Ok, so my new Asus-branded AMD Radeon 6850 arrived today, and i've installed it in my machine (after running a few quick benchmarks before first).
Initial impressions:
Beautiful packaging (not that it should matter, but it is nice).
A nice, solid looking card.
On plugging it in, (and bearing in mind it is replacing a Radeon 3870 which was being passively cooled with an Accelero heatsink), my rig is absolutely no louder. This thing is effectively silent
One stupid thing for me was that i didnt realise it needed 2 PCI-E power connectors, and I knew that the standard 6850's only needed one.... I only had one spare plug (the 3870 only needed one), and my box of modular cables is ... somewhere !! So i plugged the 1 PCI-E power lead in, prayed, and turned on... it works!
I have run a few benchmarks (more detailed results tomorrow), but my first impressions are mixed.
Probably by the fact that I was already running alot of games at high or even full resolution, but with reduced settings, and lower framerates.
My framerates have clearly improved, and in new games like Civ V it's now buttery smooth to move the map left, right etc.
Battlefield BC2 is probably the game that visually looks the most changed, it is now on much higher settings than before and is now very pretty.
I tried running a few synthetic Futuremark tests, but 3dmark vantage only tells you the results once (which I did a few weeks ago), and now wont play ball. I think it wants money, and it can kiss a part of me. 3dmark 11 is DX11 only, so wouldnt run before.
More details tomorrow. Night all.


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