XFX AMD Radeon HD 6850 Video Card Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
930 words · ~4 min read
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Now, I did a lot of launch coverage on the Radeon 6870, but I had a bit of a
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realization today that I haven't even done an unboxing of the 6850. So, let's
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get started here. Just going to open up this XFX Radeon
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6850. So, here we are. Let's start getting this opened up. And basically,
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the Radeon 6850 has the same amount of RAM. It has the same GPU on it as the
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6870. It is a member of the same series
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of video cards, which is 6800 series.
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And the only real difference is that it has a few less functional units, and
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it's not quite as fast. So, oh yeah, it's also cheaper. I guess that's
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another factor. So, XFX has a little brochure in here about some of their
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products, including their Pro series, some adapters and connectors that you
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might need if you're going to run affinity, for example. Some monitor
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stands, two or three times moni. I'm glad they had this brochure in
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here. Some low profofile kits for their graphics cards. All the power supplies.
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We mentioned that already. Specs and like little internal like
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cutouts. That's nice. It's useful, you know. All right. We've got a door
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hanger. Do not disturb. I'm gaming. They've even updated it. I have one of
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these with the old XFX dog on it or wolf or whatever it's supposed to be. And uh
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yeah. Yeah, they've updated it. Cool. So, so there's some information on the
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North America limited lifetime warranty. Remember, XFX includes a double lifetime
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warranty. That means that even if you sell the card, whoever you sell it to
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also gets a lifetime warranty. They also have a modder friendly warranty, which
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means you can install aftermarket heat sinks without voiding your warranty as
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long as you keep the original one. Driver CD install guide, throw it away. AMD graphics card, another disc, throw
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it away. And quick install guide. If you've ever installed a graphics card
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before, throw it away. Okay, nothing in
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there. Seems like there's an error. Okay, next we have the Radeon 6850
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itself. Now, something that I want to point out is that this is not a
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reference cooler. This is a reference board, but this is not a reference
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cooler design. The reference cooler, you can actually see a reference 6870 here.
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Now, why you might ask, do 6870s come with a reference cooler and
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the 6850 does not? And the reason is because AMD has decided that for this
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particular graphics card launch, they are not going to limit board partners in
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terms of which graph uh which cooler they use on the 6850. So that means
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we've got all kinds of unique designs. So you can see the XFX1 uses a flower
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style heat sink which looks like it has two large heat pipes. So here I want you
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to have a look at that heat pipe in there. That appears to be a Oh, words
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fail me. I can't remember how many millimeters that looks like it is. That's a big heat pipe or rather two.
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And then you can see there is a copper uh core to the GPU cooler itself. You
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can see that through there. And then that runs out to aluminum fins which are
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doing most of the cooling work. Now I just want to kind of look down here. It
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looks like the graphics uh card memory chips are not directly cooled. Although
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they are all situated, you can see the memory chips here and uh you can kind of
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see them through there are all situated almost directly under the fan. So you're
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going to get a lot of incidental air flow. They've also cleverly shrouded the
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cooler in such a way that when the air flow goes Okay, so you're pushing air
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into the cooler. That means you're going to have a lot of incidental air flow
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coming out this way. And they've also put vents here at the back. So you make
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sure that some of it is going to be able to run over the VRM and then carry that
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heat out of the graphics card. You've got a six pin PCIe power connector here.
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You've got Yeah, actually, you know what? I'm
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totally wrong. Just like the 6870, the VRM are actually here. And there is a
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little ventilation hole here in the shape of the XFX logo as you may or may
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not have picked up on. Now, the 6850 has fewer connectors on the back panel. It
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has two DVI, one HDMI, and one DisplayPort. The 6870 actually includes uh two
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DVI, one HDMI, and two mini display
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port. So, it's a slightly ah different
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layout. There you are. Let's just compare those really quick. So, this is
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more like the layout on the previous 5000 series cards. We've got a back
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plate here holding on our GPU cooler. We've got a standard PCIe 16X interface.
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Just like the 6870, the 6850 only supports two-way Crossfire, not
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three-way Crossfire. And I think that covers pretty much everything I wanted
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to say. This is an 80 mil fan, so it should operate very quietly. Thank you
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for checking out my unboxing of the XFX Radeon HD 6850. And don't forget to
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subscribe to Linus Tech Tips.