Sapphire Radeon HD6850 and HD6870 Review

1. Introduction2. The Architecture3. The Sapphire HD6870 and HD68504. Testing Methodology5. Unigine Heaven Benchmark6. 3D Mark Vantage7. Alien V Predator8. Far Cry 29. Lost Planet 210. Mafia 211. Metro 203312. Resident Evil 513. Tom Clancy HAWX14. Distributed Computing (RC5-72)15. TessMark16. Shader Toy17. HQV Benchmark 2.018. Power Consumption19. Thermal Dynamics20. Acoustics Performance21. Overclocking the Sapphire HD687022. Overclocking the Sapphire HD685023. Closing Thoughts24. View All Pages

KitGuru is old in the tooth and likes naming conventions which don't change. With the launch of the Radeon HD 6000 series, AMD has altered its naming strategy. The high end cards will now be the 6900 series (due November) and the 6800 cards that we're looking at today, will actually be sold for less than £200 each, including VAT (we're guessing that's under $250 for our American readers). How much can any gamer get from a graphic card that costs so little?

It seems like only yesterday that nVidia released its first Fermi products to a universally lukewarm reception. Against the subsequent series of lacklustre launches that followed, the GTX460 stood out like a giant. A genuine classic card by anyone's standard. High performance, competitive pricing and an overclocking potential that made everything around it pale in comparison. AMD has finally moved to try and counter this threat with the Radeon HD 6800 series cards.

Before we get into the details of precisely which cards have been tested, we also want to highlight how difficult our final evaluation has been made by the huge price changes we've seen over the past 5 days. Cards like EVGA's GTX460 FTW have dropped from £205 to £175, ahead of the Radeon HD 6800 series launch. In turn, it seems that AMD had some last minute price moves up its corporate sleeve. Tricky, but we've rolled with it – testing first and then making the value decisions right at the end – once we knew precisely what the final pricing will be.

Today we are looking at two boards from AMD's biggest partner – Sapphire. We will be getting up close and personal with both their HD6870 and HD6850 products, seeing how they can hold up against the mighty GTX460 in various flavours.

Firstly we need to address the naming conventions, because many people are already scratching their heads in bewilderment. The HD6870, for instance, isn't a direct replacement for the HD5870 – AMD's goal was to deliver similar levels of performance from the HD6870 but at a much lower price.

The HD5870 first hit the market at £350, while the HD6870 will cost less than £195 … an incredible achievement if the new AMD hardware can go head to head with the giant killing GTX460 – the source of this pricing war.

The ‘Barts' codenamed products are aimed at the sub $250 market, while the forthcoming ‘Cayman' and ‘Antilles' are higher end and significantly more expensive.

	Sapphire HD6870	Sapphire HD6850
Core Clock Speed	900mhz	775mhz
Stream Processors	1120	960
ROPs	32	32
Frame Buffer	1GB GDDR5	1GB GDDR5
Compute Power	2.0 TFLOPs	1.5 TFLOPs
Memory Width/Speed	256bit, 4.2GBPS	256bit, 4.0 GBPS
Idle/Load Board Power	19W/151W	19W/127W
Power Connectors	Dual 6 Pin	Single 6 Pin
Display Outputs	2xDVI + 2x mDP + 1 HDMI	2xDVI + 2x mDP + 1 HDMI

The new 6800 series has seen hardware architecture changes, with a focus on strengthening tessellation and geometry throughput. Avid readers of KitGuru will have seen over recent months that nVidia Fermi hardware has been leading the way in titles such as UniGine Heaven Benchmark, a synthetic test which relies heavily on Tessellation performance.

The 6800 series has a reconfigured core design which offers up to 2.0 TeraFLOPS and 24 Gigapixels per second performance. The command processor is linked to the graphics engine as seen in the diagram above, with the new generation 7 Tessellator. The Dual rasterizers and 12-14 SIMD engines tied to a 256 bit GDDR5 memory interface help to improve performance beyond the levels of the last generation, while using 25% less silicon.

	AMD HD5850	AMD HD6870
Die Size	334 mm2	255mm2
Transistors	2.15 billion	1.7 billion
Memory Bandwidth	153.6GB/sec	134.4 GB/sec
Geometry Throughput	725 million polygons/sec	900 million polygons/sec
SIMD Engines	18	14
Stream Processors	1440	1120
Texture Units	72	56
Z/Stencil ROPs	128	128
Colour ROPs	32	32
Max Board Power	151W	151W
Idle Power	27W	19W

The table above shows a direct comparison against the HD5850 and HD6870. The HD6870 has less texture units, SIMD engines, Stream Processors with a lower memory bandwidth but the Geometry throughput has been significantly increases from 725 million polygons per second to 900 million polygons per second. The new design is more efficient and with the die shrink requires less power at idle.

