Legit Reviews

Diamond, Sapphire & XFX AMD Radeon HD 6870 Video Card Roundup

Today we have a nice little roundup for you on a set of retail boxed AMD Radeon HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 video cards from Diamond Multimedia, Sapphire and XFX. Also known as "Barts XT," the Radeon HD 6870 had a successful launch and the retail cards are now out in force. Diamond sent over the Radeon HD 6870 XOC, which will be the first factory overclocked retail card that we have seen.

The three cards we have here today are based of the AMD Radeon HD 6870 reference design, but as you can tell they all have different stickers on the front of them. The Diamond Multimedia Radeon HD 6870 XOC that we will be looking at today is the first factory overclocked 6870 that we have gotten our hands on. Rather than coming with factory clock speeds of 900MHz on the core and 1050Mhz on the memory it comes at 940MHz and 1100MHz, respectively. It will be fun to see in the benchmarks how the overclock helps in gaming performance.

Article Title: Diamond, Sapphire & XFX AMD Radeon HD 6870 Video Card Roundup
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1455/1/
Pricing At Time of Print: $239.99 plus shipping

What happened to XFX's dual lifetime warranty that was transferable?!

Also how were the temperatures when the GPUs were overclocked?

geokilla wrote:What happened to XFX's dual lifetime warranty that was transferable?!

Also how were the temperatures when the GPUs were overclocked?

Sorry I just went back and made some changes on the warranty page. Is now reads "It should also be noted that the limited lifetime warranty is transferable one time, but the two year warranty is not transferable." Here is the warranty details that come with the card:
I didn't check temps when overclocked to be honest.

can we get some comparisons to the ati radeon HD 5970? that's what i have and i am mostly interested in how new cards compare to the 5970!

thanks

What's the deal with all the cards using the standard cooling solution? Is there something where AMD AIB partners can't change the cooling solution? The variations in the overclocking section were just the difference in each chips silicon. It had nothing to do with it being better just luck of the draw.

Sapphire included a Display Port adapter for their card - that's nice of them .

Major_A wrote:What's the deal with all the cards using the standard cooling solution? Is there something where AMD AIB partners can't change the cooling solution? The variations in the overclocking section were just the difference in each chips silicon. It had nothing to do with it being better just luck of the draw.

yup, 100% correct.... sucks huh... was a painful conclusion to write.

joe wrote:can we get some comparisons to the ati radeon HD 5970? that's what i have and i am mostly interested in how new cards compare to the 5970!

You'll see the 5970 added back in the charts when Cayman arrives. The 6800 series are the midrange cards. The high end cards will be the 6900 series.... 6990, 6970, 6950. Those are the cards that will replace 5870 and 5970.

Apoptosis wrote:

joe wrote:can we get some comparisons to the ati radeon HD 5970? that's what i have and i am mostly interested in how new cards compare to the 5970!

You'll see the 5970 added back in the charts when Cayman arrives. The 6800 series are the midrange cards. The high end cards will be the 6900 series.... 6990, 6970, 6950. Those are the cards that will replace 5870 and 5970.

i think it would be useful for people to know how the 6870 compares to the 5970 even if they are not for the same user. i certainly would like to know

For my overall benefit towards the understanding of graphics cards and the benchmarks performed; how does a single Asus GF 470 do markedly better than dual Rad 6870's in Metro 2033, at least at reduced resolution, however gets flogged at both resolutions in AVP? I commonly see these kinds of results in the benchmarks.

I understand that different cards are engineered differently and acquire their own settings etc, but when a card's performance relies on the compatibility and programing of individual games, how do you judge which card is better overall?

Sorry in advance if those questions require PDF documents to answer properly. You can send them to my email

could you tell me the voltage you put the oced xfx card? thanks in advance :D