It's a ferociously demanding test, pushing graphics cards to their limit, but also containing peaks and troughs in performance that match real world game play.Īs the test is so demanding and GPU limited, we've set 3DMark to run the test at 1,280 x 1,024 with 0xAA and 16xAF (enabled in the driver), constantly looping the test for thirty minutes and recording the maximum power consumption and GPU Delta T (the difference between the temperature of the GPU and the ambient temperature in our labs). There's no guarantee that the GPU is being pushed as hard as other titles might do, and the load will vary from play through to play through.Įventually then, we've decided to use 3DMark06's Canyon Flight test as a real world representative, repeatable graphics test. The card has 775 MHz graphics clock frequency. Conversely, simply leaving a game like Crysis running at a certain point also isn't reflective of real world use. Launched in October 2011, ATI Radeon HD 6850 desktop Graphics Processing Unit utilizes TeraScale 2 Unified Processing architecture, and is produced on 40 nm manufacturing process. It's such a hardcore test that any GPU under test is almost guaranteed to hit its thermal limit, the mark at which the card's firmware will kick in, speeding up the fan to keep the GPU within safe temperature limits. We've found that synthetic benchmarks such as FurMark thrash the GPU constantly, which simply isn't reflective of how GPU will be used when gaming. XFX HD685XZNDC Radeon HD 6850 XXX Edition Video Card - 1GB, GDDR5, PCI-Express 2.1 (x16), Dual-DVI, HDMI, Dual Mini DisplayPort, CrossFireX Ready, DirectX 11, Includes Dirt3 Game w/Registration. XFX Radeon HD 6850 Video Card - 1GB 256-bit DDR5 - 775 / 4000MHz Clock - 2x DVI, HDMI & 2x DisplayPort - AMD Eyefinity - DirectX 11 (HD-685X-ZCFC).
Power Consumption (Idle and Gaming)Putting realistic, repeatable load on a GPU to get a decent idea of its real world power consumption and thermal output has long been something we've experimented here at bit-tech.