AMD Radeon HD 6850 Overclocking Roundup: Asus, XFX, & MSI
by Ryan Smith on November 8, 2010 12:40 AM ESTMeet The XFX Radeon HD 6850
Kicking of our look at 6850s is XFX’s Radeon HD 6850 (HD-685X-ZNFC), a card we’ve had since the 6850 launch two weeks ago and provided to us by XFX to allow us to test 6850 CrossFire performance.
In terms of design the XFX 6850 only bears little resemblance to the reference 6850. The PCB runs half an inch shorter than the reference 6850, measuring 8.5”, while among other differences the XFX 6850 has a second unused set of pads for a second 6pin PCIe power socket. Unfortunately the PCIe power socket is still rear facing, meaning while the card is shorter than the reference 6850, you need to factor in space needed for a PCIe power cable. Meanwhile in terms of build quality the card is fairly normal for a mainstream video card; along with the usual solid capacitors, XFX is also using solid state ferrite core chokes here.
Attached to the top of the card is a completely custom cooler. As is common with cards in this price range and performance level, XFX has ditched the 5850/6850 blower for a more open design that features a center-mounted fan that blows air out the front and the rear of the card. These open designs are both cooler and quieter as air doesn’t need to be forced through several inches of heatsink & shrouding, at a cost of relying more on a case’s cooling abilities. XFX is using a partially shrouded design in order to keep hot air from blowing out of the bottom of the card & towards the motherboard, along with providing some structural stability to the card.
Interestingly, XFX is using a vapor chamber cooler here, which is uncommon for cards at this price range. As you may recall, vapor chambers are effectively flattened heatpipes that sit between a GPU and heatsink, and offer better cooling than a simple solid-metal heatsink base. We’ve never been able to get a solid idea on pricing, but it’s our belief that vapor chamber coolers end up costing more to build than similar heatpipe coolers, which makes the inclusion of a vapor chamber on a sub-$200 card an unusual choice. In any case, the vapor chamber is then attached to a fairly typical circular aluminum heatsink, with fins running up to the top of the card and the fan embedded in the middle. As we’ll see in our test results, the cooling design on the XFX 6850 keeps the card exceptionally cool, but XFX has turned the card for cooling performance at the cost of noise.
Cross-Sectional Diagram Of XFX's Cooler
For the port configuration, XFX has deviated from AMD’s new Eyefinity port configuration in place of the older 5800-series port configuration. This means along with the two DVI ports and the HDMI port there’s only one full-size DisplayPort, versus the two mini-DP ports that AMD has been pushing for these cards. This is a DP 1.2 port, so the XFX 6850 can still drive up to 3 monitors from it, but the card will be unable to drive 6 monitors (instead being limited to 5) as it lacks the necessary outputs.
As far as packed-in items are concerned, as the 6850 is a mainstream card you won’t find any significant included with the card. XFX includes the usual collection of a quick start guide, warranty guide, and driver CD along with a XFX-banded doorknob hanger. However you won’t find any dongles, cables, or power adapters here – in fact XFX doesn’t even officially support using a 2x Molex to 6pin PCIe power adapter.
Finally, XFX is providing their standard double lifetime warranty for the card; 2 years if unregistered with the double lifetime warranty taking effect if the card is registered. Not surprisingly this along with XFX’s design choices have pushed the price of the card up a bit, with the XFX 6850 available for around $190, $10 over the AMD baseline MSRP.
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tech6 - Monday, November 8, 2010 - link
Nice work Ryan.Let's all turn it down a notch about the 460 OC cards. This was never an issue and it still isn't. A number of available cards are chosen for comparison purposes but you can never include all possible variations. So those that are seeing some sort of conspiracy that has Anand taking bags of cash from a vendor in return for leaving out some card in his comparisons - it's time to take off you foil hats and come out from your basements. AT is an excellent and thorough tech review site and to throw out unsubstantiated charges of bias is just a cheap shot. If you have some sort of persuasive proof to contrary then please share it with the rest of us.
silverblue - Monday, November 8, 2010 - link
...it may be better to just compare the 6870 and its OCed variants to the best 460s around in a separate article. It's obvious (at least, to me) that in terms of performance, the OCed 6850s cannot match the 460 FTW and that the true competition would be the OCed 6870. In terms of power and temperature, the 6850 will win, but that's not of much concern when people want the fastest card.Veroxious - Monday, November 8, 2010 - link
Well I guess it's a case of damned if you do and damned if you don't..... IMO you should have included the superclocked EVGA GTX460 (focusing the article on OC results) as it would then be an apples to apples comparison. If one does refer back to the 6850/6870 article you will see that the 2 best overclocking cards (Asus and more so MSI) are neck and neck with the EVGA GTX460 FTW. So buying any of these cards would be an excellent buy.The DIFFERENCE is while the EVGA is arguably a limited version/best case scenario for the GTX 460 it costs $240. There is no price for the MSI card but the Asus card is $185 (out of stock currently on Newegg). As you can see in the article ALL the 6850 cards could hit 940Mhz on stock volts.
So you have a 185$ card that will give you the performance of a $240 card? No wonder there is no stock. At this price ($55 less) it gives the term "value for your money" real meaning. Can I have 2 please?
El_Capitan - Monday, November 8, 2010 - link
I'm sorry, but the EVGA GTX 460 1GB FTW isn't the best overclocking GTX 460 1GB card. It may be the best factory overclocked card, but the winner goes to:1. ASUS from $199.99 to $219.99 where available, hitting 1015MHz core clock.
2. MSI Hawk from $189.99 to $199.99 where available, hitting 960MHz core clock.
Comparing those prices to any of this review's HD 6850 cards that range from $184.99 to $189.00 plus shipping, the prices are equal.
Stuka87 - Monday, November 8, 2010 - link
Am I the only one who is not seeing *ANY* XFX scores on the benchmarks page?None of the graphs have it there??
Lazlo Panaflex - Monday, November 8, 2010 - link
I'm not seeing them either...WTH?Ryan Smith - Monday, November 8, 2010 - link
The XFX is stock-clocked, and when overclocked all of our cards reach common clocks. So we don't break out the scores separately.rpmrush - Monday, November 8, 2010 - link
I love the in-depth vid card reviews here. I really wanna c the custom cooled 6870 cards. I'm waiting to pull the trigger on the one that is quietest with decent overclocking head room.danielkza - Monday, November 8, 2010 - link
At page 8:"All of the cards could hit 850MHz core at stock clocks"
Didn't you mean:
"All of the cards could hit 850MHz core at stock voltages"
tomoyo - Monday, November 8, 2010 - link
It's funny to me that it'll seem like our wants are flipflopping, but the issue is pretty clear.An article about a brand new video card that isn't overclocked, should be compared against the same type of video card.
An article about overclocked video cards should be compared against overclocked video cards of the same market.
Simply put, you unfortunately made the wrong mistake both times, but at least this issue is pretty easy to correct. I hope you also add overclocked GTX 460 results into this one as an update, it does make sense to. The issue originally was that you compared an overclocked GTX 460, but did not compare it to an overclocked Radeon 6850.