SAPPHIRE Announces Radeon HD 6850 Vapor-X Edition

[btarunr]

SAPPHIRE Technology has just announced a new high performance model in its extensive series of graphics cards - the HD 6850 Vapor-X Edition with SAPPHIRE exclusive Vapor-X cooler. The SAPPHIRE HD 6850 Vapor-X Edition has the same internal architecture as the standard model, with 960 stream processors and 48 texture processing units, but clock speeds are increased to 800MHz for the core and 1100Mhz (4.4 Gb/sec effective) for the memory giving users a considerable boost in performance.

The SAPPHIRE exclusive Vapor-X cooler ensures that the card runs quietly and efficiently. Together with other special hardware features including on-board 10-phase power control and SAPPHIRE's highly efficient, cool running second generation Black Diamond chokes this ensures there is a good margin for performance tuning (overclocking) by enthusiast users. SAPPHIRE's overclocking tool for these models - TriXX - is available free for anyone to download from a link on the SAPPHIRE website.



Eyefinity and APP Acceleration
The SAPPHIRE HD 6850 Vapor-X Edition has the versatile output configuration of two DVI, one HDMI and two mini DisplayPort connectors. Using two of the DVI/HDMI outputs as well as the two DisplayPorts enables this card to support up to four monitors in Eyefinity (SLS) mode.

In the HD 6850 Vapor-X Edition the third generation UVD (Unified Video Decoder) supports MVC (Multi-view Video Coding) for the smooth decoding of Blu-Ray 3D with reduced CPU load as well as other HD file formats. Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio are supported, and HDMI capability is HDMI 1.4a. This provides deep colour, enhanced high resolution output for Digital Theatre applications and 3D stereoscopic support as well as 7.1 high bit-rate audio.

The multiple stream processors of the HD 6800 series can be used to accelerate other applications such as video transcoding. The latest generation of web browsers can be GPU accelerated, and this is also supported for enhanced productivity in Microsoft Office 2010.

Second Generation DX11 support
The SAPPHIRE HD 6800 series features the second generation of graphics technology from AMD designed to support all the features of Microsoft DirectX 11 and DirectCompute 11. This family of GPU's is built in AMD's 40nm process to deliver high performance with low power consumption.

Advanced hardware features include an enhanced Tessellation unit, dedicated HDR Texture compression, multi-threaded communication with system CPU cores, embedded support for many of the DirectCompute 11 instructions, 3D stereoscopic support, HDMI 1.4a and DisplayPort 1.2.

The SAPPHIRE HD 6800 series is supported by AMD's DirectX 11 WHQL certified graphics driver which delivers support for all of the key DirectX 11 features required for enhanced gaming experiences as well as GPU acceleration of supported applications.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[RejZoR]

I used to have 6870 Toxic (which is also using Vapor-X technology) and it was horrifically loud. I doubt that this one is much different.

The cooler design is simply failed. At the point below the fan where it should have the most fins its almost completely flat which makes insane air flow resistance and thus noise. Using a barrel fan (like on reference coolers) in there would make a lot more sense.
If you have to, take the cards with coolers that are designed like MSI TwinFrozr or Gigabyte Windforce.

 

[Tatty_Two]

^^ Strange that, I have had them for both HD4890 and 5850 and NEVER heard a whisper from the fans, maybe they are cost cutting!

 

[RejZoR]

After all the Vapor-X praise i was greatly disappointed. Before that i also had HD4870 Silent Efficiency which wasn't all that bad, apart from the "Silent Efficiency" which wasn't silent at all. Under low load it was fine but playing TES:Oblivion with FSAA was an ear torturing.
Now i know it wasn't powered by Vapor-X but still. with cooler of that size it should be more silent.

 

[Tatty_Two]

On recent experience I opt for the Asus DirectCU cooling method, had a 5870 with one of those beasties on, nothing ever made that fan spin above 40%, not even furmark, so no sound at all..... I only have this thing because I needed reference design to be sure of unlocking the shaders when these cards first came out.

 

[INSTG8R]

^^ Strange that, I have had them for both HD4890 and 5850 and NEVER heard a whisper from the fans, maybe they are cost cutting!

Agreed my last 2 cards were both Vapor-X(4870 and now my 5870) My 5870 the fan never goes over 47% and it is only then that I can actually even hear it, even then it is not loud or annoying say compared to the reference "buzz saw" fan.

 

[scaminatrix]

I had the 5770 Vapor-X, the fan was silent until I set it to 70% for gaming. It did get louder, but not excessively loud.

 

[RejZoR]

Not a chance. My 6870 Toxic was moderately loud at 40%. At 50% it was annoying. At 60% and above it was unbearable. I was trying to make it silent with TriXX by setting it to 35% but after that it was getting really hot with temps up to 85°C, was sometimes artefacting in NFS:HP 2010 and was still not silent enough.

 

[Tatty_Two]

There are actually 2 different models/designs of the VaporX cooling solution, if I remember rightly , the 4870, 4890 and 5870 had a basic or more advanced (I think an extra 2 heatpipes) dependant on model/GPU...... for example, my 4890 Toxic's cooler was bigger than the basic 4890 VaporX models.

 

[TheOnlyHero]

Vapor-X are great Sapphire coolers ! They are more cheaper than the other versions and and vapor-x cooling very well the card . One friend of mine have a 5770 vapor-x. he overlocked it and still it works silent with fan 80% and cold .