AMD Radeon HD 6850 Overclocking Roundup: Asus, XFX, & MSI
by Ryan Smith on November 8, 2010 12:40 AM ESTPushing the Overclocking Limits: MSI Afterburner
For the Radeon HD 6850, AMD is giving the series a fairly low Overdrive limit of only 850MHz for the core. In practice we’ve found that this is attainable without voltage modification on all of our cards, so for more extreme overclocking we have to work a bit harder. Most tools simply tie in to Overdirve, and as a result will stick with the same 850MHz limit. Asus’s SmartDoctor can go up to 1000Mhz out of the box, while for the MSI R6850 and other cards MSI’s Afterburner can surpass this, but it won’t do so out of the box.
In order to push a 6850 beyond the Overdrive limits, Afterburner must be told to ignore them. This is accomplished by opening up the MSIAfterburner.cfg file in the program’s directory, and changing the entry EnableUnofficialOverclocking from 0 to 1. With this change in place Afterburner can go over 1000MHz, which is beyond what any of our cards can achieve without exotic cooling methods.
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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.