Date:
Tuesday , February 08, 2011
Author:
Mark Warner
Editor:
Brent Justice
Google +1

MSI R6850 Cyclone Power Edition Video Card Review

If you are looking for a robust Radeon HD 6850 video card that has the potential for a high level of overclocking, then this is the video card for you. We evaluate the MSI R6850 Cyclone Power Edition video card and perform in-depth overclocking using MSI Afterburner. This video card has great potential, and competes well with the competition.

continued...

Evaluation Method

We evaluate what each video card configuration can supply us in terms of a playable gaming experience while supplying the best culmination of resolution and "eye candy" graphical settings. We focus on quality and immersion of the gameplay experience rather than how many frames per second the card can get in a canned benchmark or prerecorded timedemo situation that often do not represent real gameplay like you would experience at home. Then we will follow with apples-to-apples testing based on real gameplay as well.

Test System Setup

For our test system platform we are using an ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution motherboard with an Intel Core i7 920 overclocked to 3.6GHz, and 6GB of Corsair DDR3-1600. For the power supply, we will be using a CoolerMaster Real Power Pro 1250W.

While it might be "overkill," we use the Core i7-920 processor at 3.6GHz in an attempt to prevent our evaluation from being CPU limited. Obviously, we make every effort to not use CPU limited games for video card evaluations, but the i7-920 at 3.6GHz seems to put many peoples’ minds at ease when it comes to that subject.

Article Image

For the MSI R6850 Cyclone and the AMD Radeon HD 6850, we are using the Catalyst 10.12 Preview driver. For the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB, we are using NVIDIA ForceWare 266.35 Beta driver.

Below is a screenshot of GPU-Z after installing the MSI R6850 Cyclone and Catalyst 10.12 Preview drivers.

Article Image