XFX HD6850 Dual Fan CFx review – ultimate gaming for £300 ?

1. Introduction2. The HD 6800 Architecture3. XFX HD6850 Dual Fan4. Testing Methodology5. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark6. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage7. Synthetic: 3dMark 118. Image Quality: HQV Benchmark 2.09. Gaming versus: Alien V Predator10. Gaming versus: Far Cry 211. Gaming versus: Dawn Of War 212. Gaming versus: Resident Evil 513. Gaming versus: Tom Clancy HAWX 214. Single Screen Scoring Conclusions15. HD Videos: 3 screens in action16. 3 screen gaming: F1 201017. 3 screen gaming: Colin McRae Dirt 218. 3 screen gaming: Metro 203319. 3 screen gaming: Lost Planet 220. 3 screen gaming: Medal Of Honor SP21. 3 screen gaming: Battleforge22. 3 screen gaming: Crysis Warhead23. 3 screen gaming: Devil May Cry 424. 3 screen gaming: Left4Dead 225. 3 screen gaming: Alien V Predator26. Technical: Thermal Dynamics27. Technical: Acoustics Performance28. Technical: Power Consumption29. Technical: Overclocking30. Closing Thoughts31. View All Pages

Without question, 2010 has been a great year for gamers. Both AMD and nVidia have released fantastic graphics cards at all price points and there really has never been a better time to upgrade your system.

If you had £300 burning a hole in your wallet and wanted to improve your gaming system, what makes the best value for money purchase?

There are many options to choose from. On the nVidia side you could opt for the ever popular GTX460's in SLi, or perhaps the stunning new GTX570. If you prefer AMD graphics cards then you could opt for a HD6970, or even a Crossfire solution … but which?

This is why we are here today and it gives us a good opportunity to look at the new XFX HD6850 dual fan cooler cards. At £144.15 each including vat, you could pick up a Crossfire setup for under £300 …. but does it make sense?

To compare today we are putting the XFX HD6850's head to head against a selection of performance video cards from various manufacturers. The only criteria is that they must not exceed a price point of £300 inc vat. Later in the review we will also show how the HD6850 cards perform across three screens. We also present some video footage of the cards in action. AMD are leading the way with three screen gaming right now, and trust me, it really is something you need to experience first hand to truly appreciate.

First lets look at the potential solutions for the single screen performance gaming section of our review:

Palit GeForce GTX 460 Sonic 1GB GDDR5 (in Sli)

We couldn't have a £300 performance gaming test without including the GTX460 in SLi. The only problem was finding a 1GB card that was selling in the UK right now for £150 (or less) inc vat. Our good friends at Yoyotech supplied us with two of the Palit Sonic cards which run at 700mhz core and 3600mhz memory. Two of these cost £280 inc vat, so we are well within the monetary limits.

Inno3D GeForce GTX 570 1280MB GDDR5

Next up is the Inno3d GTX570, another card we have reviewed. This nVidia solution is £283 inc vat, so it falls within the £300 guidelines with room to spare. It is the highest performing single chip gaming solution on the market right now (under £300), although it doesn't support 3 screen gaming. Unless you buy two.

HIS Radeon HD 6970 2GB GDDR5

We have reviewed many AMD HD 6970's, and as they are all reference clocked right now we opted for the best deal. The HIS HD6970 retails for £284 inc vat meaning it falls well within our £300 limit.

Product	HIS HD 6970	XFX HF6850	Inno3d GTX570	Palit GTX 460 (oc)
Shader Units	1600	960	480	336
ROPs	32	32	40	32
Memory Count	2GB	1GB	1.28GB	1GB
Memory Bus Width	256 bit	256 bit	320bit	256 bit
Core Clock	880 mhz	775 mhz	732 mhz	700 mhz
Memory Clock	1375 mhz	1000 mhz	950 mhz	900 mhz
Price	£284	£144 (x2 £290)	£283	£140 (x2 £280)

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.