	Hardware Tessellator Progression
Generation 1	ATI Radeon 8500	Fixed Function PN Triangles (TRUFORM)
Generation 2	Microsoft Xbox 360	Displacement mapping, adaptive tessellation
Generation 3	AMD Radeon HD2000 family	Dirext X 10 compatibility
Generation 4	AMD Radeon HD 3000 family	Direct X 10.1 compatibility
Generation 5	AMD Radeon HD 4000 family	Performance Enhancements
Generation 6	AMD Radeon HD 5000 family	Direct X 11 compatibility
Generation 7	AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series	Improved Thread Management and buffering

The updated Tessellation unit, called ‘Generation 7' brings new thread management capabilities as well as buffering enhancements to the table. This means that performance is increased by up to two times when directly compared to the HD5000 series. This should mean that AMD are closely competitive with similarly priced nVidia Fermi hardware, we will look at performance later in this article. AMD's internal testing shows that the HD6870 achieves twice the tessellation performance of the HD5870.

Tessellation is a hotly discussed topic right now, and it is a bone of contention between nVidia and AMD. Our recent interview with Richard Huddy opened a few eyes, as he said “nVidia is pushing a single message and that’s tessellation. Tessellation is about enriching detail, and that’s a good thing, but nVidia is pushing to get as much tessellation as possible into everything. With artificial tests like Stone Giant, which was paid for by nVidia, tessellation can be done down to the single pixel level. Even though that pixel can’t be broken away from the 3 other pixels in its quad. Doing additional processing for each pixel in a group of 4 and then throwing 75% of that work away is just sad.”

AMD's stance on this is “Tessellating the Right Way” – which means a focus on the most efficient tessellation usage models with 16 pixels per polygon combining solid image quality with high levels of performance. Adaptive Tessellation is how they want to approach it, using high levels for objects close to the front of the screen (and in eye shot of the gamers) and then switch to lower levels for distant and simple objects to help improve performance while avoiding geometry aliasing problems.

The image above was captured from Alien V Predator and showcases the new Morphological Anti-Aliasing technique from AMD which is a post process filtering technique accelerated with DirectCompute. It delivers full scene anti Aliasing and it is not limited to polygon edges or alpha tested surfaces. The system is faster than super sampling with similar performance levels to edge detect CFAA, but it applies to all edges. This can be enabled from Catalyst Control Center and is compatible with any Direct X 9/10/11 supported application.

Anistrophic Filtering has also been fine tuned and enhanced with a newly refined algorithm in place. It addresses visible discontinuities in very noisy textures offering smoother transitions between filter levels. It also maintains full performance and angle independence.

The Sapphire HD6850 arrives in a very subdued box with a well endowed lady on the front.There is mention of HDMI 1.4A support (with a cable) and a new overclocking tool called TriXX.

Specifications and information cover the back panel and focus is brought to all the awards Sapphire have earned over the years.

While there's no free game, a comprehensive bundle has been supplied. A power converter cable, VGA adapter, Crossfire connector and high quality HDMI cable. Some literature is included to help inexperienced users. The TriXX software tool was still in development when we received this bundle, however we discuss it more later in the review.

The Sapphire HD6850 is supplied on an attractive blue PCB with custom designed cooler. This is a heatpipe design with an angular blade design keeping everything cool.

This fan is larger than the reference HD6850 design to improve cooling while lowering noise levels.

The Sapphire HD6850 adheres to the AMD reference design with support for 2x mini DP (1.2), HDMI 1.4a, and 2x DL-DVI and SL-DVI connectors. It requires a single 6 pin power connector to operate. We like the fact that this card will expel hot air out the back of the chassis.

The Sapphire cooler is a dual heatpipe design, with two thick pipes running to either side of the heatsink and passing heat through the stacks of fins.

Above, the naked card and a close up of the core and memory chips. These are Hynix H5GQ1H24AFR and we have seen them on many AMD cards in the past.

Game and performance testing was handled with another reference clocked card as the Sapphire board we received had 1120 shader cores.

The Sapphire HD6870 we received was an early ‘boxless' version so we have no details on what will be supplied within the retail box. We would assume a similar bundle to the HD6850 above. All HD6870's at launch are based around the reference AMD design, so we will not see custom, overclocked solutions until several weeks later.

