Conclusions
Contents
The new Radeon HD 6850 was faster than its main competitor, the GeForce GTX 460 with 768 MB, in almost all games and simulations we ran. Therefore, if you are looking for an economic solution to the Radeon HD 5850, the Radeon HD 6850 is a terrific option.
Here is the breakdown. In most games and simulations, the Radeon HD 6850 was up to 19% faster than the GeForce GTX 460 with 768 MB. There were only two exceptions. On 3DMark Vantage, which simulates DirectX 10 games, the Radeon 6850 was faster only when image quality settings were disabled. Maxing out image quality settings made the GeForce GTX 460 with 768 MB to be up to 15% faster. And on Far Cry 2 (a DirectX 10 game), the GeForce GTX 460 with 768 MB was 6% faster than the Radeon HD 6850 at 1680 x 1050. At 1920 x 1200, both cards achieved similar performance, but at 2560 x 1600 the Radeon HD 6850 was 8% faster.
Of course if you want more performance you may pick the Radeon HD 5850 or the GeForce GTX 460 with 1 GB (always keeping in mind that the difference between the 768 MB and the 1 GB model isn’t only the amount of video memory, but the memory interface width). In our tests the Radeon HD 5850 was up to 25% faster than the Radeon HD 6850 (between 18% and 25% faster on 3DMark vantage, between 5% and 8% faster on Call of Duty 4, between 6% and 9% on Far Cry 2, between 19% and 20% on Alien vs. Predator, between 6% and 8% on Crysis Warhead, and up to 17% fast on Lost Planet 2), while the GeForce GTX 460 with 1 GB was up to 32% faster than the Radeon HD 6850 (between 8% and 32% faster on 3DMark Vantage, up to 10% faster on Call of Duty 4, between 7% and 18% faster on Far Cry 2, between 5% and 9% faster on Alien vs. Predator, up to 11% faster on Crysis Warhead, and up to 15% faster on Lost Planet 2).
