AMD Radeon HD 6850 Overclocking Roundup: Asus, XFX, & MSI
by Ryan Smith on November 8, 2010 12:40 AM ESTFinal Thoughts
As this is a two-sided article, there are two things we’d like to touch on: Radeon HD 6850 overclocking in general, and how well the cards in today’s roundup stack up.
We’ll start with 6850 overclocking in general. While we only use a subset of our most performance-hungry games in overclocking testing, it’s clear that 6850 overclocking isn’t going to be a simple case of overclocking the core first, and getting what you can out of the memory second. In fact it looks to be the opposite: the 6850’s big performance pickup from overclocking is due to the memory overclock first, then the core overclock. As a result we’re less concerned with core overclocking (and overvolting) as we are with memory overclocking. Overclocking both is going to be necessary to compete with the 6870 in shader-bound games, but even the memory overclock alone can be quite potent. AMD’s Overdrive limits don’t look so bad in this respect, and based on our 4 cards 850/1150 is probably attainable on most cards.
On this note, it’s interesting that the only card in our roundup with a significant factory overclock, the MSI R6850 OC, had a much bigger memory overclock than a core overclock. We normally don’t put much thought in to how partners choose their overclocks beyond choosing things that bin in large enough numbers, but this certainly grabs our attention. Perhaps MSI has realized the same thing we have?
This brings us to the second half of our article: the 6850 roundup. Balance is usually the key to a good card, and in the mainstream market this is even more important. So among the 3 cards in our roundup it catches us off-guard to see that only 1 of the cards is really balanced: the Asus EAH6850. While the XFX Radeon HD 6850 has excellent cooling, it’s much too aggressive in our tests; lower temperatures don’t do anything on their own, we’re only concerned about them to the point that they’re low enough that we need not be concerned with the lifespan of a card. Meanwhile the MSI R6850 OC is just all-around worse, which while explainable at stock speeds due to its overclock, is hard to explain when we normalize clocks and voltages at 1.172v, 940/1150. There’s always something to be said for the benefits of a factory overclock, but compared to the Asus card it seems like there’s a lot to give up to get there.
And that leaves us with the Asus EAH6850. Asus’s design philosophy is normally what we’d call “aggressive”, as we have seen a number of their cards that trade temperature for noise, similar to the XFX. But this isn’t the case for the EAH6850 – it’s as balanced a card as we could ask for. It does well enough at cooling while approaching whisper-quiet noise levels, and even overclocked it manages to keep the 6850 in check without getting too loud or drawing more power than is necessary. At 9.5” long Asus did have to make some kind of tradeoff, but unless you have an extremely cramped case it’s definitely a reasonable tradeoff. Ignore the ridiculous token overclock, and you have the Radeon HD 6850 that not only stands above all others, but can more than give the GTX 460 1GB a solid kick to the curb.
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spigzone - Monday, November 8, 2010 - link
Ryan - "It was made abundantly clear to us in the comments in our follow-up piece and in emails to us that you guys disapproved of our inclusion of non-reference cards in articles."Your statement utterly disingenuous = DISHONEST.
It was crystal clear the howl that went up was specifically for using massively overclocked GTX460 cards in the FIRST REVIEW of the new AMD GPU series AND that it violated your own editorial policy on such 'first' reviews AND at that you didn't even include a Overdrive o/c'ed 6850/5870 for comparison.
It was ALSO crystal clear the readers DO want non-reference and o/ced cards in FOLLOW UP articles.
LIKE THIS ONE.
THIS IS WHERE ALL THOSE O/Ced AND NON-REFERENCE CARD STATS BELONG.
This is really disappointing.
And VERY dishonest.
7Enigma - Monday, November 8, 2010 - link
While a little harsh, this is pretty much dead on (once you weeded through all the fan-boy posts that had no sane basis other than a love/hate for their particular brand).And as mentioned the fix for this is so simple it shouldn't take more than an hour to correct. Put the 460 FTW in the charts, mention the pricing is more than the 6850 variants and let the buyers decide.
mapesdhs - Monday, November 8, 2010 - link
Hear hear!
The closing comment in the article is really dumb. Nobody in their right mind
would buy a stock 460 1GB for reasons I posted about before (they're either
more expensive than oc'd 460s, or not available at all - some sellers only
sell oc'd versions; one seller's _cheapest_ 460 1GB has an 800 core!).
So in the equivalent but opposite manner to the earlier article, readers are
left with a misleading and inaccurate conclusion. That's a real shame. The
earlier article was good because it showed how a real card that I could buy
performed. This article gives no useful comparison info at all as that same
card is left out, all because of a bunch of moaners. While I didn't agree with
those who opposed the inclusion of the FTW in the earlier article, the strong
sense from all of them was that they thought such cards *should* be included
in this kind of article. Oh dear...
This is like watching a pilot sheer a plane left/right too hard in turbulence -
no sensible middle course adopted, so the tail fin falls off. What some
perceived as an earlier mistake has merely been made worse.
