flash a R6870 BIOS into the 6850. Now first off, if you decide to try that, you do it at your own risk, if things go wrong ... it's your loss and warranty does not apply.

Bare in mind that the R6870 BIOS will run the graphics card at 900 MHz and that is a critical point here, the PCB design of the 6850 is different and the cooling is not as good. You could of course lower the GPU clocks a little. All in all interesting stuff for the uber-tweakers out there.
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http://www.guru3d.com/news/radeon-6850-could-run-fine-with-6870-bios/
 
^^^ It would be cool if WIZZ or somebody could confirm this.
 
yea i was to post this but u beat me first
 
i think its a trick amd made to keep geeks from getting the 460:nutkick::toast:
 
meran said:
i think its a trick amd made to keep geeks from getting the 460:nutkick::toast:
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I think if it's possible then AMD is just doing what it does with the sempron, athlon II and phenom II processors as in be able to unlock the extra cores on single, dual and triple core models.
 
bear jesus said:
I think if it's possible then AMD is just doing what it does with the sempron, athlon II and phenom II processors as in be able to unlock the extra cores on single, dual and triple core models.
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Lets not forget the ability to unlock a GTX465 to a GTX470... nVidia do it too.
 
Deus Ex: Human Revolution w/Eyfinity & DX11 tech demo using a 6870

Video
 
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Dj-ElectriC said:
ok we need to forget about it, it was a small mistake and it will not happen
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I agree .... unless we have serial numbers or can garuntee on which cards it happened to for sure. Otherwise I can already see the forum filling up with "Help I flashed my 6850 to a 6870 BIOS and now it's dead" Threads.

I am sure there will be a million BIOS's out there very shortly that will allow some sort of unlocking anyway. Like example unlimited voltage and clock speeds from pre overclocked reference cards.

It happens everytime :)
 
6890+

:D Can we all start gettin bit more excited/chatty bout the 6890 etc now pls im dyin for some leaked details etc as im expecting some kind of shock and awe ting goin down with essentially a quad 6870 making up the 6890 but obv on 1 optimized still further chip and with 1280 shaders per core and 2 gig std tho i may just be dreamin:rockout: - a lot

ive left it there cos its funny and it Was late etc but i ment 6990 i must av had 1 too many
 
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HD 6890? how bout we hunt down some confirmed specs on cards we know are releasing, like the HD 6950/70/90
 
yeah where is the leaked HD 6970 ?

i want to see how bad ass the card would be
 
Super XP said:
Charlie has a great read about the HD 6800 series and the mistake(s) AMD made by naming the HD 6770 into the HD 6870.

LINK:
AMD breaks it's own naming scheme with the 6870
Good chip, bad naming
http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/10/24/amd-breaks-its-own-naming-scheme-6870/
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ugghhhh that article needs a damn good editor. I can see where he is going, what he is aiming for but to try and read it hurts my brain. Though its good to see Charlie sticking the boot into his beloved ATI
 
Oh i didnt see this thread sorry i made another. The mods can delete it or whatever...


Some details coming through about the 6970.

3D mark vantage X12000 and P24449

Compare to GTX 480 X9309 and P21006

About 10-15% faster than the 480.

http://vga.zol.com.cn/195/1953715.html
__________________
 
I recall the pic but not any performance numbers...
 
So it turns out they released, whether by accident or on purpose, a 6850 with 1120 Shaders vs the claimed 920. Big difference in performance, well around 5 - 8%. So be on the lookout for those, not sure how you tell how many shaders it has until installed in a system. But I am sure there will be some lucky people that get one.

http://www.kitguru.net/components/g...amd-hd6850-1120960-shader-debate-comparisons/
 
I geuss it kind of shows that the 6870 hardly needs the second pci-e plug at stock speeds
 
Super XP said:
Charlie has a great read about the HD 6800 series and the mistake(s) AMD made by naming the HD 6770 into the HD 6870.

LINK:
AMD breaks it's own naming scheme with the 6870
Good chip, bad naming
http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/10/24/amd-breaks-its-own-naming-scheme-6870/
Click to expand...

what they are saying is just like what happened with the 3xxx series it replaced the 2xxx with no preformance benefit just lower power like we have in 6xxx than 5 mounths after
came the 4xxx series with a big preformance boost here is an example:
2900 replaced by 3870 no preformance boost
2600 xt replaced by 3650- 3650 slower then 2600 xt
then came 4xxx :
3870 replaced by 4870 big preformance boost
4670 replaced 3650 110% preformance boost
so from what i see the 6xxx series is just like 3xxx less watt the same preformance i think in less then 6 month from now 7xxx will come with over 60%-100% in all levels but an increase in power so avoid 6xxx it will not last long
 
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