The Sapphire HD6870 supports 2x mini DP (1.2), HDMI 1.4a, and 2x DL-DVI and SL-DVI connectors. It requires a two 6 pin power connectors to operate. In a similar fashion to the Sapphire HD6850, the HD6870 will expel hot air out the back of the chassis.

The reference HD6870 cooler is quite substantial, with a copper block running out to several small heatpipes. The fan is positioned on the far side so it forces air across the heatsink and out the rear of the case.

A GPUZ overview of the hardware. The Sapphire HD6870 is running at the reference clocks of 900mhz core and 1050mhz (4200mhz effective) via GDDR5 memory.

For the review today we have built a strong system which we feel would fit in well with the audience purchasing these cards. We are using a Core i7 950 Quad Core CPU with 6GB of DDR3 memory. We have applied a moderate overclock to the processor because we know you guys never run anything at reference speeds!

We are also going to limit testing to 1920×1080 (1080) and 1920×1200 as less than 1% of the enthusiast user base reading this will have a 30 inch screen – this will address the widest possible audience.

Test System: Validation here.

Sapphire HD6850
Sapphire HD6870

Other cards:
eVGA GTX460 FTW (850/1000)
nVidia GTX460 Talon Attack (1000/1000 & 810/975)
AMD Reference HD5870 (850/1200)
AMD Reference HD5850 (725/1000)
AMD Reference HD5770 (850/1200)
nVidia Reference GTX460 (675/900)
eVGA GTX460 768MB SC (763/950)
nVidia Reference GTX 460 768MB (675/900)
XFX HD5830 XXX (840/1125)
nVidia Reference GTS 450 (850/1000)
XFX HD5750 XXX (740/1200)
AMD reference HD5750 (700/1150)

Other Hardware:
Processor: Intel Core i7 950 @ 3.6ghz
Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer 13
Motherboard: ASRock X58 Extreme 6
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Tracer 1600mhz 6GB (3x2GB)
Power Supply: Thermaltake 750W Toughpower Grand
Chassis: Cooler Master CM 690 II
Monitor: Dell Ultrasharp U2410 (A00)

Software:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit

Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
HQV Benchmark
Catalyst 10.9 & 10.10 Driver (12th October WHQL) /ati_catalyst_10.9a_appprofile
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark
Forceware 260.89 beta
Tessmark
Shader Toy

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Keithley Integra unit
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter

Games:
Resident Evil 5
Lost Planet 2
Far Cry 2
Tom Clancy H.A.W.X.
Metro 2033
Alien V Predator
Mafia 2

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests all games across five closely matched runs and average out the results to get an accurate median figure.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

1080p is a standard resolution we use with the Heaven Benchmark on all graphics cards, this means all review results are comparable throughout previous months.

Shaders are set to high, Tessellation to normal, anistrophy to 4 and Anti Aliasing is disabled.

The Sapphire HD6870 scores an average of 35.2 frames per second which brings it past the previous single core AMD flagship, the AMD HD5870. This is a great result for the new architecture and we can already see the potential. The Sapphire HD6850 scores in a similar zone to the GTX460 768MB, just under 30fps.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

The Sapphire HD6870 scores 15,722 points in 3DMark Vantage which is an impressive result, only 500 points behind the eVGA GTX460 FTW which is one of the fastest GTX460's on the market at 850 core. For direct comparison the reference clocked GTX460 at 675/900 scores 13,071. The Sapphire HD6850 scores around 12,589 points putting it 500 points ahead of the GTX460 768mz.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16x AF, ambient occlusion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparable throughout reviews.

The Sapphire HD6870 delivers a final score of around 47 frames per second, a single frame faster than the eVGA GTX460 FTW with a core speed of 850 mhz. A reference clocked GTX460 manages 37.6 frames per second, again around a single frame slower than the reference clocked Sapphire HD6850. These cards are already beginning to look strong.

Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2.

Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer.

Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today.

Our settings: 1920×1200 (60Hz), D3D10, Fixed Time Step(No), Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(4x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Optimal), Vegetation(High), Shading(High), Terrain(High), Geometry(High), Post FX(High), Texture(High), Shadow(High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High).

