AMD Radeon HD 6870 with $105 pledge for Defense Grid 2 - Kickstarter

if gaughan333 will reliinquish his right to remain silent or his lawyer will speak on his behalf over this it should be case closed lol

Quote from travfar : Now I can back out without any guilt. I didn't want to leave them in the lurch so held off just in case. But now it doesn't matter. The lack of eyefinity, loud fan, poor DX11 performance and poor directcompute performance of this 6770 card kill it for me. So those looking for a $106. GO GO GO!!!!!

Your spot would have filled near instantly anyways.. besides you have no responsibility to a commercial game developer.. there is no guilt here.

i don't know... but i think i might back out. i did a search of the 6870 model. from what i can gather, it seems that the original (non-V3) model [powercolor.com] is defective. the cards will often develop problems and eventually die within a few months because of some hardware quality issue. it got to a point that neweggs had to take the product page [newegg.com] down and stopped selling them. this V3 model we'll be getting [powercolor.com] might have fixed the issue but i could not find any information about it. the specs seems to be identical to the original model.

my guess is that after powercolor finally figured out what's going on and manufactured a new batch, people are already migrating to 7xxx so they have a surplus sitting in their warehouse ready to give away.

Quote from mirai : i don't know... but i think i might back out. i did a search of the 6870 model. from what i can gather, it seems that the original (non-V3) model [powercolor.com] is defective. the cards will often develop problems and eventually die within a few months because of some hardware quality issue. it got to a point that neweggs had to take the product page [newegg.com] down and stopped selling them. this V3 model we'll be getting [powercolor.com] might have fixed the issue but i could not find any information about it. the specs seems to be identical to the original model. my guess is that after powercolor finally figured out what's going on and manufactured a new batch, people are already migrating to 7xxx so they have a surplus sitting in their warehouse ready to give away.

I'm wondering the same thing with their 6770s.

There seems to be a V1 and a V2. The V1 seemed decent (reviews speaking). The V2 didn't have as many reviews but most weren't so pleased with it. I can't find many places selling it.. seems like newegg was the biggest seller.

Powercolor has some terrible customer support responses on newegg too on these cards. To the point that I'm not sure I want to deal with them. And im guessing, with the reviews of this card, I will be dealing with them eventually if I go forth.


It looks like the 7-series didn't gain a major amount of performance versus 6 series but did lose power consumption by a large margin. And, compared to a 7770, the 6770 seems noisier as well. But is slower. Apparently there aren't any actual 6770s -- they are rebranded 5770s with a tweaked bios (to allow HDMI 1.4). I think I feel better with a 7 series card, with a little extra power, using a lot less power.. even if, per card, it costs me a little more than double.

If you are like me and keep your PC on 24/7, using the 6770 over the 7770 is the equivalent of leaving a light on all day, every day. The extra cost will be paid in the lower electricity bill over the course of a year. After that, it's money in the bank.

$54.50 per card though (in the 2x tier).. is a steal of a deal if you don't care about these things.

Quote from blargh : I'm wondering the same thing with their 6770s. There seems to be a V1 and a V2. The V1 seemed decent (reviews speaking). The V2 didn't have as many reviews but most weren't so pleased with it. I can't find many places selling it.. seems like newegg was the biggest seller. Powercolor has some terrible customer support responses on newegg too on these cards. To the point that I'm not sure I want to deal with them. And im guessing, with the reviews of this card, I will be dealing with them eventually if I go forth. It looks like the 7-series didn't gain a major amount of performance versus 6 series but did lose power consumption by a large margin. And, compared to a 7770, the 6770 seems noisier as well. But is slower. Apparently there aren't any actual 6770s -- they are rebranded 5770s with a tweaked bios (to allow HDMI 1.4). I think I feel better with a 7 series card, with a little extra power, using a lot less power.. even if, per card, it costs me a little more than double. If you are like me and keep your PC on 24/7, using the 6770 over the 7770 is the equivalent of leaving a light on all day, every day. The extra cost will be paid in the lower electricity bill over the course of a year. After that, it's money in the bank. $54.50 per card though (in the 2x tier).. is a steal of a deal if you don't care about these things.

It's less than $54.50 since the software has value too, but if you're worried about power consumption, why don't you put your computer to sleep? Personally I put only one of 10+ computers to sleep, but then again they're mostly servers and I don't pay for electricity.

Why do people keep their computers on 24/7 anymore? Just slap a SSD in there and startups are a synch!

