VisionTek Radeon HD 6850 Video Card Review

Manufacturer: VisionTek
Product Name: VisionTek Radeon HD 6850
Model Number: 900339
Price As Tested:$171.99

Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by VisionTek.

Most of us love to look at the latest reviews of the most hardcore PC components and keep apprised of what's going on up in the clouds, but when it comes down to it, we are going to end up buying something that is a little more affordable. So while reviews of those items are certainly interesting to read, it's nice to see something a little more mid-ranged. I'm talking about something that will play the latest video games, even though I might have to turn down some of the settings. In this article, Benchmark Reviews is taking a look at the VisionTek 900339 Radeon HD 6850 graphics card. The newest series of GPUs has been out for a while now, and we've seen the performance charts. We don't expect any surprises from the VisionTek 900339, but that's not going to stop us from putting it through its paces and overclocking it. We want to see where the VisionTek Radeon HD 6850 differs from other cards, especially since it sits near the top end of the price range for Radeon HD 6850s.

AMD Radeon GPUs bring a lot to the table besides just Eyefinity. While NVIDIA beat them to the punch with 3D support, the Radeon HD 6850 supports AMD HD3D technology that supports stereoscopic 3D gaming as well as Blu-Ray 3D. Additional technological advancements included with the Radeon HD 6000 series include AMD EyeSpeed visual acceleration and EyeDefinition. EyeSpeed improves video image quality and accelerates video formats like DIVX and DIVX Plus HD. EyeDefinition is AMD's implementation of DX11 tessellation and functionality.

Surprisingly enough, while the AMD Radeon 5000 and 6000 GPUs all support DirectX 11, DX11 capable GPUs are not used to the extent you might think. According to the October 2011 Steam Hardware Survey, only about 28% of gamers use DX11 GPUs. The most used DX11 GPU is the Radeon HD 5770. That leaves a lot of room for upgrade on the part of gamers everywhere. With the holiday season approaching, I'm sure this is on a lot of people's minds. One other benefit of the Radeon HD 6850 for me is that it's built on the same architecture and with the same GPU as the HD 6870. This means I can connect them in a Crossfire configuration, even though the Radeon HD 6850 runs a little slower.

Closer Look: Visiontek 6850

The Visiontek Radeon HD 6850 comes in a very unassuming black box. There is very little advertising on the box. It simply states the name of the card and, in quite small letters, some of the basic functions and features. We can see from the box that it's has 1GB of DDR5 memory, it fits a PCI-E X16 slot, supports 7.1 surround over HDMI, has a lifetime warranty, and that it's a DX11 card. I'll tell you the truth; if I saw this card in the store, I might miss it.

Opening up the box, I was a little surprised by the sparseness of the components as well, although I suppose it matches the box. Inside you'll find the VisionTek 900339 Radeon HD 6850 video card, of course, along with an installion CD, a set-up guide, a 4-pin molex to 6-pin GPU power adapter, and a DVI to VGA adapter. I am quite disappointed with the last one, especially considering that most new cards come with a mini display port. I can certainly understand that people might have an older monitor and cables and that they would need to use the DVI to VGA adapter. What I don't understand is why most new video cards come with a display port output and, in my experience, they are hard to find on monitors. That means I probably don't have a display port cable lying around. My suggestion would be a DVI (or better yet HDMI) to display port adapter rather than DVI to VGA.

When VisionTek designed their Radeon HD 6870 card, the 900338, they stuck very closely to the reference design, including the shroud and heatsink. That's not the case with the 900339, their Radeon HD 6850. The black shroud stays the same, but it's branded with the VisionTek name and the Radeon HD 6850 logo. Also, the fan is moved to the center of the PCB and the heatsink is changed slightly to fit it. The reference cooling design features the fan at the end of the PCB. This was originally designed this way to help avoid a dead spot for air flow right behind the fan where the memory or some power management components frequently hide. With the lower clock speeds on the Radeon HD 6850 as compared to the HD 6870, a little bit of extra heat probably wouldn't hurt anyway. Later on we'll take a look at the temperatures of the VisionTek Radeon HD 6850, but I doubt we'll find anything we don't like.