The Sapphire HD6870 hits the top of the pile for reference clocked boards, only behind the MSI Talon at 810-1000 core and the eVGA GTX460 FTW at 850 core. 72 fps works out 7 more than the HD5870 and 18 more than the HD5850. The Sapphire HD6850 storms through with 62 fps, 9 more than the HD5850. The reference clocked GTX460 is slightly behind the HD6870, which is surprising, considering that this particular engine is well known to run much better on nVidia hardware.

Lost Planet 2 is a third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the sequel to Lost Planet: Extreme Condition which is also made by Capcom, taking place ten years after the events of the first game, on the same fictional planet. The story takes place back on E.D.N. III 10 years after the events of the first game. The snow has melted to reveal jungles and more tropical areas that have taken the place of more frozen regions. The plot begins with Mercenaries fighting against Jungle Pirates.

After destroying a mine, the Mercenaries continue on to evacuate the area, in which a Category-G Akrid appears and attacks them. After being rescued, they find out their evacuation point (Where the Category-G appeared) was a set-up and no pick up team awaited them. Lost Planet 2 runs on the MT-Framework 2.0, an updated version of the engine used in several Capcom-developed games.

We are testing in DX11 mode.

Again the Sapphire HD6870 comes top of the pile when you take away overclocked editions. All the overclocked GTX460's perform exceptionally well with this particular engine, with the MSI Talon at 1000core scoring well over 50 frames per second. The HD6870 does manage to outperform the reference clocked GTX460 however by 2 frames per second. The Sapphire HD6850 manages to hold onto the shirtails of the HD5870, losing out by only a single frame.

Mafia II is a gritty drama which chronicles the rise of World War II veteran Vito Scaletta, the son of Sicilian immigrants. As the game progresses, Vito will join the Falcone Crime Family and become a made man. There are 15 chapters in the game, connected into one storyline.

We tested at 1080p with fullscreen: on, antialiasing:on , Anisotrophic filtering: 16x, Shadow Quality: High, Ambient Occlusion: on, Geometry Detail: High and APEX PhysX: off.

The Sapphire HD6870 outperforms the previous flagship HD5870, marginally. The HD5770 CFx configuration scores well in Mafia 2, leading the pack by a couple of frames per second. The fastest single solution card in this test is the GTX460 Talon which we clocked to a whopping 1000mhz, so it would be expected. The HD5870 managed to outperform all of the other overclocked GTX460 cards however which is impressive, considering this is a reference board.

The HD6850 beat all of the reference clocked GTX460's by at least a couple of frames per second.

The makers of Metro 2033 – 4A Games was founded by people who split off from GSC Game World a year before the release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, in particular Oles’ Shiskovtsov and Aleksandr Maksimchuk, the programmers who worked on the development of X-Ray engine used in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. The game utilizes multi-platform 4A Engine, running on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Microsoft Windows. There is some contention regarding whether the engine is based on the pre-release X-Ray engine (as claimed by Sergiy Grygorovych, the founder of GSC Game World, as well as users who have seen the 4A Engine SDK screenshots, citing visual similarities, shared resources, and technical evaluation of the pre-release 4A Engine demo conducted at the request of GSC Game World), or whether the engine is an original development (as claimed by 4A Games and Oles’ Shiskovtsov in particular, who claims it would have been impractical to retrofit the X-ray engine with console support). 4A Engine features Nvidia PhysX support, enhanced AI, and a console SDK for Xbox 360. The PC version includes exclusive features such as DirectX 11 support and has been described as “a love letter to PC gamers” because of the developers’ choice to “make the PC version [especially] phenomenal”.

We tested at 1920×1080 with settings on default ‘normal’

The Sapphire HD6870 is playing, yet again at the top of the field, trailing by 1 frame behind the HD5870 and 4 frames behind the MSI Talon Attack Edition, running at 1000mhz. The Sapphire HD6870 beats all other GTX460 cards, even the GTX460 FTW with a core running at 850mhz. The Sapphire HD6850 also really delivers a great performance with this game, managing to outperform the Talon Attack at 810 core and all other GTX 460's.

Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.

Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made.

Resident Evil 5 is a particular favourite running on AMD hardware and we see great results from both Sapphire HD6870 and HD6850. The HD6870 averages over 97 frames per second, just behind the HD5870 and HD5770 in CFx. The 1ghz clocked GTX460 tops the pile with over 109 frames per second.

The Sapphire HD6850 manages to beat the reference clocked GTX460 and the superclocked 768mb GTX 460, both trailing by 6-8 frames.

