Date: October 22nd, 2010

AMD Radeon
![]() AMD Radeon HD 6850 |
![]() Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 |

AMD
![]() Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 |
Sapphire had emailed us the previous week that they would be sending us a sample of their HD 6850 for launch date - which you now know was October 22nd at 10PM EST. So we're at Saturday afternoon, giving us until Thursday evening to get our performance and feature testing done, and talk about the new bits; plus compare performance to relevant products. We knew we were going to need to compare against the GTX 460 1GB, as well as the HD 5850. Additionally, we had hoped to test the 5830, 5870, and 5970 - the last against Crossfire 6850s. Reality set in, when the Caveman remember he had a day job, and taking another four days off wouldn't be acceptable; working for Rage3D is cool 'n junk, but it ain't putting bacon in the pan or clothes on backs. Yet. Sapphire estimated that the card would be with us at the beginning of the week, which worked out fine.
The weekend passed by, with the 6870 and 6850 testing completing pretty normally. We started with the 6800s as (a) we were excited about them and (b) it gave us the most time to find and potentially resolve issues with drivers or applications, before launch. Monday came, and with it the Sapphire HD 6850. At this time the Caveman was benching the HD 5850, having completed the 6800 series tests over the weekend. At this point, it was decision time - redo all the 6850 benchies, or just move straight to 6850 Crossfire? The two cards were supposedly identical - no factory overclock, no special sauce; just a non-reference cooler. We decided to get the temperature readings from the new cooler in single card use, then move on to 6850 Crossfire results. Benchmarks and game testing continued, we got the GeForce card done, and moved on to write up on Thursday.
The review is published, we're sickly and tired, but it's done. Whew! Time for bed. The Rage3D crew variously awake Friday morning to see comments and discussion about orders, etailer price gouging - the usual stuff. Giggity. Until the afternoon, when BenchmarkReviews.com's executive editor Olin Coles posted their notice about the Sapphire, XFX and Powercolor HD 6850s with 1120 stream processor count, and gives us a heads up; shortly after confirmed by AMD themselves:
AMD: Apparently a small number of the AMD Radeon HD 6850 press samples shipped from AIB partners have a higher-than-expected number of stream processors enabled.
AMD: This is because some AIBs used early engineering ASICs intended for board validation on their press samples. The use of these ASICs results in the incorrect number of stream processors. If you have an HD 6850 board sample from an AIB, please test using a utility such as GPU-z to determine the number of active stream processors. If that number is greater than 960, please contact us and we will work to have your board replaced with a production-level sample.
AMD: All boards available in the market, as well as AMD-supplied media samples, have production-level GPUs with the correct 960 stream processors.
You may have also seen published an email from Sapphire about press sample HD 6850s with improperly applied TIM causing a recall. This email is genuine, not a 'smokescreen'' for the switched ASIC's; our press sample was not one of the serial numbers listed in the recall, but did feature the 1120SP core.
![]() Oh FFFffffuuuuuu |
Mea Culpa

Sapphire
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