AMD HD 6850 Review/Benchmark [You were wrong if you thought I couldn't add more]

[RavenSEAL]

I understand that they allow you to set higher clocks and manipulate voltage.

But are they actually able to OC better? Does one get a more stable OC out of Trixx than they do out of CCC at identical speeds? Could one program allow you to reach a maximum OC that the other could not (assuming stock voltage and within CCC's limits).

No, they just allow you to OC higher than CCC allows you to.

 

[RavenSEAL]

8x SSAA, barely sharper, -30 FPS:

 

[Qbah]

Use MLAA for Borderlands, really... MLAA doesn't show on FRAPS screenshots , but I ran BL windowed with MLAA and made a grab with the sniping tool. Almost no difference in FPS, IQ difference is huge, especially in movement! Check out the robot's edges. Hardly any IQ difference when using MS-/SSAA and a huge performance drop - not worth it.

No AA:



MLAA:




As for Mass Effect... The heavy grain filter helps with hiding a lot of aliasing, but it's still distinctively visible:

No AA:


SSAAx4:




In ME2 the difference is huge, game runs buttery smooth for me with SSAAx4:

No AA:



SSAAx4:



And yeah, that was AF in your first reply Most UE3 games don't have AA settings in-game and you need to force through CCC.

Anyway, my point? Great results, but the IQ is lacking on the screenshots. You have a fast card now with that OC, you should max details with good AA without too much trouble.

 

[Qbah]

Funny thing with MLAA though - it gets applied on everything running on the GPU (hence also Aero or FF). So you need to turn it off every time you wish to actually use Windows outside of gaming. Check out CCC with MLAA on

 

[RavenSEAL]

More crap added. I should start seeing donations flowing into my PayPal account right about now...

P.s. I'm done for good now.

Qbah, where do i force MLAA? I don't see it on 10.10e drivers CCC.

 

[Qbah]

More crap added. I should start seeing donations flowing into my PayPal account right about now...

P.s. I'm done for good now.

Qbah, where do i force MLAA? I don't see it on 10.10e drivers CCC.

In the new CCC it's under Gaming (like on my screenshot, just not that blurry ). In the old one it was under 3D -> Antialiasing, or something similar. Pretty easy to spot. And again, MSAA in Borderlands is not applied on so many edges, it's not really worth it. With MLAA offering such a huge IQ jump, I don't really know why people stick with the older modes for this game

Also, why are your Batman settings so low? I'm running 1920x1080 all maxed and in-game MSAAx4 (best IQ results) and the game runs perfectly.

EDIT: Check it out:

Settings:


Results:

 

[thedosbox]

Funny thing with MLAA though - it gets applied on everything running on the GPU (hence also Aero or FF). So you need to turn it off every time you wish to actually use Windows outside of gaming. Check out CCC with MLAA on

That doesn't happen to me using the 10.12's.

 

[RavenSEAL]

In the new CCC it's under Gaming (like on my screenshot, just not that blurry ). In the old one it was under 3D -> Antialiasing, or something similar. Pretty easy to spot. And again, MSAA in Borderlands is not applied on so many edges, it's not really worth it. With MLAA offering such a huge IQ jump, I don't really know why people stick with the older modes for this game

Also, why are your Batman settings so low? I'm running 1920x1080 all maxed and in-game MSAAx4 (best IQ results) and the game runs perfectly.

EDIT: Check it out:

Settings:


Results:

Like I said dude, i don't have a quad core, the card get's bottlenecked. I said so in the review....

 

[toyota]

if you are only getting 40-60 fps in Batman with those modest settings then something is terriably wrong. I get twice that framerate at higher settings with the gtx260. I average 110fps at 1680x1050 with 4x AA and all those settings turned on that you have off.



1680x1050 4xAA 16xAF vsync off and all settings turned on except physx

min:62 avg:110 max:147

 

[RavenSEAL]

if you are only getting 40-60 fps in Batman with those modest settings then something is terriably wrong. I get twice that framerate at higher settings with the gtx260. I average 110fps at 1680x1050 with 4x AA and all those settings turned on that you have off.

Weird....

I'll run the benchmark... I didn't really pay much attention to Batman since when i ran it, it was the demo.

 

[Qbah]

That doesn't happen to me using the 10.12's.

Either they fixed it somehow or you enabled MLAA after opening some windows. If you open for example FF4 and then turn on MLAA, then it's fine (until you close it and reopen). I turned on MLAA first and then opened CCC (to disable it for another test), which means the new window was already influenced by the enabled MLAA.