Tom Clancy HAWX is set in the same universe as Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter; as Captain Scott Mitchell, the Ghost leader, is featured in a few missions of the missions. Plot elements are carried over from other Tom Clancy games such as the missile defense system found in Tom Clancy’s EndWar. G4′s interview with H.A.W.X’s lead designer Thomas Simon reveals that the game takes place in between Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 and Tom Clancy’s EndWar.

The player begins the game in 2014 as the player assumes the role of former U.S. Air Force pilot, David Crenshaw, who is part of an elite unit called H.A.W.X (“High Altitude Warfare eXperimental squadron”), provides fire-support missions for the Ghost team carrying out covert operations in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. However, shortly after the mission, the Air Force decides to deactivate the H.A.W.X squadron and its pilots, including Crenshaw, are recruited into the PMC Artemis Global Security.

We are testing : DX 10.1 with shadows high, sun shafts high, ambient occlusion (SSAO) very high. view distance high, forest high, environment high, texture quality high, HDR on, Engine heat on and DOF on.

Both Sapphire HD6870 and HD6850 beat the reference clocked GTX460 and the superclocked GTX460 768mb board. The HD6850 delivers almost identical performance to the HD5850 and the HD6870 is very close to the MSI GTX460 Talon Attack edition at 810mhz core.

Distributed Computing Technologies Inc. (Distributed.net) is a worldwide distributed computing effort that is attempting to solve large scale compute-intensive projects, by utilizing the combined idle processing cycles of member computers.

RC5-72 is a security-based encryption key project and is a competition to test the security and strength of 72-bit RC5 encryption keys. Packets are fetched from the server via the client, the cruncher tests each packet block of keys and sends the data back to the server. User statistics are logged on the stats server.

This isn't even a close call, with both 6800 series cards screaming ahead in this particular benchmark.

This new GPU tool, called TessMark, is small synthetic graphics benchmark focused on one of the main features of Direct3D 11 and OpenGL 4 capable cards, focusing on GPU tessellation.

Like Unigine Heaven, TessMark allows to select the level of tessellation. The small difference is that TessMark offers four different levels

• moderate = tessellation factor of 8
• normal = tessellation factor of 16
• extreme = tessellation factor of 32
• insane = tessellation factor of 64

Moderate and normal levels are levels we’ll find in real world applications like games. Extreme and insane levels are not really realistic ‘real world' tests. We are using the normal settings today.

We were surprised to see such staggering performance from the reference and overclocked GTX460 hardware. We spoke with Jerome from Geeks3d.com who said that ‘TessMark is focused only on the tessellation engine of the DX11 graphics cards'.

AMD told us that this benchmark doesn't mirror a ‘real game' situation at all, but we felt it would be interesting to include, even if it isn't a real world style benchmark.

ShaderToyMark is an OpenGL benchmark, developed with GeeXLab, and focused on pixel shaders only. ShaderToyMark? is a WebGL tool for testing GLSL shaders. Shadertoy utilises several of these shaders running at the same time in the same 3D window.

The contributors of Shader Toy are all famous demomakers and their shaders are real gems. It’s just amazing to see what can clever people do with some sin/cos and other math tricks. ShaderToyMark can be seen as a modest tribute to their fantastic and sometime unreal work.

All cards deliver high frame rates with this benchmark. The HD6870 trails the overclocked eVGA FTW, but beats the reference clocked card. The HD6850 is only 9 points behind the reference clocked GTX460.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here.

	HD6870 & HD6850
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	5
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	7
Total	196

The image quality with Catalyst 10.10 is the best yet, as the driftwood test scores 5 now instead of 2 points, bringing the total to 196 points.

To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. The best way to get maximum load results is by using Furmark, and even though it is not indicative of a real world situation it shows the limits the card can theoretically demand. The ‘gaming’ results are measured when playing Crysis Warhead and is a more valuable result to take from this.

The power consumption of the HD6800 series is noticeably less than the GTX460. Comparing the reference GTX460 at 170 watt maximum load against the HD6870 and HD6850, we can see a 17 watt and 41 watt difference.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 25c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.

Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.

The customised solution on the HD6850 delivers great results, with a maximum peak of 60c when gaming. Furmark pushes the core 9c higher, although the fan is very moderately paced, more on this shortly.

The HD6870 is a reference design with the standard AMD cooler and as such gets a little hotter. The results are still very good however, reaching only 65c when gaming.

Return to ambient is a feature we have recently added to our reviews … we measure the time it takes for a solution to return to idle temperatures, immediately after full load. The faster the time, the better the cooler – for example a Noctua NH D14 cooler will return an Intel processor to idle temperatures much faster than a reference cooler. This is a good indication of how quickly a heatsink can dissipate heat.

