Sapphire 11180-00-40R HD 6850 1GB GDDR5 PCIE Graphics Card

This card represents the first step on my journey towards the inevitable constant-upgrading madness that steals the lives of so many technophiles. I bought it to replace a 9800GT and it represents a significant upgrade over that fine card, even disregarding the DirectX 11 compatibility. Despite the rather confusing name leading many to believe that it supersedes the 5850, this card is actually a mid-range card, albeit with extremely good overclocking potential. I'll get to that in a minute.

My first thought on opening the box was that it was a card likely to continue giving for a long time. I'll explain that statement. Perhaps it is only the fact that this is my first dual-slot card, but it's large and heavy enough to still be of use once it eventually gives up; it could easily be used to cosh someone with another graphics card, which I would then steal. I applaud Sapphire and AMD for their futureproofing know-how.

The 6850 sports impressive clocks - 775 base and 1000 GDDR5 memory. While obviously inferior to its older sibling the 6870 (with 900 base and 1050 memory), it is still able to run most of my games on ultra high settings, including 8x antialiasing and 16x anisotropic filtering. These games include Dragon Age Origins and Fallout New Vegas, so it's no mean feat. It supports Eyefinity (up to three monitors) and stereoscopic 3D, for those among us who feel the overwhelming need to wear glasses but are cursed with perfect vision. Outputs include Dual-link DVI, Single-Link DVI-D, HDMI and DisplayPort, so there is a variety of options there, and it is PCI-e 2.1 certified. It can be used in a PCI-e 1.0 slot too, but to get the best out of it, it's best to use it on a motherboard with PCI-e 2.0 capability. It's also useful for cooling performance to have some space below the card.

You'll need a spare six-pin molex connector to connect to the card, but that's pretty standard for mid-to-high-end cards nowadays. Although I haven't tried it myself, I am told that the card performs excellently in Crossfire, as well. For my needs though, this card is more than enough power for the moment, especially considering the most important part of having a new graphics card: overclocking it mercilessly into submission.

Using Sapphire's own Trixx overclocking utility, I managed to get the card up to an extremely impressive completely stable 930/1150, without changing the voltage at all. I had a feeling there would be wiggle room on the base clock with voltage increases, but the memory clock seems to be completely unstable over 1150. Still, by the end of my overclocking I had trumped the performance of the 6870, and not paid an extra penny for the privilege (although, assuming that time really does equal money, I must have spent a few quid on all the gawking and evil chuckling).

Overall, I am extremely pleased with this card. It's so capable that you'd have difficulty finding situations that are beyond it. Only during Furmark tests did the temperature reach 70C - and not once did it go over, even while overclocked. During normal gameplay, it rarely gets to 65C, and even then the fan noise is barely noticeable in my case. A very, very impressive card and one that I remember fondly in years to come. Maybe I won't even club someone's head in with it after all.

I bought this card as a replacement for a HIS 4670HD 512GB graphics card, to go with my Q9550 CPU and G31M-ES2L motherboard. Even though my motherboard is only PCIe 1.1 and this card is PCIe 2.1, there haven't been any problems with that here.

The card is slightly longer than my old card and covered a SATA port on my motherboard, although you might be able to get a right-angled connecter in there (I haven't tried). It is a 2 slot wide card, common for mid/high-end cards these days. It requires a six pin graphics card power connector, a molex adapter is provided if needed. This card uses 150W max and recommendations are a 500W power supply - I am using a 425W Enermax game-grade power supply which has plenty of power on the 12V rails and a dedicated psu cable.

Available ports are:
1 x Dual-Link DVI
1 x HDMI 1.4a
1 x DisplayPort
1 x Single-Link DVI-D

A HDMI cable is supplied as is a DVI-SVGA adapter. Dual link is for resolutions > 1920x1080(HD)@60Hz but the port can act in single-link mode as well. It supports eyefinity, allowing you to connect up to three monitors and combine them into one huge display, although they have to be in the same resolution AFAIK.

I have been impressed by the performance of this card "out of the box" and even more so when overclocked. All of a sudden I can play all the graphically intensive games I've been putting off playing since I got my HD monitor with it's 1920x1080 resolution and gorgeous colours: Farcry 2, Crysis, AvP, Mirror's Edge, etc - in HD resolution with AFx16 and AA OFF VSync OFF with no lag at all, and slight lag with AAx4/Vsync. Most other games I have - Empire Total war, etc - with AAx4 (with Edge Detect this translates to x12 quality) are very, very good, VSync working well with Civilization V and offering a smooth experience for most strategy games. If in future I wanted to double the power to around about 5970/6990(if it ever comes out) speed , all I need to do is add another 6850 - it "scales" very well with hardy any potential graphical power wasted (verified by online tests), so x2 speed rather than x1.5 or x1.3.

Overclocking-wise, this card is a monster! It is very easy with the supplied utility and I was able to increase the base GPU/Memory frequency from the 775/1000MHz default to 950/1150MHz, with it staying completely stable, with no voltage increase! Amazing is probably an understatement. This equates to around a 15% real-world speed increase for most games, and overclocking doesn't affect the idle power usage either - at around 20W - as the idle clock speed is unaffected.

Over clocking does increase the noise somewhat, although it's quite controlled with no resonance or vibrating noises typical of graphics cards of the past. Fan speed is completely variable and you can set it to follow a (3 point) graph of fan speed vs. temp, set a speed percentage or leave it on automatic.

So overall an incredible card at about 2/3 the price and nearly all the performance of it's big brother, the 6870.

In previous ATI series cards like the 4800, 5800 series those where intended to be for the high end. The new 6800 series however are ATIs Mid Range cards and the 6900 series is for the higher end.

I had previously been running a Geforce 9800GT, which is still pretty good for games. The ATI 6850 has been a huge step up for me considering it has been priced for the value performance end of the market. This card has a HDMI output allowing me to connect it to my Full HDTV and it comes with a HDMI cable 1.8M. It's great playing games on a bigger screen.

The card offers strong performance and one such game that is still very demanding is Crysis. I have been playing Crysis at 1080p, enthusaist settings, 4x AA and the game has played smooth. It's noticable that the FPS aren't quite as strong when the game goes into the ICY part, but it's still very playable.

I'm not such a big PC gamer nowadays, so I didn't want to pay a huge sum of money on a GFX card. This card will play all the latest games so I'm happy with my choice.