The output ports available on the VisionTek Radeon HD 6850 mirror that of the 6870 and many other recent cards. There are two DVI outputs, an HDMI output, and a display port output. Using the display port as one of your outputs allows you to enter an Eyefinity configuration. You can then stretch your display across three separate monitors for enhanced functionality or awesome gameplay.

One of the DVI ports is dual-link DVI and that is the one that will support AMD HD3D to play 3D games or watch 3D Blu-Ray movies. The HDMI port, obviously, will support it as well. A year ago, the list of supported 3D monitors was extremely sparse, consisting of exactly one monitor. That list has expanded to a much larger variety of supported monitors now, as well as 3D TVs and projectors.

The backside of the VisionTek Radeon HD 6850 really shows us just how close together these components can get. That being said, the solder quality is great. There is no spillage and none of the solder extends out past where it should.

The VisionTek 900339 Radeon HD 3850 mirrors the AMD reference design HD 6850 in size, clocking in at 9.0" long by 1.25" tall by 3.75" wide. This is 3/4 of an inch shorter than the VisionTek 900338 Radeon HD 3870.

Besides the location of the fan and the heatsink, the VisionTek Radeon HD 6850 has some other differences from the HD 6870 in terms of cooling features. The shroud on the HD 6870 is completely enclosed. There are no vents in the back for cool air intake. Even the top of the shroud on the HD 6870 lacks a lot of ventilation. That's not the case on the VisionTek Radeon HD 6850. On this shroud the back is mostly open, allowing for air to flow freely across the board. The top is also well-ventilated.

Before we get into the testing, let's take a look at the specifications of the Radeon HD 6850.

Radeon Features

• Microsoft DirectX 11 Support
• AMD Eyefinity Technology
• AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) Technology Designed for DirectCompute 5.0 and OpenCL
• Accelerate Video Transcoding
• 40 nm Process Technology
• Advanced GDDR5 Memory Technology
• 3rd Generation TeraScale Engine
• Microsoft Windows 7 Support
• AMD CrossFireX Technology
• Enhanced Anisotropic Filtering
• Accelerated Video Transcoding
• Display Flexibility, Supports DL-DVI, DP, HDMI and D-Sub
• HDMI 1.4a support with Deep Color and 7.1 High Bitrate Audio
• On chip HDCP Support
• AMD CrossFireX multi-GPU support for highly scalable performance. (Use up to four discrete cards with an AMD 790FX based motherboard)
• AMD Avivo HD Support
  • ATI Unified Video Decoder 3 (UVD3) for 3D Blu-ray and HD Video.
  • Accelerated Video Transcoding (AVT)
  • DVD Upscaling
  • Dynamic Contrast
  • Built-in HDMI with 7.1 surround sound support
  • Dynamic power management with ATI PowerPlay technology including memory clocks
  • Dolby TrueHD and DTSHD Master Audio Support

AMD Barts GPU Details

• ATI Radeon HD 5850 has a size of 336 sq.mm, perf/sq.mm = 22.0
• AMD Radeon HD 6870 has a size of 255 sq.mm, perf/sq.mm = 30.3

6850/6870 Specifications

VGA Testing Methodology

With the widespread adoption of Windows7 in the marketplace, and given the prolonged and extensive pre-release testing that occurred on a global scale, there are compelling reasons to switch all testing to this highly anticipated, operating system. Overall performance levels of Windows 7 are favorable compared to Windows XP, and there is solid support for the 64-bit version, something enthusiasts have anxiously awaited for years. After almost a year of product testing with Win7-64, I can vouch for its stability and performance; I can't think of any reasons why I would want to switch back to XP.

Our site polls and statistics indicate that over 90% of our visitors use their PC for playing video games, and practically every one of you are using one of the screen resolutions mentioned below. Since all of the benchmarks we use for testing represent different game engine technology and graphic rendering processes, this battery of tests will provide a diverse range of results for you to gauge performance on your own computer system. All of the benchmark applications are capable of utilizing DirectX 10 or DirectX 11, and that is how they were tested. Some of these benchmarks have been used widely for DirectX 9 testing in the XP environment, and it is critically important to differentiate between results obtained with different versions. Each game behaves differently in DX9 and DX10 formats. Crysis is an extreme example, with frame rates in DirectX 10 only about half what was available in DirectX 9.