As with all XFX products, the box art is beautiful. A futuristic impressionist rendering of the dual fan cooler design.

The box opens up to reveal the contents, which at this price point is limited to mainly literature. They include a support leaflet making you aware of the excellent XFX after care support system.

These cards run at reference clocks, however the cooling solution is an XFX customised solution with heatpipes. They have also cleverly adopted a dual fan cooling system, spinning them slower to reduce noise, but to enforce high levels of airflow across the PCB length.

The XFX HD 6850 is a dual slot design with circular vented holes on the side for increased air flow. Each card only requires a single 6 pin power connector from the supply.

Two hefty heatpipes span almost the full length of the card, and unsurprisingly it is Crossfire capable. Unlike the higher cost HD6950 and HD6970 however, you can only run these in a two way CrossfireX configuration.

Each card has support for support for Displayport (1.2), HDMI 1.4a, and 2x DL-DVI and SL-DVI connectors.

Removing the cooler is a straightforward process. XFX have opted for a dual heatpipe design which is filed flat to a perfect finish. The two heatpipes enter into the aluminum base and pass out heat to a set of fins on either side of the core area. This is a great design which has proven to work well on a video card.

Today we are using one of our most powerful systems, a Core i7 970 based configuration, liquid cooled at 4.33ghz, with a Corsair AX1200 power supply – all built into a sexy Thermaltake Level 10 chassis.

Processor: Core i7 970 @ 4.33ghz
Cooling: Coolit Vantage
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65 (MS-7522)
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10
Power Supply: Corsair Ax1200
Memory: 6GB GSkill Performance Gaming ram @ 902.9 MHz (2:10) @ 7-8-7-24
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot)
Monitors: Hazro Ultra Sharp HZ230Wi, Dell Ultrasharp U2410 Rev A00, Iiyama Prolite E2472HDD x2 , Iiyama Prolite B2712HDS.

Other graphics cards for comparisons:
Palit GeForce GTX 460 Sonic 1GB GDDR5 (in Sli)
Inno3D GeForce GTX 570 1280MB GDDR5
HIS Radeon HD 6970 2GB GDDR5

Software:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
Catalyst 10.12
Forceware 263.09 WHQL
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark
HQV 2.0 Software
Widescreen Fixer

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:
Alien V Predator
Far Cry 2
Mafia 2
Resident Evil 5
Tom Clancy HAWX 2
Lost Planet 2
F1 2010
Colin McRae Dirt 2
Metro 2033
Lost Planet 2
Medal Of Honor SP
Battleforge
Crysis Warhead
Devil May Cry 4
Left4Dead 2
Alien V Predator
Call Of Duty: Black Ops

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

We test at 1080p so that all video cards can be compared throughout our reviews. Obviously driver updates might enhance performance slightly over time, but as a rule, its a useful way for us to present the findings.

Compared with the last generation, the AMD graphics hardware has improved significantly. The HD6850's in Crossfire score an average frame rate of over 50 fps, falling around half a frame behind the GTX570.

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 reference clocked XFX HD6850 in Crossfire outperforms all the other solutions, even the overclocked GTX 460's in SLi. The HIS HD6970 comes up in last place, just behind the GTX570.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance.

Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

As nVidia have yet to update the drivers to support 3dmark 11 in Sli, we had to run the GTX460 in single card mode. The XFX HD6850 in Crossfire is the top performer again, showing solid scaling with the Futuremark Direct X 11 benchmark.

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.

	XFX HD6850 Dual Fan
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 XFX HD6850 renders a very high level of image quality throughout the testing suite.

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, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparible throughout reviews.

The XFX HD6850 in Crossfire X once again tops the performance chart with this DX11 engine scoring 65 frames per second, 3fps more than the overclocked GTX460 solutions. The HIS HD6970 outperforms the Inno3D GTX570 by 4 frames per second.

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.

