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Sapphire Radeon HD6850 and HD6870 Review

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

  • Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
  • Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
  • Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
  • Multicore CPU support
  • Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
  • Powerful C++ API
  • Comprehensive performance profiling system
  • Flexible XML-based data structures

1080p is a standard resolution we use with the Heaven Benchmark on all graphics cards, this means all review results are comparable throughout previous months.

Shaders are set to high, Tessellation to normal, anistrophy to 4 and Anti Aliasing is disabled.

The Sapphire HD6870 scores an average of 35.2 frames per second which brings it past the previous single core AMD flagship, the AMD HD5870. This is a great result for the new architecture and we can already see the potential. The Sapphire HD6850 scores in a similar zone to the GTX460 768MB, just under 30fps.

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17 comments

  1. Your 6850 have 1120 sharders. o_o”

  2. these are really good cards, love the performance and price.

  3. Excellent boards those, really look the part and performance is awesome. overclocking is great !

  4. Shit… haha 6850 is a killer card and guess what? its right in the price range im looking at 😀
    Only thing i can say reading other reviews is that the 6850 reference cooler is pretty weak. These sapphire cards look great for the money 😀 (6850) will reserve judgement til i seem overclocked 6870s

  5. Killer card indeed, couldnt agree more.

  6. HD6870 is good, but I dont like reference designs, too noisy/hot/ I will wait for sapphires or XFXs custom cooling one.

  7. HD6870 is the one I would get, but not reference version. will wait a month for vapor X or toxic version.

  8. 6870 reference design is a waste, waiting on other solutions

  9. the hd6870 isn’t my first choice until they get third party products out of the stable,

    Its always the way with launches, but its weird AMD have let their partners make third party solutions for 6850s

  10. over clocked HD6870s might be hard to get out the door with such poor over clocks on the core. seems both boards max out around 950

  11. While these cards aren’t awe inspiring, when you look at the price 150 for a 6850. about the same as the 5770. 25% more performance, looks good.

  12. those overclocks on the 50 are great. id say overclocked versions will be out really soon. vapor x anyone ?

  13. As JC stated, this 6850 has 1120 shaders instead of the default 960…

  14. The bottom gpuz screenshot is for the 6870

  15. I get the same 3dmark vantage score as this HD6850. I was hoping I might even up with a 1120 shader version but sadly not 🙁

  16. @ Jon

    I saw in another review that they managed to get the Sapphire 6870’s core clock to 1000mHz stable. I’m sure if put under water, these cards will have a bit more overclocking headroom anyway.

  17. asdaSd