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HWM+HardwareZone.com Tech Awards 2011 Editor's Choice - Part 2

By Team HardwareZone - 4 Mar 2011

Best Mainstream AMD Graphics Card

Best Mainstream AMD Graphics Card

Launched along side the more powerful Radeon HD 6870, the new Radeon HD 6850 marks a new generation of graphics cards for AMD. And although it’s not blazing fast, it offers a credible mid to high-end gaming performance and is a good alternative to NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 460. And as part of AMD’s new Northern Islands line-up, the Radeon HD 6850 also gets useful features such as EyeFinity and HDMI 1.4 ports for integrating into existing the 3D ecosystem. We attempted to find out the best Radeon HD 6850 card of the past year.

Nominees:

  • ASUS EAH6850 DirectCU
  • Gigabyte HD 6850
  • MSI R6850-PM2DIGD5
  • PowerColor PCS+ HD 6850
  • Sapphire Radeon HD 6850
  • Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Toxic Edition
  • XFX Radeon HD 6850 Black Edition

And the Winner Is...

The Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Toxic Edition is our best mainstream AMD graphics card.

Our winner for best mainstream AMD graphics card is Sapphire's Radeon HD 6850 Toxic Edition. Admittedly, it has since been overshadowed by newer releases, but the Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Toxic Edition was one of the first Radeon HD 6850 cards to feature a formidable combination of features and performance at the point of evaluation. To sum up, the Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Toxic Edition was not only a tad quicker than reference versions of the Radeon HD 6850, but it has an efficient cooler and impressive overclocking potential, and that was enough to push it above the competition.

Scoring Breakdown
Criteria/Model ASUS 
EAH6850 DirectCU
Gigabyte HD 6850 MSI R6850 PowerColor PCS+ HD 6850 Sapphire HD 6850 Sapphire HD 6850 Toxic Edition XFX Radeon HD 6850 Black Edition
Performance 7.5 7.5 7.5 8.0 7.5 8.5 8.0
Features 8.0 8.0 8.0 8.5 8.0 8.5 8.5
Value 8.0 8.0 8.0 8.0 8.0 8.0 8.0
Overall 8.0 8.0 8.0 8.0 8.0 8.5 8.0
Price US$199 US$189 US$189 US$209 US$199 US$209 US$219

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed at the References section at the end.

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