[Tested] SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870 1024MB Review

SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870 Review Index

• 1 – Meet with SAPPHIRE’s Radeon HD 6870
• 2 – SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870 Features
• 3 – SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870 OpenGL performances
• 4 – SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870 Direct3D performances
• 5 – SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870 Gaming performances
• 6 – SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870 DirectCompute performances
• 7 – SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870 Power consumption and overclocking
• 8 – SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870: Misc Links and Reviews

3 – SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870 OpenGL performances

Testbed:
– CPU: Core i7 960 @ 3.2GHz
– RAM: 4GB DDR3 Corsair Dominator
– Motherboard: GIGABYTE X58-A UD5
– Windows 7 64-bit
– Graphics drivers: Cat 10.10
– PSU: Corsair AX1200

3.1 FurMark (OpenGL 2)

FurMark 1.8.2 has been used for the test. FurMark homepage is HERE.

Settings: 1920×1080 fullscreen, no AA, no postFX, 60sec, Xtreme mode UNCHECKED.

Rule: The higher the number of points, the faster the card is.

8259 points (Avg FPS: 138) – ASUS ENGTX580 ***UNLOCKED***, GPU Core: 871MHz, VDDC: 1.088V

6470 points – EVGA GeForce GTX 480

5420 points – ATI Radeon HD 5870

5161 points – MSI GeForce GTX 470

4693 points (Avg FPS: 78) – SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870, GPU core: 1020MHz

4641 points (Avg FPS: 78) – SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870, GPU core: 1000MHz

4583 points (Avg FPS: 76) – SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870, GPU core: 980MHz

4484 points (Avg FPS: 74) – ASUS EAH6870

4310 points (Avg FPS: 72) – SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870

3884 points – MSI N460GTX Cyclone 768D5 OC

2772 points – MSI R5770 Hawk

Remark: the score with a 1020MHz GPU is given only for the fun. Stressed by FurMark in Xtreme mode, the GPU clocked at 1020MHz is not stable (freeze).

3.2 TessMark (OpenGL 4)

Hardware tessellation is one of the big features of Direct3D 11 and OpenGL 4 capable graphics cards. TessMark is a new benchmark focused only on the tessellation engine of DX11 class cards. It’s a pure tessellation benchmark, it does not contain complex shader or other heavy texture fetches. TessMark shows an overview of the tessellation engine raw power, that’s all. DX11 specifies that the tessellation factor can vary from 1.0 up tp 64.0. Of course, for tessellation factors like 32 or 64, most of the tessellated triangles are smaller than… a pixel. In those cases, tessellation is useless and in a real world application such as a game, high tessellation factors won’t be used. But in the case of a synthetic benchmark, it’s always instructive to see how cards can handle the whole range of tessellation level.

TessMark 0.2.2 has been used for the test.

Settings: 1920×1080 fullscreen, no AA, 60sec, map set 1.

Rule: The higher the number of points, the faster the card is.

