Hardware XFX Radeon HD 6850 Review

We see if XFX's first stab at a Radeon HD 6850 card is up to scratch

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2010/11/06/xfx-radeon-hd-6850-review/1

 

When did the format of reviews change so the conclusion is on the front page? 9 times out of 10 I skip the content and just read the conclusion, so was caught out today

 

They did it the wrong way round with the NAS box reviews too.

Still looking forward to seeing some overclocked 6 series benchmarks to see if either card when overclocked is as good as an overclocked 460 1GB.

 

"9 times out of 10 I skip the content and just read the conclusion, so was caught out today"



Which is why they did it.....

Very funny BT.....

 

No conclusion and no crysis benchmarks......

 

Correct on one of those!

 

Well the topic hardly merits a ten page long in-depth expose of the XFX HD6850s non-reference cooler...

 

Hmm I prefer having the conclusion on the last page.

 

hazzah!

XFX has some sense, and put in normal sized connectors.

 

I think this new format benefits those of us who rarely read the full review. All we need is right there on the first page. I approve.

However one thing I don't particularly agree with (and this is the standard format for almost every review site so i'm not pointing the finger at Bit-Tech here) is the way that is is apparently necessary to rerun every single benchmark for an aftermarket card. What I want to know about in an aftermarket card is how good the cooler is, how quit it runs, and how well does it manually overclock. I really feel that unless there is a significant factory overclock, it wastes a lot of time runnign all the benchmarks and you can always guess that the overclock will make just a few FPS difference. I'd rather see you guys push the card to the limit yourselves and then see how this increases performance from the stock card in maybe one benchmark.

 

Will you be doing the same benchtest as the GTX460 got in CustomPC isue 085? they reviewed all manufacturers and came up with the perfect card.

 

I agree with this, I'd rather they didn't so extensively test each single aftermarket card and instead just listed heat, noise and overclocking (see above) and an ultimate conclusion as to which are the ones to get.

 

Lol... at first I was like



But then I saw that there were more pages on the review... Nice prank BT

 

Yes, conclusion at the end of the review please - even if it is a briefer review of partner cards of an already reviewed product.

Will be interesting to see some Vapor-x versions of the 6800 series to see how they perform.

 

So the last component I need to get for my new toy is the GPU. I have a budget of £150 and effectively this gives me either a 460 or a 6850.

I keep looking at benchmarks and the truth is there is bugger all difference between these two cards in any meaningful way.

Looks like the buying decision will be down to whoever has some sort of offer or value added pack or has a pretty finish on the fan casing. Not really the best way of deciding.

 

Your right, it's a very tough call at the moment at that price point.

However if I had to make the choice I'd go for the GTX 460 as it overclocks much better, comparing these two pages the GTX 460 gained over 20% performance from overclocking whereas the 6850 gained just over 10%. They also said in the review that that particular GTX 460 overclocked lower than other models (note that i'm not necessarily recommending those versions of the card, they're just very close to the reference and are a good indicator of overclocking performance).

Also SLI seems to perform marginally better than Crossfire at the moment, if you want to get another in the future, however it doesn't look like that'll last much longer as Crossfire continues to improve.

 

Save up just a little more money and get the HD 6870. But if I had to choose between the GTX 460 1gb and the HD 6750 then I would get the GTX 460 because of Physx and a slight edge in performance when Tessellation is applied in games such as Metro 2033 which needs to be on all DX11 Video Card reviews.

 

the conclusion of the review is that the 6850 is on a par with the GTX 460 1GB. That's just not true, the only way that 6850 beats the GTX 460 1GB is on just cause 2 which is obviously an AMD biased game (the 5770 beats a 460 786mb!). Everywhere else the 460 1gb beats it, also imagine a DX11 game like metro with 8xAA on, the 6850 would be dreadful. Also the 460 1gb isn't even an overclocked one, it gains about 25% performance compared to the 6850's 10% so would be even better, the 6850 isn't on a par, it's definately a step down from the 460.

 

I would be interested in the noise level of each of these cards so that I could compare them. Noise is a factor for me.

I did the same thing, looks like now I can log in and get the rating on the front page.

 

I think the really interesting information to be had here is in comparing the performance of the 6870 to that of the 5770, the former being some 50%+ of the later.....the 6870 is the top of the Barts chip range of the 6000 series and 5770 is the top of the Juniper chip range of the 5000 series....both the Juniper and Bart chips are second from top in performance in their given series.
If that performance ratio carries forward when comparing the Cayman and Cypress chips and 6970 ends up with 50%+ more performance than 5870 then it will be one hell of a card.....don't think Nvidias GTX580 will be enough to answer such a performance increase.