Settings: 1920×1200, D3D10, Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(8x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Ultra High), Vegetation(Very High), Shading(Ultra High), Terrain(Ultra High), Geometry(Ultra High), Post FX(High), Texture(Ultra High), Shadow(Ultra High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High)

This engine has always favoured nVidia hardware and we can see that the GTX 460 overclocked solution comes in first place, with a 8 frame per second lead against the HD6850 in Crossfire. The GTX570 also outperforms the HD6970 by 9 frames per second.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II is a real-time strategy/tactical role-playing video game developed by Relic Entertainment and published by THQ for Microsoft Windows based on the fictional Warhammer 40,000 universe. It is the sequel to the Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War video game series.

Dawn of War II uses an updated version of the Essence Engine, Essence Engine 2.0. Essence Engine 1.0 was used to power Relic's World War II real-time strategy game Company of Heroes and its two expansion packs Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts and Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor.

The XFX HD6850 comes out on top again, with the HD6970 taking second place. All solutions are easily capable of powering this game on a 30 inch screen however.

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.

The XFX HD6850 in Crossfire takes the top position on the chart again by 11 frames per second. In the single card performance stakes the HD6970 outperforms the GTX570 by 3 frames per second.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 is an arcade-style flight action game developed by Ubisoft Romania and published by Ubisoft. After the events of the first game, the H.A.W.X squadron is sent to Middle East, where a high level of violence is being registered, and the appearance of various insurgents leaders in various hotspots. The team also has to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Russian nuclear weapons. The player will be controlling three groups: one American (Hunter), one British (Munro) and one Russian (Sokov), each with its own pilots and supporting characters. There will also be references to other characters in the Tom Clancy universe.

We are testing in full DX11 mode with all settings to maximum.

HAWX 2 is a TWIMTBP title and the engine runs considerably faster on nVidia hardware. We would hate to call foulplay, but previously we have recorded a single GTX580 beating 3x HD6970's in Crossfire. Let's hope AMD can change the profile in their drivers to improve the situation. A clear victory for nVidia in this one.

So far we have seen a variety of games and a selection of synthetic benchmarks. While these results are interesting, they deserve some further analysis.

We thought it would be worthwhile scoring the four £300 gaming solutions with all the single screen testing so far. We are going to award the hardware points on the following basis.

For every title in the review so far:

First place = 5 points
Second place = 3 points
Third place = 2 points
Last place = 1 point

Out of eight titles tested in single screen this means that if one solution (theoretically) won all of them, it would score 40 points. Equally so, if a solution came last in everything, thats a total of 8 points.

The XFX HD6850 Crossfire configuration has proved to be the fastest solution across all the testing so far, by a total of 4 points. Both AMD and nVidia single card systems are joint last on 15 points. Clearly two cards are better than one.

Now that we have the single screen testing out of the way and a confirmed winner, we wanted to show you both visually and statistically just how capable the XFX HD6850 boards are across three screens at 5760×1080 resolution.

Before we get into more benchmarking we wanted to show you the benefits of gaming across three screens. The videos below highlight the XFX HD6850 cards running in Crossfire X at 5760×1080, often with settings cranked to the hilt. They can be viewed on our YouTube Channel in higher resolution.

The videos highlight the extended panoramic view across three screens. Far Cry 2 and Lost Planet 2 in particular have many things happening on the peripherial vision screens which heighten the realism and really pull you into the game. Watching a video isn't quite as good as sitting in front of three screens yourself, but it can help you gain a perspective on whether this is something you want to enjoy at home.

F1 2010 is a video game based on the 2010 season of the Formula One world championship. It is the sequel to the 2009 video game based on the same series. It was released in September 2010 on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Windows platforms. The game was confirmed by Codemasters on 23 April 2009. The game engine is based on the new EGO 1.5 engine, an unofficially titled evolution of the EGO 1.0 engine that was created specially for the title.

We are testing across three screens with 4aa and 8af enabled and ultra quality settings in DX11 mode.

At these settings the HD6850's are more than capable of maintaining smooth frame rates – 30fps+ at all times. An excellent set of results.

