Feature Articles
Test Setup & Results
Test Setup
The cards will be tested using our usual X58 system which has the following specifications:
- Intel Core i7-975 (3.33GHz)
- Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P motherboard
- 3 x 1GB DDR3-1333 G.Skill memory in triple channel mode
- Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive
- Windows 7 Ultimate
Clock speeds are a good indication of a card’s performance and based on pure clock speeds alone, we are expecting the MSI R6850 Cyclone II Power Edition OC to be the faster card. Raw graphics performance aside, we are also interested to find out how effective their custom coolers are and also how much overclocking potential they have. To keep things interesting, we have also presented results of the Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Toxic Edition, which was the winner of Best Mainstream AMD Graphics Card in our Tech Awards 2011.
If you have already forgotten, here's a summary of the cards' clock speeds.
| Cards | Core Clock Speed | Memory Clock Speed |
|---|---|---|
| HIS 6850 IceQ X Turbo | 820MHz | 4400MHz DDR |
| MSI R6850 Cyclone II Power Edition OC | 860MHz | 4400MHz DDR |
| Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Toxic Edition | 820MHz | 4400MHz DDR |
| Reference / Gigabyte Radeon HD 6850 1GB | 775MHz | 4000MHz DDR |
The list of cards tested and driver versions used:
- HIS 6850 IceQ X Turbo (Catalyst 11.2)
- MSI R6850 Cyclone II Power Edition OC (Catalyst 11.2)
- Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Toxic Edition (Catalyst 10.10)
- AMD Radeon HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 11.2)
- AMD Radeon HD 6850 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 10.10)
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 266.58)
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti (ForceWare 266.71)
The list of benchmarks used:
- Futuremark 3DMark Vantage
- Futuremark 3DMark 11
- Crysis Warhead
- Far Cry 2
- Warhammer: Dawn of War 2
- Battlefield Bad Company 2
- “Heaven" from Unigine v2.1
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat
3DMark 11
3DMark Vantage
Crysis Warhead
Far Cry 2
Dawn of War 2
Battlefield Bad Company 2
