Today AMD launches its mainstream product lines for the HD 6000 series, using the ASIC codenamed Turks. The Radeon HD 6600 and 6500 series replace the Redwood codenamed series graphics boards (HD 5600 and 5500).

Sapphire Radeon HD 6670

The Turks based add-in boards (AIB) are aimed at a very popular and highly contested market segment, with high sales to OEMs and System builders looking to provide reasonable graphics options inside a specific set of power and price constraints. To that end, the Turks based boards, like the Redwood cards that preceded them, offer a variety of specifications for AIB Partners to pick from to create their version.

Turks XT

Turks Pro

The AMD Radeon HD 6670 is codenamed Turks XT, as part of AMD's second generation of DirectX 11 compatible Northern Islands graphics cards. The Turks Pro part is used to power the HD 6500 series of cards, at a lower price point. Below you can see the specifications of the two product lines.

Radeon HD 6670 & 6570 Specifications

Northern Islands 'Turks'

Today's investigation looks at the Sapphire HD 6600 and the AMD Radeon HD 6500 series, to see how they move forward the very popular and highly competitive mainstream market, against some comparable priced competition - including AMD's own ATI Radeon HD 5700 series.