Ian.
tomoyo - Monday, November 8, 2010 - link
I don't think there's any dishonesty here at all. While I just mentioned that Ryan did make mistakes, I think they were 100% honest mistakes. His goal is to satisfy the readers. I think the effort is there, but in this case, the way it was handled was incorrect. It's pretty ugly to accuse someone of dishonesty without any reason to.Ramon Zarat - Monday, November 8, 2010 - link
I didn’t read the whole 5 pages of comments, I didn’t need to.The very first comment and the subsequent “attempts” to address it was more than enough for me and unfortunately, even reinforced the impression of partiality toward Nvidia many noticed in the first article.
This second article was the perfect opportunity to set the record straight and prove once and for all the 6850 is indeed a better buy over the 460, even a cherry picked and overclocked to death one. Pitting them one against the other was the thing to do, but no, Anand didn’t. Asking why he didn’t is kind of answering the question.
The reality is those 6850 can all hit 1Ghz on air with the help of a slight voltage adjustment. Most reach 950Mhz at stock voltage. Some even report near 1.1Ghz stable, still with air cooling, but at 1.3V. The 460 can do 850Mhz on air under the best of circumstances, period.
What we all want to see is an overclocked to death 460 against an overclocked to death 6850. Ask both Nvidia and AMD to send you the best of their respective sample and let see what a 460 at 850Mhz can do against a 6850 at over 1Ghz… If we are to accept bogus cherry picked sample, and we all know the limited 850Mhz edition are just that: super top cream golden cherry not representative of the vast majority of 460 GPU, lets assume ourselves entirely.
Give us the power and thermal at those speeds. Also do a SLI VS CF at those settings.
Again, we all know the answer: The 6850 destroys the 460 on power, speed, scalability and price ratio when apple to apple protocol is applied.. For some reason, this web site doesn’t want you, the reader, to know about it.
Ramon.
El_Capitan - Monday, November 8, 2010 - link
Really, read the 5 pages of comments. Maybe you can also stop speaking out of your ass.http://forums.overclockersclub.com/index.php?showt...
http://img101.imageshack.us/i/furmarksingle4601005...
Listen, it's fine if the HD 6850 overclocks like a monster and there's results to prove it, but don't belittle the GTX 460 1GB with bogus claims. Why don't you provide us with some proof? Obviously AnandTech can't provide it, but you know how to Google, right?
7Enigma - Monday, November 8, 2010 - link
I spent a bit of time over my lunch break to compare the Asus OC 6850 card in this review and the FTW 460 in the previous review. I put together a table in Excel but will have to summarize since this comment system is so archaic.I chose the Asus for 2 reasons: it was the top pic in this roundup due to power draw and noise and could OC to the same levels at 1.172, and it has such a low OC that at "stock" OC it is basically a reference 6850.
Here is my summary:
-At STOCK OC the Asus is 13-24% slower than the 460 FTW (10%, 13%, 24%, 13%, and 17% for Crysis, Battleforge, Civ 5, BC2, and ME2 respectively)
-At 940MHz core only CIV 5 has a significant win for the 460 FTW (16%), the other games are a wash (-2 to 2%)
-Idle power consumption is equal (I had to use the reference 6850 from the previous article since it is not in this OC article but they should be within a watt or two)
-Load power consumption in Crysis is 13.5% lower with the Asus as compared to the 460FTW (269w vs. 311w)
-Load power consumption in Furmark is 18.4% lower with the Asus as compared to the 460FTW (292w vs. 358w)
-Idle noise levels are equal (again had to base this off of the previous article at reference clocks so could be slightly higher at idle but not likely)
-Load noise levels are 3.5dB higher with the Asus as compared to the 460FTW (that IS significant as 3 dB is a doubling in sound pressure)
So here's my recommendations:
If you care only about performance the 940MHz OC'd Asus is tough to argue against. It's cheaper and behaves almost exactly like a 460FTW in the games tested except for CIV 5 where it is 16% slower at 1920X1200 resolution (both still very playable at 35.5fps and 42.2fps)
If you care about power consumption the 940MHz OC'd Asus uses significantly lower power (13.5-18.5% less, 40-60w less)
If you care about noise level the 940MHz OC'd Asus is significantly louder than the 460 FTW (3.5dB higher).
If you do not want to OC these cards and use them strictly at their "stock" OC speeds the 460FTW is in a different class (both price and performance). The upgrade is worth it.
So basically the only situation I would recommend the 460FTW over one of these 6850 OC cards (knowing that they *should* OC to 940MHz core, 1150MHz ram) is if the user does not plan to OC the card. And for that reason I definitely think the 460 FTW should have been compared in this review of aftermarket OC cards as it significantly changes the conclusion of the previous article.
Sorry for the long rant.....
spigzone - Monday, November 8, 2010 - link
Long post maybe, but that was the opposite of a rant.Thanks for taking the time to lay out the hard numbers on this.
El_Capitan - Monday, November 8, 2010 - link
Yup, same sentiments.SunLord - Monday, November 8, 2010 - link
I've yet to find a single 6850 that has two mini display port since launch and I highly doubt that they exist in the US if at all outside of the AMD branded reference card.