Hardware XFX Radeon HD 6850 Review

you know to be honest I think starting with the conclusion isnt a bad idea really, I tend to jump to the end, get an idea of what they think of the card and check out the ratings and then go through and look at the test results to which ever test I wanted to look at. This could work.

 

I just skimmed through the original HD6850 review again and couldn't find any mentioning of the stock cooler's loudness. Actually, the closest thing I could find was this:

To me that doesn't sound like the stock HD6850 cooler is noisy.

I'd really like for bit-tech to focus a bit more on graphics card noise (or the lack thereof) as this becomes increasingly more important to many users.

 

XFX Issues Fix for HD 6850 High Idle Fan Speed

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/news/video/xfx-issues-fix-hd-6850-high-idle-fan-speed/

 

What is the point in running a stock clocked card through all of the tests when you already have the results from a stock clocked (reference) card included in said review?

More over why bother finidng out how far a HD6850 can clock and then NOT including any overclocking results in the tests at all? To me this just seems a waste of time.

The same thing happened with the Asus HD5870 VT. Bit reviewed the card at reference clocks where suprise suprise it scored identical to the reference card. Only one result was shown for its overclock when in reality the card should have been put through the tests overclocked and the reference card should have acted as a proxy for stock clocks.

Sorry to sound like I am moaning but really this 'review' doesn't realy tell us anything we don't already know.

 

Been thinking of buying one of these for a new build however, the GTX 460 still seems like the way to go if im right in thinking the benchmarked 1GB GTX 460 is stock? If so, surely the msi or Gigabyte 460 would just completely embarrass the 6850?

 

+1 for keeping the conclusion at the start of the review.
Unless I'm actively looking for new hardware I don't usually bother looking through all the graphs, just a quick overview to keep up.

 

From a scientific point of view, the conclusion should come last. But from my own point of view, I really couldn't give a monkeys if it is at the end or the beginning. Just so long as bit make up their mind which format they are going to follow, and stick with it.

The phrase 'don't fix what isn't broken' does come to mind though.

 

So, uh, can it run Crysis?

Oh wait, it's not in the review...

 

This card only has 960 stream processors ? not 1120 as listed in the specs?Any way is this a significant upgarde from a radeon 4870?i game at 1680 x 1050 and mostly play COH online and DOW 2.

 

it's not much of an upgrade, especially for those games at that screen resolution. I'd wait to see how the GTX 560 is for performance at this sort of price point.