Powercolor HD6850 Single Slot CrossfireX Review

1. Introduction2. Powercolor HD6850 Single Slot CrossfireX3. Testing Methodology4. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark5. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage6. Synthetic: 3DMark 117. Image Quality: HQV Benchmark V2.08. Gaming: Resident Evil 59. Gaming: Alien V Predator10. Gaming: Lost Planet 211. Gaming; Total War Shogun12. Gaming: Far Cry 213. Gaming: Tom Clancy HAWX 214. Gaming: Home Front15. Technical: Acoustics Performance16. Technical: Thermal Dynamics17. Technical: Power Consumption18. Technical: Overclocking19. Closing Thoughts20. View All Pages

One of AMD's most active partners in recent months has been PowerColor. They have been releasing a wide selection of quality HD6000 series cards with custom PCB and proprietary cooler designs. Today we are looking at an affordable CrossfireX configuration which will work perfectly inside a chassis with limited physical space. The PowerColor HD6850 Single Slot cards can work in 2, 3 and 4 way Crossfire configurations, ensuring good future proofing if high resolution gaming is top on your list of priorities.

Today we are testing two of these svelte, attractive cards with a wide cross section of the latest, and older classic game engines.

HD6850 Single Slot Edition Core Speed 775MHz Memory Speed 1000MHz(4.0Gbps) Memory 1GB GDDR5 Memory Bandwidth 256bit Eyefinity Yes DirectX® 11 CrossFireX™ Yes Output DL-DVI-I/ HDMI/2x mini DisplayPort

The Powercolor cards arrive in an attractively designed box with a high resolution image of the product on the front. Each card can support up to four screens in Eyefinity.

The bundle contains literature on the product, a DVI dongle, Mini DP to DP cable, a driver CD and a CrossFire connector.

The card is built around a bright red PCB with a subdued sticker on the front highlighting the product name and the Powercolor logo along the bottom. It is a very attractive design, we like the accented gold stripe across the front of the card, then around the fan.

Each card has a single DVI DL port, next to an HDMI and 2 mini displayport connectors. All can be powered simultaneously for Eyefinity configurations.

The HD6850 Single Slot cards are 2, 3 and 4 way CrossFire capable and they require only a single 6 pin power connector (each) for operation.

Removing the cooler is a little more time consuming than normal, as it is held in place with 9 screws.

The PowerColor HD6850 single slot edition takes advantage of PowerColor’s Platinum Power Kit, utilizing 100% SMT type components: Volterra, Poscap and Proadlizer, enhancing the stability and efficiency. Furthermore, the latest edition uses 3 units of 8mm heat pipes with a full cover cooling plate, dissipating heat from its large pure copper base. Elpida memory is used on these particular boards.

Each card operates at 775 mhz core, and the 1GB of GDDR 5 memory runs at 1000mhz (4ghz effective) connected via a 256 bit memory interface. They are built around a 40nm BARTS core, with 32 ROPs and 960 unified shaders.

Today we are using our high end Core i7 970 system which is overclocked to 4.33ghz.

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: Dell 3011, Dell U2410 UltraSharp, Sanyo 50 inch LCD Television.

Other graphics cards:
Nvidia GTX590
Zotac GTX580 AMP! Edition
Nvidia GTX580
Nvidia GTX570
XFX HD5970 Black Edition 4GB (QuadFireX)
AMD HD6990
AMD HD6970
AMD HD6950
AMD HD6870
AMD HD6850
AMD HD5870
Sapphire HD5850 Xtreme
Sapphire HD5830 Xtreme
Sapphire HD5770 Vapor X Edition (860mhz core)
Sapphire HD6790 CrossfireX
MSI N560GTX Ti Twin Frozr II
nVidia GTX570
nVidia GTX 550 ti (900/1026)
nVidia GTX460 OC (715/900)

Software:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
Catalyst 11.5
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark
HQV 2.0 Software

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
Far Cry 2
Alien V Predator
Lost Planet 2
Tom Clancy HAWX 2
Home Front
Total War: Shogun 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

We use the following settings: 1920×1080 resolution. Anti Aliasing off. Anisotrophy 4, Tessellation normal. Shaders High. Stereo 3D disabled. API: Direct X 11.

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.

A final score of almost 56 frames per second is very strong, outperforming AMD's high end HD6970 by around 3 frames per second.

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.

A great overall score in the Direct X 10 3DMark Vantage, scoring 25,128 points. This is less than 300 points behind Nvidia's single GPU flagship, the GTX580.

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.

The two HD6850's are almost neck and neck with Sapphire's overclocked HD5850 Xtreme cards in Crossfire, scoring around 200 points less. The overclocked Zotac GTX580 AMP! Edition by comparison scores 6,256 points … highlighting a switch in the performance leadership from the previous Direct X 10 oriented 3DMark Vantage. AMD are strong with Direct X 11.

