Sapphire HD6850 Vapor-X

Overall the Sapphire HD6850 Vapor-X is a good video card for its price. Check out how it stacks up against the competition.

Introduction

The AMD HD6xxx series is the newest set of graphics cards available from AMD at this time. As with every other series of graphics cards, there are multiple price ranges and product lines to choose from that offer a variety of features and functions. The HD6850 is a high performance graphics card that comes with an affordable price, which is part of what makes the 6850 from Sapphire so popular.

As you would expect from current graphics cards, the HD6850 supports all of the latest technologies like DX11 and Eyefinity, but still retains a reasonable price point. The price of the Sapphire 6850 Vapor-X has not officially been announced at the time of this review but it is expected to be available for right around $180, which puts it right in the middle of the road. It is quite a bit cheaper than the higher 69xx series graphics cards, but at the same time it should perform nearly as well.

As for performance, continue reading to see how well the Sapphire HD 6850 Vapor-X stacks up against the competition.

Features

Pictures & Impressions

Software Overview

Software is always an important addition to any video card which is why Sapphire included a CD with the necessities. There is no other software on the disk.

Here is the first screen we see when starting the installation; obviously it is pretty straightforward. ATI Easy Install is the recommended option as it will automatically install drivers and the Catalyst Control Center.

After the first step basically everything is all automated. This screen shows the supported video cards as well as the support operating systems. Once the install is done users will see the following screen which is the standard Catalyst Control Center.

Next up we see Sapphire’s TRIXX tweaking utility. Like most video card manufacturers, Sapphire created this program to monitor and control the basic functions of the video card such as fan speeds and overclocking. It works quite well and it even included a Windows Desktop Gadget; the only real problem with this program is that Sapphire did not include it on the software CD. In fact Sapphire did not even mention it in the manual or any of the paperwork so many consumers would never have found the program at all.

Testing and methodology

In the interests of thoroughness and accurate results, we ran each test at least three times, and some tests more than that. We average the total of all the tests from each benchmark then report the average here.

The OS used was Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit with all patches and updates applied. We also use the latest drivers available for the motherboard and any devices attached to the computer. We do not disable background tasks or tweak the OS or system in any way. We turn off drive indexing and daily defragging. We also turn off Prefetch and Superfetch. This is not an attempt to produce bigger benchmark numbers. Drive indexing and defragging can interfere with testing and produce confusing numbers. If a test were to be run while a drive was being indexed or defragged, and then the same test was later run when these processes were off, the two results would be contradictory and erroneous. As we cannot control when defragging and indexing occur precisely enough to guarantee that they won’t interfere with testing, we opt to disable the features entirely.

3DMark Vantage

3DMark Vantage is still one of the most popular benchmarks even though it is getting a bit old now. It lets us get a good idea of the performance of video cards while running DX10 which is still quite common in many games.

3DMark 11

“3DMark 11 is the latest version of the world’s most popular benchmark for measuring the graphics performance of gaming PCs. Designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.”

Overall the Sapphire 6850 Vapor-X did very well in both of the 3DMark benchmarks. Obviously being both DX10 and DX11 they show that the 6850 Vapor-X is more than adequate for new DX11 games and older DX10 games; it is also quite clear that overclocking the card using the Catalyst Control Center or the Sapphire TRIXX software is able to give a significant boost in performance.

Heaven Benchmark

Unigine Heaven is a benchmark program based on Unigine Corp’s latest engine, Unigine. The engine features DirectX 11, Hardware tessellation, DirectCompute, and Shader Model 5.0. All of these new technologies combined with the ability to run each card through the same exact test means this benchmark should be in our arsenal for a long time.

The Unigine Heaven benchmark showed basically the same results as the other two synthetic benchmarks. The Sapphire 6850 Vapor-X is just as powerful as other cards in the same price range, and with a bit of overclocking, a significant performance boost can be had.

Just Cause 2

“Just Cause 2 is an open world action-adventure video game. It was released in North America on March 23, 2010, by Swedish developer Avalanche Studios and Eidos Interactive, and was published by Square Enix. It is the sequel to the 2006 video game Just Cause.

