MSI Radeon HD 6850 review - Introduction

Introduction

It was ... hmm a week and a half ago since AMD released the Radeon HD 6800 series on the market, their answer against the GeForce GTX 460 series. They launched it with much success and the series seems to be another winning streak for AMD.

All products thus far have been reference based though with the very same cooling. Today the first customized Radeon HD 6850 makes an entry, it comes with custom cooling which is definitely a notch better.

Right on the heels of the official release is a more customized product from MSI and in combo with the MSI AfterBurner software ( has new Beta Voltage tweaking) that does absolute miracles to a product like the one shown today. The new mid-range series 6800 promises to deliver a very decent chunk of gaming performance, a set of new features and as always, will carry a nice price tag.

Now remember, the R6850 is clocked at 775 MHz right ? We'll take it towards 975 MHz today by applying some tweaks. The memory as well, standard you'll need to work with a 4000 MHz (effective data rate) memory clock frequency ... we'll take that to 4800 MHz on this product.

So for 179 USD and a bit of experimenting, you can get yourself R6870 performance ... how about that huh ?

Let's have a quick peek at MSI's Radeon HD 6850 and then head onwards into the review, where we'll cover the features, architecture, photo-shoot, power consumption, heat levels, benchmarks and of course we'll teach you how to tweak this card into the stratosphere..

Pretty much everything you can expect from a Guru3D.com review of course. Next page please.