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

	Powercolor HD6850 SS
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

A fantastic set of results for Powercolor hardware, scoring 196 points out of 210.

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 Powercolor HD6850 cards in Crossfire generate incredible frame rates with this Direct X 10 engine, slightly more than the GTX590.

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.

Very close in performance to the Sapphire HD5830 Xtreme edition cards in CFx and again faster than the overclocked Zotac GTX580 AMP! Edition.

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 normally test at higher settings, but the hardware being evaluated today was not capable of maintaining solid framerates. We are therefore testing at 1080p in DX11 mode with settings on high. DX11 is set to medium.

The new 6000 series cards perform better in with this specific Direct X 11 engine as highlighted above. The HD6850 Single Slot cards outperform the overclocked HD5850's from Sapphire, by a single frame per second.

Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths.

All settings are pushed to mixed high/ultra settings as shown below.

Shoguns 2 runs well on the HD6850 hardware, outperforming the previous generation HD5850 by a few 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).

Far Cry 2 has always favoured Nvidia hardware but with two HD6850's in Crossfire, the frame rate result is higher than the GTX580, with an average of 103 frames per second being rendered.

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.

On a 30 inch screen, two of the Powercolor HD6850's can produce almost the same frame rates as the GTX580. This is impressive, especially considering this particular engine is skewed in favour of Nvidia hardware.

Homefront is speculative fiction, set in a near-future, post peak oil world that features a significantly diminished United States, and a united Korea that has built a massive alliance in East Asia. The Gate Corporation (a major private military company) also plays a minor role. The game focuses on the collapse of the United States, subsequent occupation by the Greater Korean Republic—a united Korea under the rule of Korea—and the American Resistance that fights said occupation. The player is invited to join the American Resistance, “using guerrilla tactics, commandeering military vehicles, and utilizing advanced drone technology”.

Homefront’s PC version has been outsourced to Digital Extremes, a Canadian developer responsible for numerous Unreal Tournament games and Bioshock ports. Frank Delise, the executive producer of the PC version has stated that the PC version of the game will feature exclusive content and dedicated servers. Additional exclusive features include clan support, DirectX 11 graphics, and first person vehicle cockpits.

Homefront is a great looking game and it runs particularly well on AMD graphics hardware. The CrossfireX HD6850 configuration manages to produce an average of 67 frames per second which is impressive.

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

The cards are relatively quiet when idle, meaning they are a good choice for a media center. When loaded however the noise levels quickly rise due to the small, fast spinning fan configuration. They are clearly audible under load and when paired together can theoretically emit almost 45 dBa of noise (Furmark). Gaming noise levels aren't quite as intrusive, peaking at 38.7dBa.

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 single slot cards peak around 84-85c under Furmark load, or around 78c when gaming.

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. We measure results while gaming in Crysis Warhead and record the results.

The HD5850 is an efficient card, demanding 17 watts when idle and just over 100 watts when gaming. A Crossfire X configuration is still quite cost effective considering the power on hand.

To overclock today we are using Sapphire’s TriXX software tool, which is one of the best overclocking tools on the market.

Both cards overclocked to similar levels achieving a final result of around 850 mhz from the core and 1100mhz from the memory. This translates to around a 10% increase from both core and memory.

The Powercolor HD6850 Single Slot Edition is undoubtedly a graphics card which will appeal to media center enthusiast users. If you are interested in building a new system in a small form factor case then one of these cards will certainly allow for a quality gaming experience. Today we reviewed two of the cards in CrossfireX and the tests have shown that even with high resolutions there is plenty of power on tap, even with demanding Direct X 11 game engines.

Two of these cards would be an ideal SFF buying decision thanks to the single slot cooler design and subsequent improvements with chassis airflow. With a power drain of around 200 watts when gaming a new system build won't eat into the electricity bill either.

Powercolor have been releasing some great video cards in recent months, right across the range and we like the fact they are trying to push out a wider array of custom PCB and cooler designs.

Single slot cards are great for physically compromised case designs, but as we have said before, there are some compromises to be made. The cards do operate at higher temperatures than others we have tested in recent months and the fans have to spin higher to compensate for rising heat. With two cards in a CrossfireX configuration, the noise is easily noticeable under load and it may become intrusive for some.

When all is considered however there is no doubt in my mind that the Powercolor HD6850 Single Slot Edition cards will appeal to a very specific audience. Specifically gamers who want a small system build in their living room to entertain friends and family in a social environment. Two of these cards will cost around £300 inc vat … they deliver similar performance to a GTX580, but with a £100 lower premium. The only problem is, they can get rather loud, and this is why they don't earn our top award.

Pros:

• single slot opens up new possiblities
• design is good
• excellent performance in CrossfireX, right up there with a GTX580
• power consumption is excellent

Cons:

• Louder than a single, high performance solution.

KitGuru says: High performance, good price and ideal for a small case. A single high end card such as the GTX580 is much quieter however.

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