Just Cause 2 employs the Avalanche Engine 2.0, an updated version of the engine used in Just Cause. The game is set on the other side of the world from the original Just Cause, on the fictional island of Panau in Southeast Asia. Panau has varied terrain, from desert to alpine to rainforest. Rico Rodriguez returns as the protagonist, aiming to overthrow the evil dictator Pandak “Baby” Panay and confront his former mentor, Tom Sheldon.”

As with the synthetic benchmarks it is clear that the Sapphire 6850 Vapor-X performs quite well; a small overclock is once again able to generate a noticeable increase in performance and overall the card simply performs well no matter what is thrown at it. Running at high resolution with plenty of AA and AF, the Sapphire 6850 Vapor-X continues to provide constant frame rates.

Crysis Warhead

Crysis Warhead is the much anticipated standalone expansion pack to Crysis, featuring an updated CryENGINE™ 2 with better optimization. It was one of the most anticipated titles of 2008 and despite being slightly older it is still a standard benchmark in today’s testing.

Just as expected the Sapphire 6850 Vapor-X once again performed well in a real world gaming experience. Obviously it is not quite at fast as the more expensive video cards but with a moderate overclock is is once again able to perform a substantial amount faster.

Overclocking

Overclocking is important to any computer enthusiast because it allows users to get a little extra power out of  hardware without spending any additional money. Fortunately most graphics card manufacturers cater to overclockers quite well which.

Overall the Sapphire 6850 Vapor-X overclocks quite well which can make a pretty big difference in terms of performance. The initial clock speed of the 6850 Vapor-X is 800MHz and with just a little bit of work it is easy to reach into the 900+ MHz range. 900MHz is the speed we used for all overclocked testing during the benchmarks though it was possible to squeeze another 20 or 30 MHz out of the card. Overall the Sapphire 6850 Vapor-X overclocks well which is a great sign for a relatively inexpensive graphics card such as this.

Important note: Overclocking can cause component failure.  Please exercise caution when attempting any level of overclock on system components.

Temperatures

The temperatures were recorded using Sapphire’s TRIXX monitoring and overclocking tool. In order to stress the card and reach a load temperature numerous 3D benchmark programs were run for 30 minutes. The maximum temperature was then recorded for the “load” temperature; the idle temperature was taken prior to any benchmarking or testing of the GPU.

Just as expected the temperatures of the GPU do increase by a noticeable amount when overclocked. This is unavoidable simply due to the nature of overclocking but the temperatures are still low enough to be safely used. The Vapor-X cooling system developed and used by Sapphire simply performs much better than most standard GPU coolers. Not only does this unique cooler work well, it is also generally fairly quiet. When idling or under minimal load the GPU cooling fan is nearly silent which is always a good thing.

Power Consumption

The power consumption was tested while running 3D stress tests and benchmarks in order to load the entire system. The maximum power used during an extended time period test is what was used for the load values and the idle values were recorded immediately after booting up the computer into Windows.

Once again it is clear that overclocking is not only going to generate more heat but it is also going to draw more power. Fortunately the HD6850 Vapor-X uses quite a bit less power than many other mainstream video cards thanks to the 10-phase power control system used by Sapphire. The 6850 Vapor-X is definitely one of the least power hungry cards we’ve tested.

CONCLUSION

The Sapphire HD 6850 Vapor-X might not be the most powerful or the fastest GPU available right now but to many people that isn’t a big deal. The 6850 Vapor-X is more than powerful enough for nearly any modern game and from both the synthetic and gaming benchmarks we ran it is clear that the card performs quite adequately. Cooling and power consumption along with noise are all controlled quite well thanks to the unique Vapor-X cooling used by Sapphire which really makes this card stand out from the crowd.

Of course this card is not perfect; for starters it would have been nice if Sapphire had included all of their software on the included CD. Sapphire TRIXX is a very useful utility but unfortunately since it wasn’t included on the disk many consumers won’t even know the program exists on Sapphire’s website. Fortunately Sapphire made up for this by including plenty of other additional accessories and cables that most manufacturers wouldn’t have included with the package.