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When nVidia released the GTX460, everyone was literally blown away – this was a mid range card that utterly dominated the market and delivered staggering levels of performance, particularly when overclocked. AMD had left a big hole in its range, from the 5770 to the 5850 – with only the lightweight 5830 offering any resistance in the £130 to £200 market. The headroom on nVidia's GTX460 card was incredible, with voltage tweakable solutions today hitting 1GHz on the core. AMD haven't been asleep on the job though and the new 6800 series is a direct reply to the serious questions the GTX460 has been asking.
XFX are one of AMD's key partners now, having parted company with nVidia to concentrate solely on AMD graphics cards. For this launch article today we have decided to concentrate on the XFX HD6850, a card which features a custom cooling solution. XFX have told us that this card will be sold for around £155 inc vat – meaning it directly targets reference clocked GTX 460's and overclocked 768mb models.
Firstly, we need to address the naming conventions, the HD6850 isn't a direct replacement for the HD5850, after all the HD5850 was initially released around £250, not £150.
AMD are focusing on tight price points and ensuring they try and deliver the best value for money products to market.
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XFX HD6850
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| Core Clock Speed |
775mhz
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| Stream Processors |
960
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| ROPs |
32
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| Frame Buffer |
1GB GDDR5
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| Compute Power |
1.5 TFLOPs
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| Memory Width/Speed |
256bit, 4.0 GBPS
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| Idle/Load Board Power |
19W/127W
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| Power Connectors |
Single 6 Pin
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| Display Outputs |
2xDVI + 2x mDP + 1 HDMI
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These look the nicest boards, love that cooler design. performance is great from the 6850. seems to be the better overclocker of the two series.
Wow nvidia just got owned again. although the gtx460 is still competitive, I like these better, power consumption rocks.
Excellent value for money, see it on Scan for 133.
HD6850 seems the massively scalable of the two, those overclocks are fantastic.
I ilke the way they have copied the look of the black edition 4GB 5970.
These look beautiful. what a classy looking design.
What a great price, less than two 5770s for 30% moer performance.
Great cards, shame about the lack of OC tool, I wonder will sapphire make this available on their site for everyone to use?
Great article, very informative
this new range is impressive. good power consumption
Looking forward to the high end cards if this is a sign !
cant wait to see the 6970 next year
the price is brilliant, crossfirex here I come. any ideas who has them to buy ?
A nice card indeed. At the moment I have a HD4870, but I’m thinking of upgrading. The price of the GTX460 also lowered quit significantly to like 140 EUR, so I’m still in doubt. HD6850 is slightly above that price, but I have a Crosshair 4 Formula. It would be nice to run Crossfire like in the review.
@ Zardon
btw Zardon, is your first name ‘Allan’? Since I think I’ve seen you before on another website 😛
XFX cards have been fixed with 1120 cores instead of 960 which is stated which means that these results are unacceptable and you wont get this perforamce out of the 6850s. WTF
These are 960. GPUz screenshot in the review.
oh yeah rofl sorry. that means the 6850 cf and 460 sli are in dead heat wow!
Great review guys. The scalling is awesome.
I did the calcutlations and the stock 460 sli beats the 6850 cf by 4.8% and metro and mafia which the 6850s beat the 460s support physx which makes it more complicated favorign teh 460s. The 460s are better performers but the 6850s are still very competetive and eats less power and new drivers would increase performance so…. its still a war. Great review
not including 3dmark vantage bcse its not a game and it fluctautes
sry 4.8 frames not 4.8 % lol