At the start of all tests, the previous display adapter driver is uninstalled and trace components are removed using Driver Cleaner Pro. We then restart the computer system to establish our display settings and define the monitor. Once the hardware is prepared, we begin our testing. According to the Steam Hardware Survey published at the time of Windows 7 launch, the most popular gaming resolution is 1280x1024 (17-19" standard LCD monitors) closely followed by 1024x768 (15-17" standard LCD). However, because these resolutions are considered 'low' by most standards, our benchmark performance tests concentrate on the up-and-coming higher-demand resolutions: 1680x1050 (22-24" widescreen LCD) and 1920x1080 (24-28" widescreen LCD monitors).

Each benchmark test program begins after a system restart, and the very first result for every test will be ignored since it often only caches the test. This process proved extremely important in several benchmarks, as the first run served to cache maps allowing subsequent tests to perform much better than the first. Each test is completed five times, the high and low results are discarded, and the average of the three remaining results is displayed in our article.

A combination of synthetic and video game benchmark tests have been used in this article to illustrate relative performance among graphics solutions. Our benchmark frame rate results are not intended to represent real-world graphics performance, as this experience would change based on supporting hardware and the perception of individuals playing the video game.

Intel P67 Test System

• Motherboard: ASUS P67 Sabertooth
• Processor: Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz
• System Memory: GSkill Ripjaws X Series 1600MHz (9-9-9-24)
• Primary Drive: Filemate SolidGO 60GB SSD
• Power Supply Unit: Corsair TX850W 850W 80+ Bronze Certified

DirectX-9 Benchmark Applications

• Mafia II
  • Extreme Settings: (Antialiasing, 16x AF, High Shadow Quality, High Detail, High Geometry, Ambient Occlusion)

DirectX-10 Benchmark Application

• 3DMark Vantage v1.02
  • Extreme Settings: (Extreme Quality, 8x Multisample Anti-Aliasing, 16x Anisotropic Filtering, 1:2 Scale)

DirectX-11 Benchmark Applications

• DIRT 2 DEMO Benchmark
  • Extreme Settings: (High Quality, 8x AA, 16x AF, High DirectX 11 Features)

• Aliens vs Predator
  • Extreme Settings: (High Quality, 4x AA, 16x AF, SSAO, Tessellation, Advanced Shadows)
• BattleField: Bad Company 2
  • Extreme Settings: (Highest Quality, HBAO, 4x AA, 16x AF, 180s Fraps Single-Player Intro Scene)
• Lost Planet 2
  • Extreme Settings: (4x MSAA, High Shadow Detail, High Texture, High Render, High DirectX 11 Features)
• Unigine Heaven Benchmark 2.5
  • Extreme Settings: (High Quality, Normal Tessellation, 8x AF, 4x AA)

Video Card Test Products

• MSI GeForce GTS 450 N450GTS Cyclone (850 MHz GPU/1700 MHz Shader/1000 MHz vRAM - Forceware 285.62)
• PowerColor Radeon HD 5770 PCS+ (875 MHz GPU/1225 MHz vRAM - ATI Catalyst Driver 11.10)
• EVGA GeForce GTX 460 SE 1GB (648MHz GPU/1296 MHz Shader/850 MHz vRAM - Forceware 285.62)
• MSI R6850 Radeon HD 6850 (775 MHz GPU/1000MHz vRAM - ATI Catalyst Driver 11.10)
• VisionTek 900339 Radeon HD 6850 (775MHz GPU/1000MHz vRAM - ATI Catalyst Driver 11.10)
• MSI R6870 Hawk Radeon HD 6870 (930 MHz GPU/1050MHz vRAM - ATI Catalyst Driver 11.10)
• PNY GTX 570 1280MB VCGGTX570XPB (732MHz GPU/1464MHz Shader/950MHz vRAM - Forceware 285.62)

DX10: 3DMark Vantage

3DMark Vantage is a PC benchmark suite designed to test the DirectX10 graphics card performance. FutureMark 3DMark Vantage is the latest addition the 3DMark benchmark series built by FutureMark corporation. Although 3DMark Vantage requires NVIDIA PhysX to be installed for program operation, only the CPU/Physics test relies on this technology.

