Ah, nothing like the smell of fresh GPUs in the morning...even when they're diet GPUs, with no cream! The 68xx series that ATI launches today comes in response to the perpetual stream of enthusiast complaints about the pricing of the older 58xx series: "Why is it so expensive? I could get an 800 series GPU for peanuts back when ATI was in an incredible rut and needed to stave off market erosion, and I see absolutely no reason for which that has changed!".

Leaving joking aside, the Barts based 6870 and the 6850 aren't replacements for the Cypress based 5870/5850, but rather more muscular propositions for the performance mainstream market, where neither 57xx cards nor the castrated 5830 did that well against the rather excellent GTX 460. As such, we're looking primarily at optimised ASICs that get a 50MHz engine clock bump versus prior efforts, whilst shaving off some SIMDs,  double precision support, but keeping ROP count at 32 to end up with a 255mm2 die. Did we mention that the top SKU is quite aggressively priced at ~240E?

OK, we may be selling Barts a bit short there, but we're not that familiar with the hardware, which puts a dent in our divining abilities. Luckily, our friend Damien is still in favour it seems, and has had ample time to play with the new cards, the result being a rather good piece we urge you to read. For those of you that are not hugely proficient in Moliere's language, Anandtech brings the English goodies. Happy reading!