PowerColor Radeon HD 6850 PCS+ Review - PAGE 4

Hardware Configuration:

• CPU: 920 @ 3.60GHz
• Motherboard: MSI X58 Platinum
• Memory: 6GB Mushkin Redline DDR3 1600
• Chassis: Microcool Banchetto 101 bench-table
• Power Supply: Enermax Galaxy 1000W
• HDD: 1.5TB GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11
• Cooling: Corsair H50 dual-fan
• OS: Windows 7 Pro 64 bit

Software:

All the ATI cards released prior to the 6800 series will be tested using AMD's Catalyst 10.8 drivers, while the NVIDIA graphics cards will be tested using their 260.89 drivers. Both the HD 6870 and HD 6870, however, will be tested with AMD's latest 10.10 drivers release.

Benchmarks DX11:

• Aliens vs Predator
• Unigine Heaven 2.1
• Metro 2033

Benchmarks DX10:

• Futuremark: 3DMark Vantage
• Street Fighter IV
• Crysis Warhead
• Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
• Darkest of Days
• Resident Evil 5
• Just Cause 2

All benchmarks were performed at resolutions of 1280x1024, 1680x1050, 1920x1200 and 2560x1600. Vsync is disabled in the control panel and AA is set to x4 with AF set to x16. The only benchmark performed with lower AA and AF is Street Fighter IV, which showed better scaling when AA and AF were set to 0.

Usage:

• Power consumption
• Temprature

MSI's Kombuster will be used to gauge the power requirement and temperature of the graphics cards. The program applies a very heavy load to the GPU and as such will push the card beyond that of a game or benchmark. For the minimum temperature and power consumption the system will be left in an idle state for 15 minutes and for load Kombuster will be left on for 15 minutes.

Comparison Specifications: