Powercolor HD6850 Single Slot Edition Review

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.

Furmark is an intensive stress test which shows a very ‘worst case' scenario. It isn't that indicative of a real world situation, which is why we also include gaming tests. When gaming, the card never rose above 78c, with a fan speed of around 60percent. Under Furmark, the temperatures rose to 84c and the fan increased to 72percent.

Return to Idle 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.

With a single slot cooler, there is always going to be a performance trade off. In this case it takes over 30 seconds for the card to return the temperature to idle, even with a fairly aggressive fan profile. To be fair, this is actually quite good, as some of AMD's reference cooling configurations will take longer than this.

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