Colin McRae: Dirt 2 (known as Dirt 2 outside Europe and stylised, DiRT) is a racing game released in September 2009, and is the sequel to Colin McRae: Dirt. This is the first game in the McRae series since McRae’s death in 2007. It was announced on 19 November 2008 and features Ken Block, Travis Pastrana, Tanner Foust, and Dave Mirra. The game includes many new race-events, including stadium events. Along with the player, an RV travels from one event to another, and serves as ‘headquarters’ for the player. It features a roster of contemporary off-road events, taking players to diverse and challenging real-world environments. The game takes place across four continents: Asia, Europe, Africa and North America. The game includes five different event types: Rally, Rallycross, ‘Trailblazer,’ ‘Land Rush’ and ‘Raid.’ The World Tour mode sees players competing in multi-car and solo races at new locations, and also includes a new multiplayer mode.

We are testing across three screens in Direct X 11 mode with 4aa and 16af enabled. All settings are switched to high.

The XFX HD6850 cards in Crossfire deliver a great gaming experience, similar to the HD6970. The game really does look stunning in Direct X 11 at this resolution.

Metro 2033 is an action-oriented video game with a combination of survival horror and first-person shooter elements. The game is based on the novel Metro 2033 by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. It was developed by 4A Games in Ukraine and released in March 2010 for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows.

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). 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”.

The XFX HD6850 Crossfire configuration manages to push an average frame rate of 33 frames per second with only a couple of instances hitting below 25 fps. It is slightly smoother than the single HD6970 at the same settings.

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 with all settings lowered from single screen testing earlier.

The extra power of the CrossfireX configuration smooths out the frame rate. The game is playable at these settings with the HD6850 CFx configuration but not via the single HD6970.

Medal of Honor’s single-player campaign uses a heavily-modified version of Unreal Engine 3, and its multiplayer uses the Frostbite Engine. The single player campaign takes place in 2002 in Afghanistan.

For half of the game, players assume the role of a DEVGRU operator codenamed “Rabbit”, of AFO Neptune. For the remainder, the player alternates between the roles of a Delta Force sniper code-named “Deuce”, of AFO Wolfpack, as well as Army Ranger Specialist Dante Adams of the 75th Ranger Regiment, and AH-64 Apache gunner Captain Brad “Hawk” Hawkins.

No problems for either AMD configuration at these settings. There is a slightly higher average with the HD6850's but its not really noticeable, real world.

BattleForge is a video game developed by EA Phenomic and published by Electronic Arts. It was released on Windows in March 2009. A demo was released in the same month. BattleForge is a card based RTS. It revolves around trading, buying and winning through means of micro-transactions. Micro-transactions are not required for playing the game, only for buying new cards.

It supports DirectX 11 providing full support for hardware tesselation.

Again, the CrossfireX HD6850 system delivers a consistently higher level of frame rates throughout our testing.

Crysis Warhead, like the original Crysis, is set in the near future when an ancient alien spacecraft is discovered on an island east of the Philippines. The single-player campaign has the player assume the role of former SAS Delta Force operator Sergeant Michael Sykes, referred to in-game by his call sign, Psycho. Psycho’s arsenal of futuristic weapons builds on those showcased in Crysis, with the introduction of Mini-SMGs which can be dual-wielded, a six-shot grenade launcher equipped with EMP grenades, and the destructive, short ranged Plasma Accumulator Cannon (PAX). The highly versatile Nanosuit returns. In Crysis Warhead, the player fights North Korean and extraterrestrial enemies, in many different locations, such as a tropical island jungle, inside an “Ice Sphere”, an underground mining complex, which is followed by a convoy train transporting an unknown alien object held by the North Koreans, and finally, to an airfield.

The engine is still a system killer, all these years later, but modern day hardware can finally generate the frame rates we wanted when it was released !

The HD6970 struggles at these settings, which we have seen recently in other reviews. The HD6850 Crossfire system manages to keep it almost perfectly smooth throughout, with only one dip below the magic 25 fps marker.