3DMark Vantage offers benchmark tests focusing on GPU, CPU, and Physics performance. Benchmark Reviews uses the two GPU-specific tests for grading video card performance: Jane Nash and New Calico. These tests isolate graphical performance, and remove processor dependence from the benchmark results.

• 3DMark Vantage v1.02
  • Extreme Settings: (Extreme Quality, 8x Multisample Anti-Aliasing, 16x Anisotropic Filtering, 1:2 Scale)

3DMark Vantage GPU Test: Jane Nash

Of the two GPU tests 3DMark Vantage offers, the Jane Nash performance benchmark is slightly less demanding. In a short video scene the special agent escapes a secret lair by water, nearly losing her shirt in the process. Benchmark Reviews tests this DirectX-10 scene at 1680x1050 and 1920x1200 resolutions, and uses Extreme quality settings with 8x anti-aliasing and 16x anisotropic filtering. The 1:2 scale is utilized, and is the highest this test allows. By maximizing the processing levels of this test, the scene creates the highest level of graphical demand possible and sorts the strong from the weak.

3DMark Vantage GPU Test: New Calico

New Calico is the second GPU test in the 3DMark Vantage test suite. Of the two GPU tests, New Calico is the most demanding. In a short video scene featuring a galactic battleground, there is a massive display of busy objects across the screen. Benchmark Reviews tests this DirectX-10 scene at 1680x1050 and 1920x1200 resolutions, and uses Extreme quality settings with 8x anti-aliasing and 16x anisotropic filtering. The 1:2 scale is utilized, and is the highest this test allows. Using the highest graphics processing level available allows our test products to separate themselves and stand out (if possible).

Mafia II DX9+SSAO Benchmark Results

Mafia II is a single-player third-person action shooter developed by 2K Czech for 2K Games, and is the sequel to Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven released in 2002. Players assume the life of World War II veteran Vito Scaletta, the son of small Sicilian family who immigrates to Empire Bay. Growing up in the slums of Empire Bay teaches Vito about crime, and he's forced to join the Army in lieu of jail time. After sustaining wounds in the war, Vito returns home and quickly finds trouble as he again partners with his childhood friend and accomplice Joe Barbaro. Vito and Joe combine their passion for fame and riches to take on the city, and work their way to the top in Mafia II.

Mafia II is a DirectX 9 PC video game built on 2K Czech's proprietary Illusion game engine, which succeeds the LS3D game engine used in Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven. In our Mafia-II Video Game Performance article, Benchmark Reviews explored characters and gameplay while illustrating how well this game delivers APEX PhysX features on both AMD and NVIDIA products. Thanks to APEX PhysX extensions that can be processed by the system's CPU, Mafia II offers gamers equal access to high-detail physics regardless of video card manufacturer. Equal access is not the same thing as equal performance, though.

With PhysX technology turned off, both AMD and NVIDIA are on a level playing field in this test. In contrast to many gaming scenes, where other-worldly characters and environments allow the designers to amp up the detail, Mafia II uses human beings wearing ordinary period-correct clothes and natural scenery. Just like how high end audio equipment is easiest to judge using that most familiar of sounds - the human voice, graphics hardware is really put to the test when rendering things that we have real experience with. The drape of a woolen overcoat is a deceptively simple construct; easy to understand and implement, but very difficult to get perfect.

Aliens vs. Predator Test Results

Rebellion, SEGA and Twentieth Century FOX have released the Aliens vs. Predator DirectX 11 Benchmark to the public. As with many of the already released DirectX 11 benchmarks, the Aliens vs. Predator DirectX 11 benchmark leverages your DirectX 11 hardware to provide an immersive game play experience through the use of DirectX 11 Tessellation and DirectX 11 Advanced Shadow features.

In Aliens vs. Predator, DirectX 11 Geometry Tessellation is applied in an effective manner to enhance and more accurately depict HR Giger's famous Alien design. Through the use of a variety of adaptive schemes, applying tessellation when and where it is necessary, the perfect blend of performance and visual fidelity is achieved with at most a 4% change in performance.

