Doing additional processing for each pixel in a group of 4 and then throwing 75% of that work away is just sad.”ĪMD's stance on this is “Tessellating the Right Way” – which means a focus on the most efficient tessellation usage models with 16 pixels per polygon combining solid image quality with high levels of performance.
Even though that pixel can’t be broken away from the 3 other pixels in its quad.
With artificial tests like Stone Giant, which was paid for by nVidia, tessellation can be done down to the single pixel level. Tessellation is about enriching detail, and that’s a good thing, but nVidia is pushing to get as much tessellation as possible into everything. Our recent interview with Richard Huddy opened a few eyes, as he said “nVidia is pushing a single message and that’s tessellation. Tessellation is a hotly discussed topic right now, and it is a bone of contention between nVidia and AMD. AMD's internal testing shows that the HD6870 achieves twice the tessellation performance of the HD5870. This should mean that AMD are closely competitive with similarly priced nVidia Fermi hardware, we will look at performance later in this article. This means that performance is increased by up to two times when directly compared to the HD5000 series. The updated Tessellation unit, called ‘Generation 7' brings new thread management capabilities as well as buffering enhancements to the table. The ‘Barts’ codenamed products are aimed at the sub $250 market, while the forthcoming ‘Cayman’ and ‘Antilles’ are higher end and significantly more expensive. The HD5870 first hit the market at £350, while the HD6870 will cost less than £199 … an incredible pricepoint achievement if the new AMD hardware can go head to head with the giant killing GTX460 – the source of this pricing war. The serious high end HD6900 cards are due for release in November.
The HD6870 isn’t a direct replacement for the HD5870 – AMD’s goal was to deliver similar levels of performance from the HD6870 but at a much lower price. The new AMD HD6870 has been released to tackle the GTX460's domination with similar pricing levels.įirstly we need to address the naming conventions, because many enthusiasts have gotten a little confused. Many partners have released custom solutions with enhanced coolers and clock speeds. It took nVidia many more months to come to market with competitive solutions and while their GTX480 and GTX470 received a half hearted welcome, the GTX460 has literally taken the mid market by storm.
AMD have been in charge of the DX11 battlefield since their HD5000 series cards were released last year.