SAPPHIRE Announces HD 6870 Dirt 3 Edition Graphics Card

[btarunr]

SAPPHIRE Technology has just announced a new model in its successful HD 6800 series of graphics cards - the HD 6870 1GB Dirt3 Edition with Dual fan cooler and a voucher code for the full game in the package.

The SAPPHIRE HD 6870 Dirt3 Edition has the same internal architecture as the standard model, with 1120 stream processors and 56 texture processing units, but clock speeds are increased to 920MHz for the core and 1050Mhz (4.2Gb/sec effective) for the 1GB of GDDR5 memory giving users a boost in performance. The new SAPPHIRE exclusive cooler design has Dual fans to keep this model cool and quiet even when under load conditions, keeping even extreme gamers happy! This new design has two 90mm fans with thin impellers that can move the same amount of air at 10% lower rotation speeds than conventional fans, keeping noise low, and their special dust repelling bearings contribute to high reliability.



Enthusiast users can tune up performance even more with SAPPHIRE's dedicated VGA overclocking tool TriXX, which is available free for anyone to download from the SAPPHIRE website, www.sapphiretech.com - just follow the TriXX buttons!

Eyefinity and APP acceleration
The SAPPHIRE HD 6870 Dirt3 Edition has the versatile output configuration of two DVI, one HDMI and two mini DisplayPort connectors, and can support a VGA monitor with the dongle supplied. Using two of the DVI/HDMI outputs together with the two DisplayPorts enables this card to support up to four monitors in Eyefinity (SLS) mode.

The third generation UVD (Unified Video Decoder) in the SAPPHIRE HD 6870 supports MVC (Multi-view Video Coding) for the smooth decoding of Blu-Ray 3D with reduced CPU load as well as other file formats. Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio are supported, and HDMI capability has also been upgraded to HDMI 1.4a. This provides deep colour, enhanced high resolution output for Digital Theatre applications and 3D stereoscopic support as well as 7.1 high bit-rate audio.

The multiple stream processors of the HD 6800 series can be used to accelerate other applications such as video transcoding. The latest generation of web browsers can be GPU accelerated, and this is also supported for enhanced productivity in Microsoft Office 2010.

Second Generation DX11 support
The SAPPHIRE HD 6800 series features the second generation of graphics technology from AMD designed to support all the features of Microsoft DirectX 11 and DirectCompute 11. These GPUs are built in AMD's 40nm process to deliver high performance with low power consumption.

Advanced hardware features include an enhanced Tessellation unit, dedicated HDR Texture compression, multi-threaded communication with system CPU cores, embedded support for many of the DirectCompute 11 instructions, 3D stereoscopic support, HDMI 1.4a and DisplayPort 1.2.

The SAPPHIRE HD 6800 series is supported by AMD's DirectX 11 WHQL certified graphics driver which delivers support for all of the key DirectX 11 features required for enhanced gaming experiences as well as GPU acceleration of supported applications.

For more information, visit the product page.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[BrooksyX]

Whats the point of this now? Trying to get rig of back stock of 68xx chips to make room for 7xxx?

 

[erocker]

Whats the point of this now? Trying to get rig of back stock of 68xx chips to make room for 7xxx?

As per the norm.

 

[BrooksyX]

As per the norm.

Nothing wrong with the 6870 though. Ill probably hold on to mine during the 7xxx seriess and hold out until the 8xxx series later next year.

 

[Edgarstrong]

This vs Vapor-X

Does anyone know how this Dirt 3 version fare versus Vapor-X edition?

 

[erocker]

Does anyone know how this Dirt 3 version fare versus Vapor-X edition?

This one uses two fans on the cooler and comes with DiRT 3. That's it.

 

[RejZoR]

Does anyone know how this Dirt 3 version fare versus Vapor-X edition?

I've had the Toxic and even though it was fast (nearly as fast as HD6950), it was horribly loud. By the looks of it, this Dirt 3 Ediition should be much more silent but probably not as fast.

 

[Casecutter]

Now they add more bells (fans) whistles (a game title) to keep momentum and pricing strong. Given here in the USA, Egg has had several 6870 for like $142 -AR it's interesting that such 6870's are IMO “marching down”. It a little earlier than I would've thought, if a 7XXX is more like 3 months away (minimum). Then such cards are the completive equal to the non-ti GTX560 (reference) and those are holding at like $23-35 more even after rebates. This with a $140 after rebate price and a nice over-clock would make a exceptional buy.

Hey W1zzard it’s been quiet from you… Might be neat to get this Sapphire and say a Gigabyte Windforce, then two moderately OC’d (820-830Mhz) and priced GTX560 non-ti. See if things (drivers and such) have these gravitating closures or further in price/performance, and just how spirited the fight is between such contenders’ actually is since you last visited that Asus GTX 560 TOP (925Mhz) Direct Cu II 1 GB, back 5 months ago in May.

