The latest that we have gathered about AMD's controversial new graphics cores, codenamed Barts (not Simpson ed.) claim that Radeon HD 6870 should easily be faster than a Geforce GTX 460 1GB.

This also implies that this card should be priced slightly higher than a Geforce GTX 460 1GB, so we expect that Radeon HD 6870 should cost around €250 / $250 USD if not a few bucks cheaper.

We are hearing that the performance gain on average with the new Barts XT part is around 20 to 25 percent but on the same time, we hear that Radeon HD 6870 won't be that much faster than the current 5870.

The good part is that despite the controversies Cayman XT and PRO cards should ship in about a month's time, being significantly faster than Cypress based Radeon HD 5870 series available today.

The official launch should take place next week.