And complementing its aggressive price tag is excellent gaming performance, which challenges even the impressive Radeon HD 5850. And judged on overall power efficiency as gauged by performance per watt, the HD 6850 handily outscores the slower HD 5770.ĪMD’s Radeon 6850 may not lead the pack, but from a value standpoint, its price-to-performance ratio is tough to beat. On the other hand, the HD 6850 demands less power when idle–102 watts, versus 105 watts for the HD 5770.
#Amd radeon hd 6850 full#
The biggest gap was on Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X., where the HD 5850 enjoyed an average advantage of 16 frames per second–but that’s not bad for a $100 discount, and the gap shrinks once antialiasing is enabled.īecause the Radeon HD 5770 is a smaller card, it demands less power under full load: 200 watts, versus 219 watts for the HD 6850. Games testing paints an even rosier picture of the 6850.It trailed the Radeon HD 5850 in performance, but not by much. Both cards are equipped with AMD’s Eyefinity Technology, which will allow you to drive as many as three displays from a single card, and they sport an array of connecters: a pair of DVI ports (one dual-link and one single-link), an HDMI port, and two mini-DisplayPort connectors (which require a pair of adapters in order to work). For a deep dive into the technical features of the Radeon HD 6800 series, be sure to check out Jason Cross’s expansive overview.Īesthetically, the Radeon HD 6850 is nearly identical to (albeit a bit shorter than) the 6870. The new architecture cuts back on size, but still delivers performance in spades. Like the larger Radeon HD 6870, the Radeon HD 6850 is built on a new chip architecture, code-named Barts–a modified version of the Cypress chip architecture that powers the older Radeon HD 58 graphics cards. Priced at $179 (as of October 21, 2010), the Radeon HD 6850 might not top the charts, but it achieves an excellent price-to-performance ratio that’s sure to please frugal gamers. It may occupy the lower end of the current pairing, but this card is more than a match for the GPU it ostensibly replaces–and it gives even the beefier Radeon HD 5850 a run for its money. Don’t be fooled by the Radeon HD 6850’s position on the 6800-series totem pole.