Radeon HD 6000 series explained

AMD Radeon HD 6000 series
Codename:Northern Islands
Vancouver
Architecture:TeraScale 2
TeraScale 3
Transistors1:292M 40 nm (Cedar)
Transistors2:370M 40 nm (Caicos)
Transistors3:716M 40 nm (Turks)
Transistors4:1.040M 40 nm (Juniper)
Transistors5:1.700M 40 nm (Barts)
Transistors6:2.640M 40 nm (Cayman)
Transistors7:2x 2.640M 40 nm (Antilles)
Entry:64xx - 66xx
Midrange:67xx
Highend:68xx - 6970
Enthusiast:6990
Openglversion:OpenGL 4.5[1]
D3dversion:Direct3D 11
(feature level 11_0) [2]
Shader Model 5.0
Openclversion:OpenCL 1.2[3]
Predecessor:Radeon HD 5000 series
Successor:Radeon HD 7000 series
Support Status:Unsupported

The Northern Islands series is a family of GPUs developed by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) forming part of its Radeon-brand, based on the 40 nm process. Some models are based on TeraScale 2 (VLIW5), some on the new TeraScale 3 (VLIW4) introduced with them.

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). This also marks the end of the "Mobility Radeon" name in their laptop GPUs, keeping only the "M" suffix in the GPU model number to signify a Mobile variant.

Its direct competitor was Nvidia's GeForce 500 series; they were launched approximately a month apart.

Architecture

This article is about all products under the Radeon HD 6000 series brand.

Multi-monitor support

See main article: AMD Eyefinity. The AMD Eyefinity-branded on-die display controllers were introduced in September 2009 in the Radeon HD 5000 series and have been present in all products since.[4]

Video acceleration

Unified Video Decoder (UVD3) is present on the die of all products and supported by AMD Catalyst and by the free and open-source graphics device driver.[5]

OpenCL (API)

OpenCL accelerates many scientific Software Packages against CPU up to factor 10 or 100 and more.Open CL 1.0 to 1.2 are supported for all Chips with Terascale 2 and 3.[6]

Products

The 6800 series was the first batch of the Radeon 6000 series. Codenamed ''Northern Islands'',[7] this series was released on October 22, 2010, after brief delays. Over the following months, the budget, midrange, and high-end cards were filled into the series.

Radeon HD 6400

AMD released the entry-level Radeon HD 6400 GPU on February 7, 2011. Codenamed Caicos, it came to market at the same time as the Radeon HD 6500/6600 Turks GPUs. The sole Caicos product, the Radeon HD 6450, aimed to replace the HD 5450. Compared to the 5450 it has double the stream processors, GDDR5 support, along with new Northern Island technologies.

Radeon HD 6500/6600

Codenamed Turks, these entry-level GPUs were released on February 7, 2011. The Turks' family includes Turks PRO and Turks XT which are marketed as HD 6570 and HD 6670 respectively. They were originally released to OEMs only, but later released to retail.

The Radeon HD 6570 and 6670 are minor upgrades of their Evergreen counterparts, the HD 5570 and 5670. Turks GPUs contain 80 more stream processors and 4 more texture units. They have also been upgraded to support the new technologies found in the Northern Islands GPUs such as HDMI 1.4a, UVD3, and stereoscopic 3D.

Radeon HD 6700

Codenamed Barts LE, the 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.

AMD has confirmed that the HD 6700 cards use the Juniper XT and Juniper Pro cores from the HD 5700 series, and therefore they are not formally Northern Islands GPUs. Thus 6770 and 6750 are essentially the 5770 and 5750 respectively, with the label being the main difference. There are a few enhancements to the 5700 series, including:

Radeon HD 6800

Codenamed Barts, the Radeon HD 6800 series was released on October 23, 2010. Products include Radeon HD 6850 and Radeon HD 6870. Barts uses shaders of the same 5-way VLIW architecture as HD 5000 series.[9]

Radeon HD 6900

This family includes three different high-end products all based on TeraScale 3 (VLIW4)

Codenamed Cayman, the 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, which 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.[11]

AMD PowerTune technology was introduced as a part of AMD's ongoing commitment to enhance power efficiency in its range of graphics cards. Launched alongside the Radeon HD 6900 series, PowerTune aimed to maximize the performance of GPUs within specified power envelopes.

Chipset table

Desktop Products

IGP (HD 6xxx)

Desktop
Ultra-mobile

Mobile Products

IGP (HD 6xxxG)

ModelReleasedCode nameFab (nm)Core Clock (MHz)Config core1FillrateShared MemoryGFLOPSCombined TDP2 (W)
Pixel (GP/s)Texture (GT/s)Bandwidth (GB/s)Bus typeBus width (bit)IdleMax.
Radeon HD 6380GJune 14, 2011WinterPark[14] 32400160:8:41.63.217.06DDR3-133312812835
Radeon HD 6480GBeaverCreek[15] 444240:12:41.773.55213.135-45
Radeon HD 6520GBeaverCreek[16] 400320:16:83.26.4256
Radeon HD 6620GBeaverCreek[17] 444400:20:83.558.8825.6DDR3-1600355.2

See also

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition Beta . . 2018-04-20.
  2. Web site: AMD Radeon Software Support for Legacy Graphics Products . . 2018-04-21.
  3. Web site: AMD Catalyst Software Suite Version 12.4 Release Notes . 2012 . 2018-04-20. https://web.archive.org/web/20120426183944/http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalystSoftwareSuiteVersion124ReleaseNotes.aspx . 2012-04-26 . dead .
  4. Web site: AMD Eyefinity: FAQ . . 2011-05-17 . 2014-07-02.
  5. Web site: AMD Releases Open-Source UVD Video Support . 2023-08-24 . www.phoronix.com . en.
  6. Web site: The Khronos Group . 17 August 2022 .
  7. Web site: RadeonFeature . Xorg.freedesktop.org . 2013-11-10.
  8. Web site: Prior. James. Editorial — AMD Radeon HD 6770/6750 Rebranding. Rage3D. 18 March 2012.
  9. http://www.anandtech.com/show/3987/amds-radeon-6870-6850-renewing-competition-in-the-midrange-market AnandTech: ATI’s Radeon HD 6870 & 6850: Renewing Competition in the Mid-Range Market
  10. http://www.sweclockers.com/artikel/12880-djupdykning-i-radeon-hd-6800-serien/3#pagehead by Anonymous, 15th March 2011
  11. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4061/amds-radeon-hd-6970-radeon-hd-6950 AnandTech: ATI's Radeon HD 6970 & 6950: Paving The Future For AMD
  12. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-6990-antilles-crossfire,2878.html by Chris Angelini, 8th Mar 2011
  13. http://www.sweclockers.com/recension/13610-amd-radeon-hd-6990/3#pagehead by Anonymous, 15th Mars 2011
  14. used in E2-3000M APU
  15. used in A4-3300M and A4-3310MX APU
  16. used in A6-3400M and A6-3410MX APU
  17. used in A8-3500M, A8-3510MX and A8-3530MX APU