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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.
Your 6850 have 1120 sharders. o_o”
these are really good cards, love the performance and price.
Excellent boards those, really look the part and performance is awesome. overclocking is great !
Shit… haha 6850 is a killer card and guess what? its right in the price range im looking at 😀
Only thing i can say reading other reviews is that the 6850 reference cooler is pretty weak. These sapphire cards look great for the money 😀 (6850) will reserve judgement til i seem overclocked 6870s
Killer card indeed, couldnt agree more.
HD6870 is good, but I dont like reference designs, too noisy/hot/ I will wait for sapphires or XFXs custom cooling one.
HD6870 is the one I would get, but not reference version. will wait a month for vapor X or toxic version.
6870 reference design is a waste, waiting on other solutions
the hd6870 isn’t my first choice until they get third party products out of the stable,
Its always the way with launches, but its weird AMD have let their partners make third party solutions for 6850s
over clocked HD6870s might be hard to get out the door with such poor over clocks on the core. seems both boards max out around 950
While these cards aren’t awe inspiring, when you look at the price 150 for a 6850. about the same as the 5770. 25% more performance, looks good.
those overclocks on the 50 are great. id say overclocked versions will be out really soon. vapor x anyone ?
As JC stated, this 6850 has 1120 shaders instead of the default 960…
The bottom gpuz screenshot is for the 6870
I get the same 3dmark vantage score as this HD6850. I was hoping I might even up with a 1120 shader version but sadly not 🙁
@ Jon
I saw in another review that they managed to get the Sapphire 6870’s core clock to 1000mHz stable. I’m sure if put under water, these cards will have a bit more overclocking headroom anyway.
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