AMD has enjoyed a terrific run with the Radeon Hard disk drive 5000 serial as information technology took Nvidia no less than six months to counter with its initial Fermi products. It's been a year since nosotros reviewed the Radeon Hard disk drive 5870, calling it a "real winner, and possibly i the best graphics cards we have ever reviewed in this toll point." Within five months of releasing its first DirectX xi GPU, AMD launched some other eleven graphics cards ranging from affordable to the ultra-expensive.

On the other side of the fence, the GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 arrived months later on and weren't nearly besides accepted as Nvidia hoped. Some 2 months after entering the DirectX xi market, Nvidia tried to crank up the heat by unleashing its GeForce GTX 465. Sadly, the card was a flop and it took them 6 more weeks to finally brand headway in the DX11 GPU market with its GeForce GTX 460.

Arriving at $200 (currently $170), the GTX 460 768MB bested the existing Radeon Hard disk 5830 while simultaneously threatening the more affordable Radeon HD 5770 cards. Meanwhile, the 1GB version of the GTX 460 has sat at $230, diminishing the Radeon HD 5850'south value.

Now on the cruise for 3 months, the GTX 460 has forced AMD to cut prices but we still feel the GeForce GTX 460 is better than the firsthand competition. That poses a serious challenge to AMD, which vowed last year to keep on superlative of Nvidia throughout 2022 -- an unachievable job without some kind of radical overhaul. Today marks that overhaul, with AMD launching two new graphics cards designed to tackle the GTX 460. Known as the Radeon Hard disk 6870 and 6850, AMD's fresh offerings might non exist quite what yous think.

Given the naming scheme, you'd look the new cards to supervene upon the existing Radeon HD 5870 and 5850, but that's non the case. Instead the new Radeon HD 6870 and 6850 are being presented equally the new mid-range offerings in AMD's line-up with a suggested retail of $239 and $199, respectively -- suspiciously shut to the 1GB and 768MB GeForce GTX 460.

The twelvemonth-former Radeon Hard disk 5870 and 5850 volition be axed next month when AMD launches the Cayman-based Radeon HD 6970 and 6950 graphics cards. While the existing Radeon 5700 series is expected to take over the lower-end affordable graphics sector.

We expect the Radeon Hard disk 6870 to be slightly slower than the 5870, while the Radeon Hard disk 6850 should be slower than the 5850, only don't pay attention to the tricky naming. The new cards supposedly amend upon Radeon HD 5000 series with better DirectX 11 and enhanced display support, just mayhap most importantly they are ready to offering a better value than Nvidia's GTX 460. Read on.