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Anandtech 6850 comparison is up


No Sapphire? Lame. It's only 4 cards, 3 of which are actually buy-able in large quantities, and Ryan had, what, a week to do this? Ugh.

XFX is a funny card, I wonder if they have a very aggressive fan profile or something by default, given its load temps and noise (low temps, high noise).

Edit: based on other reviews and using other cards as reference points (e.g., 5850), the Sapphire is about equal to the ASUS in idle and load temps, maybe off by 1-2C.
 
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No Sapphire? Lame. It's only 4 cards, 3 of which are actually buy-able in large quantities, and Ryan had, what, a week to do this? Ugh.

XFX is a funny card, I wonder if they have a very aggressive fan profile or something by default, given its load temps and noise (low temps, high noise).

Edit: based on other reviews and using other cards as reference points (e.g., 5850), the Sapphire is about equal to the ASUS in idle and load temps, maybe off by 1-2C.
Sapphire offered us their card. It would not have arrived by our cutoff for our publishing deadline.
 
Sapphire offered us their card. It would not have arrived by our cutoff for our publishing deadline.

Cool, do you plan to review it, or plan to have additional reviews? My complaint is not with the quality of the review but the quantity of cards reviewed. 🙂
 
6850 OC @ 850MHz is near 6870 default performance buy 3-5% most of the time, as 5850 vs 5870 was. Clearly for people that OC there cards 6850 is the best choice in performance/price.
 
Cool, do you plan to review it, or plan to have additional reviews? My complaint is not with the quality of the review but the quantity of cards reviewed. 🙂
Probably. At this point my schedule is so full I honestly don't know when I'll be able to look at all the second-wave cards. It's definitely something I want to do, but my wants column exceeding my available time column is nothing new.😛
 
Probably. At this point my schedule is so full I honestly don't know when I'll be able to look at all the second-wave cards. It's definitely something I want to do, but my wants column exceeding my available time column is nothing new.😛

Understandable; I trust AT and [H] more than any other sites so I'm always anxious to see what AT has to say about stuff. Keep up the good work!
 
Poor GTX 460
whats poor about? for the same price or cheaper even a reference gtx460 will overclock even more and beat the overclocked 6850 while running cooler and quieter than most of these non reference 6850 cards.
 
Poor GTX 460

?
The 768MB owns its price segment, and there's a 1GB on Newegg at $197 with $30 MIR and free HAWX 2.
6850 looks to be nicely priced and a nice little overclocker, but it's Nvidia that's been putting on the pressure since release with the GTX 460.
 
whats poor about? for the same price or cheaper even a reference gtx460 will overclock even more and beat the overclocked 6850 while running cooler and quieter than most of these non reference 6850 cards.

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.

:hmm: ... you paint a much better picture.
 
Was this done using 10.10 at default IQ settings? I'm surprised you didn't comment on this before I did, Keys.

Also, Ryan, what's your take on the 'stock settings 68XX series has worse IQ than stock settings 4XX' series fiasco?
 
Was this done using 10.10 at default IQ settings? I'm surprised you didn't comment on this before I did, Keys.

Also, Ryan, what's your take on the 'stock settings 68XX series has worse IQ than stock settings 4XX' series fiasco?

Hey, that's a very good question!! Thanks dude!
 
Apparently, the high noise level of the XFX may have been a glitch. XFX issued a fix. See this article: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/news/video/xfx-issues-fix-hd-6850-high-idle-fan-speed/

I wonder if this had been applied in the Anandtech article, and if not, would it have changed the rankings?

More and more, I think it's hard to compare various noise measurements, because any power user will go in and tailor a fan profile that optimizes noise and temperature...I think some sites have started to measure CPU heatsinks at identical decibels to test the effectiveness of the designs. I wonder if the same should be done for GPUs. It's obviously a lot more work.
 
Good article, but no OC NVIDIA cards there?

In 1 article where AT review stock cards and don't even approach OC of that product at all you compare them to OCed competition cards.

In 1 article where AT review OC cards and goes an OC cards some more, AT sticks with NVIDIA stock cards.

Go figure.
 
Good article, but no OC NVIDIA cards there?

In 1 article where AT review stock cards and don't even approach OC of that product at all you compare them to OCed competition cards.

In 1 article where AT review OC cards and goes an OC cards some more, AT sticks with NVIDIA stock cards.

Go figure.

yeah that was really weak on AT's part.
 
Good article, but no OC NVIDIA cards there?

In 1 article where AT review stock cards and don't even approach OC of that product at all you compare them to OCed competition cards.

In 1 article where AT review OC cards and goes an OC cards some more, AT sticks with NVIDIA stock cards.

Go figure.

Its better they just focus on the card(s) being reviewed.

On a related note. We just got some of those ASUS 6850s over here. They are quite a bit cheaper than stock 460s.
 
Good article, but no OC NVIDIA cards there?

In 1 article where AT review stock cards and don't even approach OC of that product at all you compare them to OCed competition cards.

In 1 article where AT review OC cards and goes an OC cards some more, AT sticks with NVIDIA stock cards.

Go figure.

Hey, maybe Ryan will see this comment and amend the article to add the EVGA GTX460 FTW figures for the overlapping tests in the two articles. That would be really helpful.
 
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