AMD Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 officially pictured, coming this Friday

AMD said it's bringing the new heat this week, but, in a classic act of showmanship, it's teasing out only imagery today and insisting on making us wait until Friday to truly learn what the next generation of Radeon graphics is made of. For now, we have the full titles of its leading lights, namely the Radeon HD 6870 and Radeon HD 6850, along with plenty of pictorial evidence of their existence in a lab somewhere. We note with glee that the default output arrangement includes no less than five ports, including two DVI, one HDMI (1.4a), and two Mini DisplayPorts. We'd rather the latter two were full-sized, but it doesn't look like ~~ATI~~ AMD had the room to fit them in. As to power requirements, the HD 6870 will need two 6-pin connectors to augment the juice it gets from the PCI Express port, while the HD 6850 will sate its needs with just the one. Anyhow, enjoy the gallery below and make sure to have your popcorn ready for the benchmark-heavy reviews coming up at the end of the week.

Gallery: AMD Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 official images