Here’s a review though I’m not sure what they mean by “rather than the 2GB found on the stock reference design” reference was 1Gb. Here they pit it against a GTX 560ti
http://www.pureoverclock.com/review.php?id=1360&page=6

 

[fusionblu]

Now they add more bells (fans) whistles (a game title) to keep momentum and pricing strong. Given here in the USA, Egg has had several 6870 for like $142 -AR it's interesting that such 6870's are IMO “marching down”. It a little earlier than I would've thought, if a 7XXX is more like 3 months away (minimum). Then such cards are the completive equal to the non-ti GTX560 (reference) and those are holding at like $23-35 more even after rebates. This with a $140 after rebate price and a nice over-clock would make a exceptional buy.

Hey W1zzard it’s been quiet from you… Might be neat to get this Sapphire and say a Gigabyte Windforce, then two moderately OC’d (820-830Mhz) and priced GTX560 non-ti. See if things (drivers and such) have these gravitating closures or further in price/performance, and just how spirited the fight is between such contenders’ actually is since you last visited that Asus GTX 560 TOP (925Mhz) Direct Cu II 1 GB, back 5 months ago in May.

Here’s a review though I’m not sure what they mean by “rather than the 2GB found on the stock reference design” reference was 1Gb. Here they pit it against a GTX 560ti
http://www.pureoverclock.com/review.php?id=1360&page=6

Just a performance comment. I saw the gaming results for the tests with this graphics card against and the 560 Ti, and from the information I saw the 6870 (the exact model in this article) got owned by the 560 Ti in every game in the test including the Dirt 3 game. This card was shown to be only slightly (no realistic difference) better than the 560 Ti in the 3D Mark 11 tests, but that is as good as it got. As for power consumption the 6870 wasn't much greener enough a graphics card than the 560 Ti (560 Ti was generally 10w more than the 6870 under full load, but less in idle though) to buy that instead of the 560 Ti to save on electric bills or for a smaller PSU. All in all they are on the same level, but you would definetely get more out of a 560 Ti in gaming (and probably other things too) than the 6870.

 

[Casecutter]

Add power info

I said...

the completive equal to the non-ti GTX560 (reference)

Pricing of most GTX560ti are $200+ and those are intended to compete with the 6950's. But 6870 aren't that far behind for being $60-100 less.

As to power that while only running Dirt3 providing approx 6% more FpS while using approx 6% more power. That's not a true indicator of all tiles and/or max power consumption levels. Here W1zzard has the Asus Top (non-ti) @ 925Mhz (we don't get a reference non-ti version to compare) along with the reference 560Ti. A 6870 is 40W less (max) and if I had to guess a reference GTX 560 (non-ti) would be right in there between the 465/5870 which make it still 30W more. Even compared at peak if we said a GTX 560 (non-ti) might be at 145W, that makes it 25% more than a 6870. It would be nice to get a new review as we are left needing extrapolate the missing Power Data, but did present gaming B-M and summary FPS and even "performance per watt" for the reference non-ti (which 6870 betters it 28%)!

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_560_TOP_Direct_Cu_II/25.html

That's why I'd like to see a new round of competition!

 

[damric]

Take a close look at the heatsink. It is the same garbage heatsink as my stock Sapphire HD 6850's. See the pseudo-fins? Yep, they don't cut all the way through. It's just a chunk of aluminum with some grooves cut into it.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

theres is seriously a Dirt 3 obsession when it comes to AMD cards

 

[LordJummy]

So many damn variations of cards this generation. It's getting a bit out of hand lol.

 

[erixx]

why anybody is interested in Ati/Amd is a mistery to me.

 

[LordJummy]

why anybody is interested in Ati/Amd is a mistery to me.

Why is it a "mistery" to you?

 

[Casecutter]

Take a close look at the heatsink. It is the same garbage heatsink as my stock Sapphire HD 6850's. See the pseudo-fins? Yep, they don't cut all the way through. It's just a chunk of aluminum with some grooves cut into it.

I don't see a "chunk" of aluminum "extrusion style" cooler? It sure appears to be a heat-pipe(s) cooler and stamped fins like most offen in this price range. Sure the center area that clamps the pipes is extrudeded aluminum that's fairly typical. I'm not following you...

Some better close-up pics' of it here...
http://www.pureoverclock.com/review.php?id=1360&page=4

 

[micropage7]

for special edition it looks flat.
just black cover, black fans and thats it :sad:

 

[arterius2]

why anybody is interested in Ati/Amd is a mistery to me.

why anyone would misspell "mystery" as "mistery" is a mistery to me.

 

[Jetster]

Love my SAPPHIRE 6870 and I must be the only one that didn't get Dirt 3

 

[Casecutter]

Lieutenant Dan, I got you some ice cream...

http://www.fudzilla.com/reviews/ite...-reviewed/24078-gainward-gtx-560-2gb-reviewed

Would have like a few more gaming B-M's, but it has concise/conscience data.

 

[Casecutter]

mistery to me

Forrest Gump had a saying about that... also.

 

[[H]@RD5TUFF]

Clocks don't seem all that great.