The improved cooling solution on the Sapphire HD6850 means it can return to idle in 15 seconds, 7 seconds faster than the reference HD6870 cooler. When Sapphire get the chance to enhance the HD6870, we can expect low temperatures and a faster return to idle state.

Recently we have changed our method of measuring noise levels. We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. We are using a heatpipe based passive power supply and an Intel SSD to keep noise levels to a minimum. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests. Ambient noise in the room is around 20-25dBa. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet take-off/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The HD6870 reference cooler is noticeably louder than the Sapphire customised HD6850, which is quiet. AMD's reference cooling solutions are acceptable, but we know that once Sapphire gives this card a makeover both temperatures and noise will improve.

The HD6850 cooler is great, hovering around 34 dBA when gaming, which is certainly not going to annoy any performance gamer.

When overclocking the Sapphire HD6870 we used Catalyst Control Centre.

Overclocking on reference boards indicates potential speeds a few weeks down the line when AMD partners release their own overclocked solutions with improved coolers and bios configurations.

Our overclocking tests were reasonably successful considering this is a reference cooler, although we didn't find huge overhead on the core. We were limited to 950MHz on the core and 1,140MHz on the memory.

We then wanted to run some tests with our overclocked results, settling on 940MHz core and 1,140MHz memory for the final CrossFireX settings.

The overclock results are healthy, Unigine Heaven Benchmark shows a 2fps increase in and 3DMark Vantage scales with 300 additional points when overclocked.

Overclocking the Sapphire HD6850 in Catalyst Control Center is a futile process as it limits the card to 850MHz, however Sapphire sent over a beta of their new Trixx overclocking tool for the HD6800 series.

We need to point out that the version of TriXX shown in these screenshots might look (and act) slightly differently to the final version bundled with the retail product.

We would like to add that the results on this page will not relate to the final product as the Sapphire card we received had 1120 shader cores (see image below), this page is therefore here mainly out of curiousity.

The Sapphire Trixx utility will be bundled with retail versions of the Sapphire HD6850 and it allows the end user to change a plethora of settings, including GPU voltage changes. We managed to get the core to 860mhz without adjusting the voltage.

After cranking the voltage (as we always do!) we managed to get the core stable to 951MHz and the memory to 1132MHz. This is an incredible core increase from 775MHz and although we could just be lucky with this particular sample, it could very well show massive potential headroom with the HD6850 hardware – we experienced similar results with the 960 core XFX HD6850.

The Sapphire HD6870 is a fantastic board which manages to keep up with our overclocked GTX460's … sometimes even leading the way, and always in the top grouping. We haven't made it easy for AMD's new mid range flagship product as we have pitted it against some of the most powerful GTX460's available today such as the eVGA GTX460 FTW and the MSI GTX460 Talon Attack.

We are excited to see how Sapphire will modify the HD6870 design later, because we aren't that impressed with the reference cooler. It isn't bad, but it can get a little noisy when pushed hard.

The HD6870 can be clocked a little higher, although all of our samples seemed to be limited to around 950MHz on the core, which is only a 50MHz increase. Memory can be increased from 1000Mhz to around 1140-1150MHz without experiencing an issue. This card will retail at a very competitive £197 inc vat.

The star of this review however is the stunning Sapphire HD6850, which delivers very solid performance levels without breaking the bank. With the price looking to settle at just over £150 inc VAT, this card has surely to be on the shortlist of many people wanting a new gaming card for high resolution gaming.

As we expected, the heatpipe based cooler is excellent, keeping the card running under 60c at all times and the return to idle state is also very impressive, averaging 15 seconds.

The new TriXX overclocking tool from Sapphire however really brings this card into a new playing field, as we managed to get the core to 950MHz (almost 23% up from the stock clock of 775MHz) before it would hardlock. This was achieved by increasing the core voltage to 1299 which raised temperatures by around 10c when loaded (i.e. to 70c when gaming).

KitGuru says: Sapphire's holding a winning pair here, no doubt. It has to be said again that we have been comparing these cards against the very best, overclocked GTX460 cards on the market. AMD could have launched its second generation DX11 cards with a £400 leviathan. Instead, they have aimed squarely at the best nVidia card on the market and, based on several days' testing, have hit the bull's eye.

Update: 22 October: Be sure to check UK stores as the prices are dropping to £135 for HD6850 and £175 for the HD6870.

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