Tessellation factor 8.0: moderate

52188 (872FPS) – ASUS ENGTX580

48084 – EVGA GeForce GTX 480

38191 – MSI GeForce GTX 470

30512 – MSI N460GTX Cyclone 768D5 OC

27718 (462FPS) – Sapphire HD 6870, GPU core: 1000MHz

26223 – ASUS EAH6870

24161 (403FPS) – ATI Radeon HD 5870

23131 (386FPS) – Sapphire HD 6870

20745 – MSI R5770 Hawk

Tessellation factor 16.0: normal

36369 (545FPS) – ASUS ENGTX580

29196 – EVGA GeForce GTX 480

23316 – MSI GeForce GTX 470

17452 – MSI N460GTX Cyclone 768D5 OC

9255 (154FPS) – Sapphire HD 6870, GPU core: 1000MHz

8555 – ASUS EAH6870

8177 (136FPS) – Sapphire HD 6870

8018 (134FPS) – ATI Radeon HD 5870

7669 – MSI R5770 Hawk

Tessellation factor 32.0: extreme

15128 (252FPS) – ASUS ENGTX580

13008 – EVGA GeForce GTX 480

9997 – MSI GeForce GTX 470

6729 – MSI N460GTX Cyclone 768D5 OC

2299 – ASUS EAH6870

2246 (38FPS) – Sapphire HD 6870

2156 (36FPS) – ATI Radeon HD 5870

2159 – MSI R5770 Hawk

Tessellation factor 64.0: insane

4840 (81FPS) – ASUS ENGTX580

3963 – EVGA GeForce GTX 480

3169 – MSI GeForce GTX 470

1959 – MSI N460GTX Cyclone 768D5 OC

585 – ASUS EAH6870

574 (10FPS) – Sapphire HD 6870

565 – MSI R5770 Hawk

550 (10FPS) – ATI Radeon HD 5870

3.3 ShaderToyMark (OpenGL 2)

ShaderToyMark 0.1.0 is an OpenGL 2 benchmark, developed with GeeXLab,
and focused on pixel shaders only. The pixel shaders are heavily based on math (few texture fetches) and then ShaderToyMark can be seen as a kind of GPU computing benchmark.

Settings: 960×540 windowed, no AA, 60sec

306 points (51 FPS) – ASUS ENGTX580

263 points (43 FPS) – GeForce GTX 480

189 points (31 FPS) – ATI Radeon HD 5870

184 points (30 FPS) – ASUS EAH6870

179 (29FPS) – Sapphire HD 6870

156 points (26 FPS) – MSI N460GTX Cyclone

104 points (17 FPS) – MSI R5770 Hawk

46 points (7 FPS) – GeForce 9800 GTX

36 points (6 FPS) – EVGA GTX 280

33 points (5 FPS) – GeForce GTX 260

3.4 Maxon CINEBENCH R11.5 (OpenGL 2)

CINEBENCH is an OpenGL benchmark based on Cinema4D.

Settings: windowed mode 1920×1080.

61.79 FPS – Sapphire Radeon HD 6870

61.22 FPS – Radeon HD 5870

42.84 FPS – GeForce GTX 480

42.53 FPS – MSI N460GTX Cyclone

3.5 OpenGL 4 Mountains demo

Mountains demo is an OpenGL 4 demo that shows hierarchical-Z map based occlusion culling in action.

Settings: default window size: 1024×768, ICR enabled (Instance Cloud Reduction), Hi-Z enabled and dynamic LOD enabled.

674 FPS – ASUS ENGTX580

568 FPS – EVGA GTX 480

350 FPS – MSI N460GTX Cyclone 768D5

255 FPS – ASUS EAH6870

235 FPS – Sapphire Radeon HD 6870

231 FPS – Radeon HD 5870

220 FPS – MSI R5770 Hawk

3.6 GluxMark2 (OpenGL 2)

GluxMark2 is a purely syntethic OpenGL benchmark
and tries to measure performance from every point of view by using programmable graphics pipeline (vertex, geometry and fragment/pixel shaders).

Preset: high-end (1920×1080, MSAA: 8X)

9216 points (OpenCL: +2776 = 11992 points) – GeForce GTX 480

8099 points – Radeon HD 5870

6615 points – Sapphire Radeon HD 6870

5367 points (OpenCL: +2789 = 8156 points) – MSI N460GTX Cyclone

3.7 Unigine Heaven (OpenGL 4)

For this last OpenGL test, I used Ungine Heaven 2.1, one of the standard Direct3D / OpenGL synthetic benchmark.

Settings: 1920×1080 fullscreen, OpenGL rendering, tessellation: normal, shaders: high, AA: 4X, 16X anisotropic filtering.

46.4 FPS, Scores: 1168 – ASUS ENGTX580

38.7 FPS, Scores: 974 – EVGA GeForce GTX 480

24.5 FPS, Scores: 617 – MSI N460GTX Cyclone 768D5 OC

15.9 FPS, Scores: 400 – ATI Radeon HD 5870

13.6 FPS, Scores: 342 – ASUS EAH6870

13.5 FPS, Scores: 339 – SAPPHIRE HD6870

9 FPS, Scores: 227 – MSI R5770 Hawk

SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870 Review Index

• 1 – Meet with SAPPHIRE’s Radeon HD 6870
• 2 – SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870 Features
• 3 – SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870 OpenGL performances
• 4 – SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870 Direct3D performances
• 5 – SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870 Gaming performances
• 6 – SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870 DirectCompute performances
• 7 – SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870 Power consumption and overclocking
• 8 – SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870: Misc Links and Reviews