PowerColor Radeon 6850 PCS+ review - Introduction

For this editor one of the more exciting product releases this year has been AMD's Radeon 6800 series. Now we are all still waiting on the best from AMD which has yet to arrive, the 6900 series, but the Radeon HD 6850 and 6870 have had a warm welcome already in the mid-range gaming segment of graphics cards.

PowerColor is as always never late to arrive at the party, they submitted a Radeon HD 6850 for a test here at Guru3D.com and as such we'd be more than happy to bring you a full review on one of their newest products today, the PCS+ version of the Radeon HD 6850.

The new mid-range series 6800 delivers a very decent chunk of gaming performance, a set of new features and, as always, will carry a nice price tag.

PowerColor has been busy though, merely a week or two after the official launch their 6850 range already has a non standard product with custom cooler, custom PCB and a totally non-reference design.

It's positioned in their PCS+ range and as such comes factory overclocked as well. Now remember, the R6850 is clocked at 775 MHz right? PowerColor clocks it at towards 820 MHz for you, and if you feel a little brave then apply some tweaks yourself as that will get you over 900 MHz quite easily. The memory as well, standard you'll need to work with a 4000 MHz (effective data rate) memory clock frequency PowerColor takes that to 4400 MHz on this product. And sure, there as well is some room left to fool around with tweaking wise.

Let's have a quick peek at the new duo and then head onwards into the review, where we'll cover the features, architecture, photo-shoot, power consumption and heat levels and benchmarks... oh yeah... you are in for the entire Guru3D treat today. Next page you guys.