DirectX 11 hardware also allows for higher quality, smoother and more natural looking shadows as well. DirectX 11 Advanced Shadows allow for the rendering of high-quality shadows, with smoother, artifact-free penumbra regions, which otherwise could not be realized, again providing for a higher quality, more immersive gaming experience.

In our next section, Benchmark Reviews looks at one of the newest and most popular games, Battlefield: Bad Company 2. The game lacks a dedicated benchmarking tool, so we'll be using FRAPS to measure frame rates within portions of the game itself.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Test Results

The Battlefield franchise has been known to demand a lot from PC graphics hardware. DICE (Digital Illusions CE) has incorporated their Frostbite-1.5 game engine with Destruction-2.0 feature set with Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 features destructible environments using Frostbite Destruction-2.0, and adds gravitational bullet drop effects for projectiles shot from weapons at a long distance. The Frostbite-1.5 game engine used on Battlefield: Bad Company 2 consists of DirectX-10 primary graphics, with improved performance and softened dynamic shadows added for DirectX-11 users. At the time Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was published, DICE was also working on the Frostbite-2.0 game engine. This upcoming engine will include native support for DirectX-10.1 and DirectX-11, as well as parallelized processing support for 2-8 parallel threads. This will improve performance for users with an Intel Core-i7 processor.

In our benchmark tests of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, the first three minutes of action in the single-player raft night scene are captured with FRAPS. Relative to the online multiplayer action, these frame rate results are nearly identical to daytime maps with the same video settings.

DiRT-2 Demo DX11 Benchmark Results

DiRT-2 features a roster of contemporary off-road events, taking players to diverse and challenging real-world environments. This World Tour has players competing in aggressive multi-car, and intense solo races at extraordinary new locations. Everything from canyon racing and jungle trails to city stadium-based events. Span the globe as players unlock tours in stunning locations spread across the face of the world. USA, Japan, Malaysia, Baja Mexico, Croatia, London, and more venues await, as players climb to the pinnacle of modern competitive off-road racing.

Multiple disciplines are featured; encompassing the very best that modern off-roading has to offer. Powered by the third generation of the EGO^TM Engine's award-winning racing game technology, DiRT-2 benefits from tuned-up car-handling physics and new damaged engine effects. It showcases a spectacular new level of visual fidelity, with cars and tracks twice as detailed as those seen in GRID. The DiRT-2 garage houses a collection of officially licensed rally cars and off-road vehicles, specifically selected to deliver aggressive and fast paced racing. Covering seven vehicle classes, players are given the keys to powerful vehicles right away. In DiRT-2 the opening drive is the Group N Subaru, essentially making the ultimate car from the original game the starting point in the sequel, and the rides just get even more impressive as you rack up points.

The primary contribution that DirectX-11 makes to the DiRT-2 Demo benchmark is in the way water is displayed when a car is passing through it, and in the way cloth items are rendered. The water graphics are pretty obvious, and there are several places in the Moroccan race scene where cars are plowing through large and small puddles. Each one is unique, and they are all believable, especially when more than one car is in the scene. The cloth effects are not as obvious, except in the slower-moving menu screens; when there is a race on, there's precious little time to notice the realistic furls in a course-side flag. I should also note that the flags are much more noticeable in the actual game than in the demo, so they do add a little more to the realism there, that is absent from the benchmark.

Lost Planet 2 DX11 Benchmark Results

A decade has passed since the first game and the face of E.D.N. III has changed dramatically. Terra forming efforts have been successful and the ice has begun to melt, giving way to lush tropical jungles and harsh unforgiving deserts. Players will enter this new environment and follow the exploits of their own customized snow pirate on their quest to seize control of the changing planet.

• 4-player co-op action: Team up to battle the giant Akrid in explosive 4 player co-operative play. Teamwork is the player's key to victory as the team is dependent on each other to succeed and survive.
• Single-player game evolves based on players decisions and actions.
• Deep level of character customization: Players will have hundreds of different ways to customize their look to truly help them define their character on the battlefield both on- and offline. Certain weapons can also be customized to suit individual player style.
• Beautiful massive environments: Capcom's advanced graphics engine, MT Framework 2.0, will bring the game to life with the next step in 3D fidelity and performance.
• Massive scale of enemies: Players skill on the battlefield and work as a team will be tested like never before against the giant Akrid. Players will utilize teamwork tactics, new weapons and a variety of vital suits (VS) to fight these larger-than-life bosses.
• Rewards System: Players will receive rewards for assisting teammates and contributing to the team's success.
• Multiplayer modes and online ranking system.
• Exciting new VS features: Based on fan feedback, the team has implemented an unbelievable variety of Vital Suits and new ways to combat VS overall. The new VS sytem will have a powerful impact on the way the player takes to the war zone in Lost Planet 2.

