Monday, September 19th 2011

ColorFire Shows Off Xstorm HD 6850 X2 4 GB Graphics Card

Asian graphics card manufacturer known for its intriguing designs, Colorful, after a brief gap of four months, unveiled its latest graphics card in the works, under its Radeon-centric ColorFire brand. Called the ColorFire Xstorm HD 6850 X2 4GB, its name pretty much spells out what it's about: a dual-GPU (CrossFire on-a-stick) graphics card with two Radeon HD 6850 GPUs, and 4 GB of total memory (2 GB per GPU system). It's not just the specifications that earned Colorful/ColorFire its popularity, it's their nerdtastic choice of components. This card is no exception.
With this card, the designers are trying out what they call "Silver-Plated Technology". All of the PCB's contacts (the metal-exposed parts onto which components are soldered), apart from the PCIe and CFBE interfaces, are plated with silver. Silver is one of the best conductors. ColorFire argues that the use of silver contacts reduces resistance, and also helps with cooling.

The next interesting feature is the use of DIP-switched based voltage control, which is an old-school yet direct and effective way of tuning voltages. Voltage measurement points are consolidated to a convenient location (next to the power connectors), and are angled for easy access. Lastly, a pair of jumpers near the display output connectors, allows you to switch between two sets of EEPROMs, each having a different clock and voltage profile.

Moving on to the GPU system itself, there are two 40 nm AMD Barts GPUs in the HD 6850 configuration (960 stream processors per GPU). One of the two sets of EEPROMs packs AMD reference speeds, but ColorFire didn't mention details of the overclocked profile. The card draws power from two 8-pin connectors, a 12-phase VRM handles voltage regulation. To cool it all, ColorFire used a custom design dual-fan cooler, which uses a large heatsink to which heat is conveyed by five heat-pipes.

ColorFire did not give out pricing information.
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34 Comments on ColorFire Shows Off Xstorm HD 6850 X2 4 GB Graphics Card

#1
Damn_Smooth
Slap a reasonable price on this and I'm going tri-fire.
Posted on Reply
#2
DarkOCean
Why only 6850 and not 6870?! as for the memory all dual gpu cards should have double the quantity.
Posted on Reply
#3
n-ster
Interesting memory size choice....
Posted on Reply
#4
HossHuge
Damn_SmoothSlap a reasonable price on this and I'm going tri-fire.
Wouldn't that mean that all the cards would be running at 1GB of memory?


btarunr, do you have a website address for Colorfire? Or would I have to go through Colorful to contact them. Their Colorful website doesn't show any AMD cards at all.
Posted on Reply
#5
Shihab
Pimp my Graphix. AMD edition ! :pimp:
No rly, look at the PCB plan view image. First I was like :wtf:, then I was :roll:
Hell, even the GPU sockets are silver plated ! Let's just hope silver prices don't follow gold's, else you might find these cards retailing for $1000+ .
Posted on Reply
#6
Damn_Smooth
HossHugeWouldn't that mean that all the cards would be running at 1GB of memory?


btarunr, do you have a website address for Colorfire? Or would I have to go through Colorful to contact them. Their Colorful website doesn't show any AMD cards at all.
Yeah, but 1GB is enough for 1080p in most situations.
Posted on Reply
#7
jpierce55
HossHugeWouldn't that mean that all the cards would be running at 1GB of memory?


btarunr, do you have a website address for Colorfire? Or would I have to go through Colorful to contact them. Their Colorful website doesn't show any AMD cards at all.
It would be so powerful I doubt it would matter.
Posted on Reply
#8
HossHuge
jpierce55It would be so powerful I doubt it would matter.
Eyefinity would use the extra memory...;)
Posted on Reply
#9
Zubasa
jpierce55It would be so powerful I doubt it would matter.
The only time that you should be using tri-GPU is on very high resolutions, which means the memory size matters.
Posted on Reply
#10
FreedomEclipse
~Technological Technocrat~
Colorfire??? possibly a spinoff or subsidary of POWERCOLOR??

I swear Asian companies come up with the weirdest of names of stuff
Posted on Reply
#11
Breathless
That is the most busy PCB I think i've ever seen, on both sides... its pretty amazing.
Posted on Reply
#12
Unregistered
That's a very interesting card, it looks very pimp with its silver flashing.

Those jumpers might be a bit of a pita to get at though with the cooler on.
Posted on Edit | Reply
#13
trickson
OH, I have such a headache
If ONLY I could get one at a good price .
Posted on Reply
#14
bear jesus
It's great to see 2GB on this, when gpuz had the memory usage added i was shocked to find out that some games i play can use over 1GB at just 1680x1050 never mind on a higher res monitor or an eyefinity setup.
Posted on Reply
#15
mab1376
would this be an upgrade from a single 5870?
Posted on Reply
#16
bear jesus
mab1376would this be an upgrade from a single 5870?
It would be kind of like 5850 crossfire with a little better scaling going by the 6850 crossfire reviews so heading towards double the power of a 5870 but very game dependent due to crossfire.
Posted on Reply
#17
coldtortilla
The heatsinks look terrible, what's up with these crossfire and sli on a stick cards? :confused:
Posted on Reply
#18
n-ster
bear jesusIt would be kind of like 5850 crossfire with a little better scaling going by the 6850 crossfire reviews so heading towards double the power of a 5870 but very game dependent due to crossfire.
Heading towards the power of 5870 in CF is more like it
Posted on Reply
#19
bear jesus
n-sterHeading towards the power of 5870 in CF is more like it
That is kind of what i meant by heading towards double the power of a 5870 but honestly i'm not too sure on crossfire scaling on the 5870's so i was trying to not be too specific in my answer.
Posted on Reply
#20
NC37
FreedomEclipseColorfire??? possibly a spinoff or subsidary of POWERCOLOR??

I swear Asian companies come up with the weirdest of names of stuff
Well you gotta consider their language. When some of the names are used in their language it has a greater meaning. Plus they'll sometimes sound cooler. When translated into English, a lot of the effect is lost. Many times the translator picks the most basic meaning which when we see it makes us wonder why they named something in such a childish way/etc.
Posted on Reply
#21
_JP_
:wtf:
That's a...nice card.
I can expect to see this card on DX in a few months.
Posted on Reply
#22
micropage7
it looks nice.
i like the colour but with silver does it will make huge difference? or it just made to attract more attention since we dont know about the brand?
Posted on Reply
#23
Unregistered
T'other thing is, will all the silver tarnish and go black at some point?
Posted on Edit | Reply
#24
devguy
tiggerT'other thing is, will all the silver tarnish and go black at some point?
Hopefully. Then you can sell it as the limited edition HD 6850x2 Black Edition for more than you payed for it. :cool:
Posted on Reply
#25
erocker
*
tiggerT'other thing is, will all the silver tarnish and go black at some point?
If it is silver it should. Then again I don't know if it is still the case while running electircal current through silver?
Posted on Reply
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