Radeon HD 6850 & 6870 reviews...

[onethreehill]

AMD Radeon HD 6850 Overclocking Roundup: Asus, XFX, & MSI
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4002/a...p-asus-xfx-msi

[generics_user]

i can confirm their findings; temperature and noise gets through the roof once you hit 950mhz; i managed to push my card to 1050mhz core but it required 1.3v (Sapphire Trixx has a higher limit than afterburner) and ttemps with the fan @100% jumped from 60 to 80°C; if you set it to 90% you get an instant crash so 80°C is the limit when overclocking these cards...

it seems like 950mhz core is the sweet spot for 6850s as power consumption is still ok at this level and you're getting mem bandwidth limited even with 1150-1200 mem clock (my card does 1200 without artifacting; 1230 shows artifacts and 1240 causes a driver reload)

great review and i think that 6850 is a much better value than 6870 and slightly better than GTX460 especially with overclocks and a properly modded bios with 2D clocks

[Pantsu]

So it looks like people with 6850 need to pray for some good memory OC instead of just upping the core.

[Manicdan]

AMD Radeon HD 6850 Overclocking Roundup: Asus, XFX, & MSI
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4002/a...p-asus-xfx-msi

good review, but i was kinda mad that used a very simple method for handling the fan speed, by leaving it on auto

if they went out of their way to use afterburner to ignore overdrive limits, i imagine they could have also used the fan profile tool to test out what temps each one received when running at the same noise. just because the auto profile is working best for asus, does not mean it offers the best noise/temp ratio of the bunch.

[Tomasis]

it seems like 950mhz core is the sweet spot for 6850s as power consumption is still ok at this level and you're getting mem bandwidth limited even with 1150-1200 mem clock (my card does 1200 without artifacting; 1230 shows artifacts and 1240 causes a driver reload)

great review and i think that 6850 is a much better value than 6870 and slightly better than GTX460 especially with overclocks and a properly modded bios with 2D clocks

i agree... does your sapphire have heatsinks on memory and vrm?

im getting artifacts already after 1150