Another funny thing, very much connected with this, happened when I was looking at the screenshots I made for Borderlands - they all looked so nice! But it was because MLAA was enabled and it was doing its magic on the screenshots, when I was viewing them

Anyway, I can't use 10.12s - the official WHQL drivers apparently won't enable MLAA on HD58xx series and it will be only available when running hotfix drivers - which is a shame. Though it the hotfix ones run fine, I don't really care. The MLAA option is gone for me when using WHQL 10.11 and 10.12 drivers.

As for CPU bottlenecking RavenSEAL - you might want to read up on what that means. Unless the details include some heavy physics that require more CPU power, if you're CPU limited, increasing detail won't lower your FPS - because you're limited, the lower settings actually don't run as fast as they can (as the CPU is limiting the framerates). Detail level has nothing to do with it in most cases. And as toyota wrote, he gets a lot more frames on his GTX260 and he has a very similar CPU.

 

[RavenSEAL]

Well, here is what's happening...

The gameplay and the benchmark are giving me completely different figures @ 1080p, very high, all effects on.





Edit: I fixed the benchmark on the front.

 

[thedosbox]

Either they fixed it somehow or you enabled MLAA after opening some windows. If you open for example FF4 and then turn on MLAA, then it's fine (until you close it and reopen). I turned on MLAA first and then opened CCC (to disable it for another test), which means the new window was already influenced by the enabled MLAA.

Hmm. I rebooted after enabling MLAA and all subsequent window contents were as sharp as before.

 

[RavenSEAL]

Anyone got an explanation?

Gameplay is the same as it was before...40-60 FPS.

 

[Qbah]

Hmm. I rebooted after enabling MLAA and all subsequent window contents were as sharp as before.

Then it looks like they fixed it somehow - it's not applied on your desktop (good fix!). Hopefully the next driver that allows it on HD58xx will have this fix too and then I'll update it.

As for the low scores, RavenSEAL. No idea, maybe you had something running in the background? A virus scanner or something? Maybe updates were installing? The important fact is that it's working fine for you - so go enjoy those games!

 

[tincart]

Thanks for the benchmarks. Good work.

 

[RavenSEAL]

Thanks for the benchmarks. Good work.

You're welcome

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

I appreciate all the info in this thread. I also have a Sapphire 6850 and have noticed that, at least according to GPU-Z, the core voltage is not dropping when the idle clocks kick in. It's at a constant 1.148v with no overclocking settings or programs running. I dumped the Bios and used RBE to look at the power states and it's set at .95v at 100/150. So can any of you guys with this card and other 6850's chime in on this? I'm using hd6900_8.79.6.2rc3_dec16.exe drivers, am downloading the official 10.12 now to see if that changes anything.

Edit: No change with the different drivers. I used Trixx to bump the voltage a smidgen to see if GPU-Z was getting the correct voltage and it is. My Bios is the same rev as RavenSEAL's, so if his voltage is actually idling down I'm stumped as to what is going on with my card. There's nothing running on my rig that should be preventing it from idling down, and judging from the clock speeds it is idling, but the voltage is just stuck.

Edit 2: Well now it's idling the voltage down like it should. My only guess is it takes a hard power-down to reset the voltage lock if it's set by Trixx/Afterburner.

 

[Deanodarlo]

Edit 2: Well now it's idling the voltage down like it should. My only guess is it takes a hard power-down to reset the voltage lock if it's set by Trixx/Afterburner.

Yep, at the moment Trixx causes the voltage to not go down to 0.95v idle. Once run, the voltage sticks at 1.145v and increases temps and power usage in 2D. You have to reset the OS to get voltage back to normal after exiting Trixx.

At least the clocks still idle low unlike afterburner.

 

[RavenSEAL]

Yep, at the moment Trixx causes the voltage to not go down to 0.95v idle. Once run, the voltage sticks at 1.145v and increases temps and power usage in 2D. You have to reset the OS to get voltage back to normal after exiting Trixx.

At least the clocks still idle low unlike afterburner.

Weird....i'm gonna look into that.

Thanks for the info :thumbsup:

 

[evolucion8]

I'm also using MLAA with Borderlands and looks so much better than with SSAA. But in ME2, Super Sampling was a better option, choices choices.

 

[Soundmanred]

I love this card!
I got the XFX HD6850 XXX Edition and it's nice to play games with some detail now.
I've played through Just Cause 2, Batman:AA and a ton of others using my 8600GTS, and now it's a whole new experience. (The 2500K/8GB upgrade didn't hurt either)

 

[RavenSEAL]

You can now grab em for $160 off AMiR @ Newegg, XFX versions have $3 shipping as well.

My card is still going strong! :thumbsup:

I did notice some images were down, so i will try to replace them.

 

[RavenSEAL]

Updated version coming soon!

 

[RavenSEAL]

Can't change the thread title :|