PowerColor HD 6850 SCS3 1 GB

, on Jun 17th, 2011, in Graphics Cards. Manufacturer: PowerColor

Introduction

AMD's Radeon HD 6850 has been on the market for quite a while and we have seen many non-reference designs in the last months. However, all those used active cooling to keep the card cool. PowerColor's new HD 6850 SCS3 is the first HD 6850 that does away with the fan and uses an all passive cooling solution.

PowerColor has chosen to use a big triple slot heatsink on their card to manage the heat output of the card. In terms of performance characteristics nothing has changed, the card comes at AMD reference clock speeds. Price-wise, PowerColor is asking a $10 premium which seems quite reasonable considering the unique no-noise aspect of this product.

HD 6850 Market Segment Analysis
	Radeon HD 6790	GeForce GTX 460	GeForce GTX 460	Radeon HD 6850	PowerColor HD 6850 SCS3	Radeon HD 6870	GeForce GTX 560	GeForce GTX 560 Ti
Shader Units	800	336	336	960	960	1120	336	384
ROPs	16	24	32	32	32	32	32	32
Graphics Processor	Barts	GF104	GF104	Barts	Barts	Barts	GF114	GF114
Transistors	1700M	1950M	1950M	1700M	1700M	1700M	1950M	1950M
Memory Size	1024 MB	768 MB	1024 MB	1024 MB	1024 MB	1024 MB	1024 MB	1024 MB
Memory Bus Width	256 bit	192 bit	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit
Core Clock	840 MHz	675 MHz	675 MHz	775 MHz	775 MHz	900 MHz	810 MHz	823 MHz
Memory Clock	1050 MHz	900 MHz	900 MHz	1000 MHz	1000 MHz	1050 MHz	1002 MHz	1002 MHz
Price	$150	$150	$170	$170	$180	$200	$200	$230