Test A:

The primary purpose of Test A is to give an indication of typical game play performance of the PC running Lost Planet 2 (i.e. if you can run Mode A smoothly, the game will be playable at a similar condition). In this test, the character's motion is randomized to give a slightly different outcome each time.

Test B:

The primary purpose of Test B is to push the PC to its limits and to evaluate the maximum performance of the PC. It utilizes many functions of DirectX-11 resulting in a very performance-orientated, very demanding benchmark mode.

Unigine Heaven 2.5 Benchmark Results

The Unigine "Heaven 2.5" benchmark is a free, publicly available, tool that grants the power to unleash the graphics capabilities in DirectX 11 for Windows 7 or updated Vista Operating Systems. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. With the interactive mode, emerging experience of exploring the intricate world is within reach. Through its advanced renderer, Unigine is one of the first to set precedence in showcasing the art assets with tessellation, bringing compelling visual finesse, utilizing the technology to the full extent, and exhibiting the possibilities of enriching 3D gaming.

The distinguishing feature in the Unigine Heaven benchmark is a hardware tessellation that is a scalable technology aimed for automatic subdivision of polygons into smaller and finer pieces, so that developers can gain a more detailed look to their games almost free of charge in terms of performance. Thanks to this procedure, the elaboration of the rendered image finally approaches the boundary of veritical visual perception. The "Heaven" benchmark excels at the following key features:

• Native support of OpenGL, DirectX-9, DirectX-10 and DirectX-11
• Comprehensive use of tessellation technology
• Advanced SSAO (screen-space ambient occlusion)
• Volumetric cumulonimbus clouds generated by a physically accurate algorithm
• Dynamic simulation of changing environment with high physical fidelity
• Interactive experience with fly/walk-through modes
• ATI Eyefinity support

VisionTek Radeon HD 6850 Temperatures

It's hard to know exactly when the first video card got overclocked, and by whom. What we do know is that it's hard to imagine a computer enthusiast or gamer today that doesn't overclock their hardware. Of course, not every video card has the head room. Some products run so hot that they can't suffer any higher temperatures than they generate straight from the factory. This is why we measure the operating temperature of the video card products we test.

Before stressing the video card to its extremes, I want to get a good baseline for how the card runs at idle. I use GPU-Z to measure the temperature reported by the GPU to get this number. After that's taken care of I want to really stress the card. I use FurMark to do this. It is important to remember that, with FurMark, we will get temperature and power consumption numbers that are probably far above anything a game could produce. I run FurMark at full blast on the stress settings with everything turned all the way for 20 minutes before checking the temps. At the same time, the idle temps were taken after sitting at the desktop for 20 min after a cool start up. While checking the temperatures of the card, the ambient room temperature remained stable at 22C. I use an open-air test bench for testing, so air restriction is not a problem.

Despite the changes in fan placement and the lower clock speeds of the Radeon HD 6850, the VisionTek Radeon HD 6850 touts temperatures almost exactly the same as the VisionTek 6870.

When overclocked, the GPU temperatures raise slightly, but considering the performance upgrade that the overclock provides, it's worth it. With only a single fan on the VisionTek 6850, even when cranked up to 100%, it wasn't very noisy. If I concentrated, I could hear it, but it wasn't loud. With the fan on auto, I didn't hear a thing.

Overclocking

Since Afterburner got its upgrade, overclocking has become a lot less limited. Since the Radeon HD 6850 is so close in nature to the HD 6870, it has a lot of overclock potential. To overclock the VisionTek Radeon HD 6850, I used the Afterburner program from MSI.

