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Radeon HD 6000 series

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Northern Islands Family
Release date2010
CodenameNorthern Islands
Caicos
Turks
Barts
Cayman
Antilles
Cards
Entry-level6450, 6570, 6670
Mid-range6770, 6790, 6850, 6870
High-end6950, 6970
Enthusiast6990
API support
DirectXDirect3D 11
Shader Model 5.0
OpenCL1.1
OpenGL4.1
History
PredecessorEvergreen family
SuccessorSouthern Islands family

The Northern Islands series is a family of GPUs developed by ATi Technologies.

Starting with this family, the former ATI brand was officially discontinued in favor of making a correlation between the graphics products and the AMD branding for computing platforms (the CPUs and chipsets). Therefore, the AMD brand was used as the replacement. The logo for graphics products and technologies also received a minor makeover (using design elements of the 2010 AMD VISION logo).

Release

The original design was for 32 nm, but TSMC canceled its 32 nm process in favor of 28 nm development. ATi was forced to adapt its designs as second generation 40 nm products. Even before canceling 32 nm process, TSMC priced their 32 nm process higher than 40 nm. ATi calculated that for mid-range chips, the new VLIW4 architecture (at 32 nm), would not be as cost effective as an updated VLIW5 on 40 nm.

By moving the smaller chips (Barts, Turks, and Caicos) to 40 nm early, ATi/AMD avoided by luck a major delay from the 32 nm cancellation. The top parts, Cayman and Antilles (dual Cayman), were not so lucky causing the unusual situation of a mid-range part (Barts) launching the series.[1] Also, AMD added stereoscopic 3D support to this Radeon lineup along with HDMI 1.4a and DisplayPort 1.2.

Products

Radeon HD 6700

Codenamed Barts LE, this lower mid-range GPU Radeon HD 6790 was released on April 5, 2011. There is one retail product available, the Radeon HD 6790. Barts uses shaders of the same 5-way VLIW architecture as HD 5000 series.

  • HD 6790 has 800 stream processors at 840MHz, a 256-bit memory interface and 1 GB GDDR5 DRAM at 1GHz with maximum power draw of 150W. Performance is superior to the NVIDIA GTX 550 Ti and Radeon HD 5770, less powerful than the Radeon HD 6850 and close to the GTX 460 768MB and Radeon HD 5830.

ATi has confirmed that the HD 6700 cards use the Juniper XT and Juniper Pro cores (same cores as the HD 5700 series). Thus 6770 and 6750 cards are essentially rebranded 5770 and 5750 respectively, with label being the main difference

  • The HD 6750 comes in at 720 stream processors clocked at 700MHz. The memory is packed in the same amount but clocked a tad slower at 1.15GHz, resulting in 73.66GB/s bandwidth, which lines up perfectly with the outgoing HD 5750.
  • In previous HD 6000-series cards, ATi’s Universal Video Decoder was upgraded to version 3.0 which supported BluRay 3D codecs, hardware decoding for DivX / xVid and a list of other improvements. The HD 6700-series however carries over Juniper’s UVD 2.0 so none of these new formats are processed through the GPU.
  • According to AMD, these cards have been upgraded to support HDMI 1.4a but without the 3D features brought forward by UVD 3.0.

Radeon HD 6800

Codenamed Barts, the mid-range GPUs Radeon HD 6800 series was released on October 22, 2010. Products include Radeon HD 6850 and Radeon HD 6870. Barts uses shaders of the same 5-way VLIW architecture as HD 5000 series.[2]

  • HD 6850 has 960 stream processors at 775MHz, a 256-bit memory interface and 1 GB GDDR5 DRAM at 1GHz with maximum power draw of 127 W. Compared to competitors of the GTX 460 series, performance falls in line with the 1 GB cards of the NVIDIA GTX 460 series and superior to the 768MB Geforce 460. Compared to predecessor videocards of the Radeon 5800 serires, the 6850 is significantly faster than the Radeon HD 5830 and close to the performance of the Radeon HD 5850. A single 6-pin PCIe power connector requirement makes it suitable for mainstream users.
  • HD 6870 has 1120 stream processors at 900MHz, a 256-bit memory interface and 1 GB GDDR5 DRAM at 1.2GHz with a maximum power draw of 151 W. Performance is superior to the NVIDIA GTX 460 and less than the NVIDIA GTX560 TI series. Compared to predecessor videocards of the Radeon 5800 series, the 6870 is faster than the HD 5850 and close to the performance of the Radeon HD 5870.[3]

Radeon HD 6900

This family includes three different high-end products.

Codenamed Cayman, the high-end GPUs Radeon HD 6900 series was expected to be released on November 12, 2010, these release dates were pushed further back and Cayman was released on December 15, 2010. Products include Radeon HD 6950 and Radeon HD 6970. Cayman is based on new 4-way VLIW architecture. VLIW4 was chosen over AMD's older VLIW5 in order to reduce complexity in the design of AMD's stream processors. Studies showed that few applications fully leveraged the extra stage in a VLIW5 SP. Reducing the stream processors to VLIW4 allows AMD to save on transistors for each individual SP and add more overall in the future.[4]

  • In games, the performance of HD 6970 is comparable to the NVIDIA GTX 570 and GTX 480. The Radeon HD 6950 is slightly slower than the 6970, comparable to slightly faster than the GTX 560 Ti and faster than the HD 5870. The 6950 was further discovered to be identical to the 6970 in core design, only differing in BIOS flashed software. As such, a BIOS flash would essentially upgrade the 6950 to a 6970.
  • Codenamed Antilles, the enthusiast dual-GPU (dual-6970) Radeon HD 6990 was launched on March 9, 2011. It features an 830 MHz reference engine clock speed, 3072 stream processors, 5.1 TFLOPS computing performance, 192 texture units, 4 GB of GDDR5 frame buffer (DRAM), and 375 W maximum board power.[5]
  • The HD 6990 card also comes with dual BIOS. By pushing a little switch next to the power connectors on the card, the card uses another firmware which AMD calls "Uber Mode". When enabling "Uber Mode" the cards 375 W maximum power drain increases to 450 W. The Engine clock also increases its speed to 880 MHz, exactly the engine speed of the 6970. The "Uber Mode" is well suited for overclocking the card. AMD says the "Uber Mode" feature is used at own risk.[6]

Chipset table

Main article: Comparison of AMD graphics processing units

See also

References

  1. ^ SemiAccurate: What happened with AMD's Northern Islands? by Charlie Demerjian, 20th Dec 2010
  2. ^ AnandTech: ATI’s Radeon HD 6870 & 6850: Renewing Competition in the Mid-Range Market by Ryan Smith, 21st Oct 2010
  3. ^ [1] by Anonymous, 15th March 2011
  4. ^ AnandTech: ATI's Radeon HD 6970 & 6950: Paving The Future For AMD by Ryan Smith, 15th Dec 2010
  5. ^ [2] by Chris Angelini, 8th Mar 2011
  6. ^ [3] by Anonymous, 15th Mars 2011
  • Ryan Smith (December 15, 2010). "AMD's Radeon HD 6970 & Radeon HD 6950: Paving The Future For AMD". anandtech.com. Retrieved January 10, 2011.
  • David Kanter (December 14, 2010). "AMD's Cayman GPU Architecture". realworldtech.com. Retrieved January 10, 2011.
  • AMD Radeon HD 6000 series
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