Devil May Cry 4 is an action game that was published and developed by Capcom in 2008 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows platforms. The game is the fourth installment to the Devil May Cry series.

In the game, the player controls both Nero and Dante, the game’s protagonist and the series’ title character as they fight enemies in close combat using firearms, swords, and other weapons. The characters Lady and Trish from previous games in the series makes an appearance, along with new characters Nero, Kyrie, Credo, Gloria, and Agnus. The game is set after Devil May Cry but before Devil May Cry 2.

We used Super high settings with HDR on high and 8aa and 16af to improve the image quality as much as possible.

There is no problem with this older engine, with the single card able to power through our settings at 5760×1080. Again the CrossfireX solution gives a tiny performance increase.

Left 4 Dead 2 is a cooperative first-person shooter game. It is the sequel to Valve Corporation’s award-winning Left 4 Dead.

Like the original, Left 4 Dead 2 is set during the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic, and focuses on four survivors fighting against hordes of the infected. The survivors must fight their way through levels, interspersed with safe houses that act as checkpoints, with the goal of reaching a rescue vehicle at the campaign’s finale. The gameplay is procedurally altered by an artificial intelligence engine dubbed the “Director” that monitors the players’ performance and adjust the scenario to provide a dynamic challenge. Several new features have been introduced: new types of infected, melee weapons, and a story-arc that connects the game’s five campaigns together.

The Source engine is easily powered by both systems, from prior testing we know that even a single HD6950 can handle it at these settings.

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, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on.

Fantastic performance from the AMD configurations. Both are playable, with only the single card dropping below 25fps a few times when the action heats up.

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 XFX dual cooler manages to keep temperatures under 70c at all times when gaming, which is a great result.

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.

We load the card with FurMark.

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 takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The cooler is exceptionally good, only generating around 33 dBa of noise under full gaming load. This rises a little under extended Furmark stress testing, but its not really indicative of a real world gaming situation.

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.

Power consumption of the XFX HD6850 is slightly lower than the AMD reference design. These cards, like many AMD products recently are extremely efficient.

To overclock the Sapphire cards, we used the Sapphire TRIXX overclocking software . We use this all the time and it is one of the best pieces of software available for AMD users.

The card overclocked well, from 775mhz  to 950mhz on the core which translates to a 22.5% overclock. The memory overclocked to 1170mhz from 1000mhz, giving a final effective figure of 4680mhz. Temperatures only rose by a few degrees celcius in the overclocked state.

We already knew that the AMD HD6850 was a great value for money card, but in CrossfireX they really come to life, delivering first rate gaming performance in modern titles, even across three screens at 5760×1080 resolution.

The XFX HD6850 Dual Fan is an exciting reboot on the reference design, delivering lower noise and improved thermals to the enthusiast masses. Not only that, but power consumption has also been tuned and these cards make the foundation for a very impressive CrossfireX system build.

In the early part of the review, we built several configurations, all costing under £300 and the XFX Crossfire system came out on top, beating the HD6970, GTX460 SLI and GTX570 solutions.

The XFX bundle is very spartan, but when you factor in a £144 inc vat asking price with a custom modified cooler there really is no better value mid range card right now on the market. The only thing missing is a Crossfire connector, which seems like a rather unusual omission to us.

Is there anything else we would recommend under £300? Well it is worth bearing in mind that the ultimate performance of the HD6850 in Crossfire will be related to driver profiles, so either HD 6970 or GTX 570 bears serious consideration if this is an issue for you. The HD6970 is a little bit slower overall, but it offers 3 panel gaming out of the box, so its our top choice right now.

XFX have really delivered a kick ass product with this low cost, modified HD6850 design. One card is enough for 1080p, but two in Crossfire means you can add another two monitors and totally transform your gaming experience.

KitGuru says: Another great product from the XFX team. A ‘Must Have' purchase, especially at this price point.

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