I increased the auxiliary voltage and memory voltage for the VisionTek Radeon HD 6850 using Afterburner by the maximum available values. For the GPU core voltage I slowly increased until I reached a value of 920. I haven't had much luck with any card operating above this. In the end, I was able to achieve excellent results with the overclocking. The VisionTek Radeon HD 6850 reached a GPU core clock speed of 1000MHz, up from the stock 775MHz it came with. That is the exact same speed I reached with the MSI 6870 Hawk. That constitutes an increase of almost 30%. With the memory, I was able to achieve stability at 1150MHz, up from 1000MHz. That increase is about 15%.

The excellent overclocking that we achieved with the VisionTek Radeon HD 6850 made it pretty equal to a Radeon HD 6870 at overclocked speeds. It also made it very comparable to the much more expensive GTX 570 in many cases. Realize that these results are not typical and each piece of hardware is different.

VisionTek 9900339 Radeon HD 6850 Conclusion

IMPORTANT: Although the rating and final score mentioned in this conclusion are made to be as objective as possible, please be advised that every author perceives these factors differently at various points in time. While we each do our best to ensure that all aspects of the product are considered, there are often times unforeseen market conditions and manufacturer changes which occur after publication that could render our rating obsolete. Please do not base any purchase solely on our conclusion, as it represents our product rating specifically for the product tested, which may differ from future versions. Benchmark Reviews begins our conclusion with a short summary for each of the areas that we rate.

The release of the Barts GPU was a little less than stellar. The 6xxx series didn't come in with quite the same fanfare as the 5xxx series. There was a lot of skepticism, especially around the naming convention. Even so, the specifications for the new line of Barts GPUs were great. After being around now for a while, things have calmed down and the Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 have settled into their niche. They occupy a great place in AMDs GPU line-up, allowing for buyers to have something in the in-between range to work with. Prices have recently dropped significantly. This makes the Radeon HD 6850 a very attractive card for mid-range buyers.

The VisionTek Radeon HD 6850 performed just like any normal Radeon HD 6850. In most areas, it did outperform the MSI Radeon HD 6850 we tested it against. The cooling was steady and temperatures were relatively low compared to the heavy duty cards of yesteryear. All in all, before overclocking, the VisionTek Radeon HD 6850 was pretty standard.

I don't consider the VisionTek Radeon HD 6850 to be very visually appealing. It's pretty plain. The fan is a translucent blue, which looks ok, but it doesn't stand out a whole lot. The plain appearance transcends the card itself and adheres to the box as well. Besides touting the features of the card, there isn't anything else on the card or box itself. No graphics or fancy logos; nothing to make it stand out in a crowd.

While the VisionTek 6850 may not look like much, it is well constructed. There is a lot of headroom for extra voltage and overclocking, which tells the tale of the high quality components. An inspection of the more closely packed areas of the card reveals careful construction. There is no splash residue of solder remaining. Everything looks clean and sturdy.

The functionality, including overclocking ability, of the VisionTek Radeon HD 6850 that we received was absolutely outstanding. I was able to achieve a nearly 30% increase in clock speed on the 9900339 that we received for testing. Even the memory speed was increased by 15%. As I mentioned before, these results are not typical. I don't want you to go out and buy one of these cards expecting these numbers. What it does show is the amazing overclock headroom available on the VisionTek 6850.

Pros:

Cons:

- A little pricey for a 6850
- Looks pretty dull

Ratings:

• Performance: 9.00
• Appearance: 7.75
• Construction: 9.00
• Functionality: 9.75
• Value: 8.00

Final Score: 8.7 out of 10.

Questions? Comments? Benchmark Reviews really wants your feedback. We invite you to leave your remarks in our Discussion Forum.

Related Articles:

• Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5870 Video Card 21161-00-50R
• Mad Catz Tritton Pro+ 5.1 Surround Headset
• Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500 DDR2 1066MHz RAM
• Corsair Vengeance 2000 Wireless Headset
• Func MS-3 Gaming Mouse
• Antec MicroFusion Remote 350 Mini HTPC Enclosure
• Patriot Supersonic Magnum Flash Drive
• AMD Phenom II X3 720 BE Black Edition AM3 CPU
• ADATA XPG SX900 Solid State Drive
• Mad Catz Cyborg RAT-7 Laser Gaming Mouse