Quote from blargh : If you are like me and keep your PC on 24/7, using the 6770 over the 7770 is the equivalent of leaving a light on all day, every day. The extra cost will be paid in the lower electricity bill over the course of a year. After that, it's money in the bank.

I'm not sure where you're getting the "the equivalent of leaving a light on all day, every day" thing. The 6770 draws 19 watts at idle, while the 7770 draws 10 watts at idle. Nine watts clearly isn't the equivalent of a light bulb...maybe a night-light. Is 10 watts better than 19? Sure. But it's nowhere near as significant as you're making it out to be. Heck, your cell phone charger could be consuming nine watts when your phone isn't connected to it. This isn't a significant amount of power.

Quote from chazzzer : I'm not sure where you're getting the "the equivalent of leaving a light on all day, every day" thing. The 6770 draws 19 watts at idle, while the 7770 draws 10 watts at idle. Nine watts clearly isn't the equivalent of a light bulb...maybe a night-light. Is 10 watts better than 19? Sure. But it's nowhere near as significant as you're making it out to be. Heck, your cell phone charger could be consuming nine watts when your phone isn't connected to it. This isn't a significant amount of power.

You're correct. I was looking at the 7750 (strike 1) this which actually shows TDP (and that is different, strike 2)

http://www.hwcompare.com/11774/ra...n-hd-7750/

the actual power differences between the cards is anywhere from 9 to around 55 watts from idle to full load... and I'd have two cards now that I have two systems going.

In any case I'm still glad I pulled out.. Now that I've realized it, the only card (outside of a branded ATI) with which I've had problems was a Powercolor board.. and I vaguely remember tech support was a pain. From the reviews I've seen around the net, I don't think they've improved much in that regard.

I'd rather skip the potential headaches (there or not) and CHOOSE a card versus having one chosen for me. At least, if it fails, I will only have me to blame for my choice.

We all have to make our choices.. and they really don't need to be judged by anyone.

Quote from satanslover : It's less than $54.50 since the software has value too, but if you're worried about power consumption, why don't you put your computer to sleep? Personally I put only one of 10+ computers to sleep, but then again they're mostly servers and I don't pay for electricity.

A case of sudden dyslexia... I meant 45.50 not 54.50 hehe

106 (for cards) - 15 (for game) = 91 / 2 (cards) = 45.50 (each)

Quote from Sultanofdeals : Why do people keep their computers on 24/7 anymore? Just slap a SSD in there and startups are a synch!

Because we like it this way, of course.

Quote from blargh : I'm wondering the same thing with their 6770s. There seems to be a V1 and a V2. The V1 seemed decent (reviews speaking). The V2 didn't have as many reviews but most weren't so pleased with it. I can't find many places selling it.. seems like newegg was the biggest seller. Powercolor has some terrible customer support responses on newegg too on these cards. To the point that I'm not sure I want to deal with them. And im guessing, with the reviews of this card, I will be dealing with them eventually if I go forth. It looks like the 7-series didn't gain a major amount of performance versus 6 series but did lose power consumption by a large margin. And, compared to a 7770, the 6770 seems noisier as well. But is slower. Apparently there aren't any actual 6770s -- they are rebranded 5770s with a tweaked bios (to allow HDMI 1.4). I think I feel better with a 7 series card, with a little extra power, using a lot less power.. even if, per card, it costs me a little more than double. If you are like me and keep your PC on 24/7, using the 6770 over the 7770 is the equivalent of leaving a light on all day, every day. The extra cost will be paid in the lower electricity bill over the course of a year. After that, it's money in the bank. $54.50 per card though (in the 2x tier).. is a steal of a deal if you don't care about these things.

The V2 reviews are horrible. I didn't find the more plentiful V1 reviews much better. Especially the almost universal comments about the "777" noisy fan.

I think the 77XX series is a step forward. The 67XX series has always been criticized for it's slow DX11 performance to the point that the solution seems to be to not run it with DX11 games. The 77XX no longer has that handicap. AMD/ATI drivers tend to improve performance with later releases on new hardware. The directcompute numbers seem to imply that there is hope. In the directcompute benchmarks, the 77XX line slaughters the 67XX line. The processing power is there, hopefully they can tap into it. The superquiet fan is a big plus. Some reviewers say that it's so quiet that it makes a good HTPC over a passive solution.

Thanks to the person that just let a 6870 go...now I've got a pair of them coming soon!

Two 6770 $106 pledges available right now.

Got one of the 6770's. I'm running a reference 5870 right now, but my brother is piecing together a pc build.

6870 now available....