TLDR: Cyclone vs DirectCU vs Windforce. What cooler wins?
For a crossfire solution with 6850s.
Dual CrossFire (16X+16X)
GIGABYTE GV-R685D5-1GD Radeon HD 6850
Core Clock: 775MHz
Effective Memory Clock: 1000MHz (4.0Gbps)
$180 each
ASUS EAH6850 DC/2DIS/1GD5/V2 Radeon HD 6850
Core Clock: 790MHz
Effective Memory Clock: 1000MHz (4.0Gbps)
$180 each, $160 after $20 MIR
MSI R6850 Cyclone PE/OC Radeon HD 6850
Core Clock: 860MHz
Effective Memory Clock: 1100MHz (4.4Gbps)
$190 each
All of them have a 3 year warranty.
In the end, it depends on the cooling of the card. 2x 6850 is way more sufficient than I'll ever need it to, no matter what core clock. Although, I actually plan on slightly OCing the cards themselves seeing how I hear the 6850 OCs well, but only after a year or so, at a point where I don't care half as much about the warranty with a new card.
System Specs:
Motherboard: MSI 790FX-GD70
Processor: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 955 Processor (4 CPUs), ~3.2GHz
Memory: Mushkin 1600mhz 4096MB RAM
Hard Drive: 2x500 GB Western Digital Caviar Black
Current Video Card: HIS Ice-Q Radeon HD 4850
Monitor: ASUS 24" 1920x1080
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Motherboard: MSI 790FX-GD70 AM3
Computer Case: Cooler Master HAF 932
PSU: Corsair 750HX Modular
PS: I am open to "mix and match", my motherboard has quad crossfire configuration, meaning that I will have a reasonable gap between both cards and they won't be hugging each other (motherboard manual recommends PCI Express 2.0 slots 1 and 3, reasonably spaced). I do have a few questions about crossfire however, knowing that crossfire uses the lowest amount ram from two cards (ex: 512mb and 1gb, crossfire will be combined only 512mb), is it the same with core clock and memory speed? All the 6850s above have different core clocks, if I mix them, will the crossfire configuration be the lowest speed? Also, how does one go along overclocking a crossfire setup? From my extremely limited knowledge of overclocking, it's hard to raise voltage with crossfire.
Oh, and is one crossfire bridge enough? The 68xx series only has one crossfire finger, allowing only for 2x crossfire.
For a crossfire solution with 6850s.
Dual CrossFire (16X+16X)
GIGABYTE GV-R685D5-1GD Radeon HD 6850
Core Clock: 775MHz
Effective Memory Clock: 1000MHz (4.0Gbps)
$180 each
ASUS EAH6850 DC/2DIS/1GD5/V2 Radeon HD 6850
Core Clock: 790MHz
Effective Memory Clock: 1000MHz (4.0Gbps)
$180 each, $160 after $20 MIR
MSI R6850 Cyclone PE/OC Radeon HD 6850
Core Clock: 860MHz
Effective Memory Clock: 1100MHz (4.4Gbps)
$190 each
All of them have a 3 year warranty.
In the end, it depends on the cooling of the card. 2x 6850 is way more sufficient than I'll ever need it to, no matter what core clock. Although, I actually plan on slightly OCing the cards themselves seeing how I hear the 6850 OCs well, but only after a year or so, at a point where I don't care half as much about the warranty with a new card.
System Specs:
Motherboard: MSI 790FX-GD70
Processor: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 955 Processor (4 CPUs), ~3.2GHz
Memory: Mushkin 1600mhz 4096MB RAM
Hard Drive: 2x500 GB Western Digital Caviar Black
Current Video Card: HIS Ice-Q Radeon HD 4850
Monitor: ASUS 24" 1920x1080
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Motherboard: MSI 790FX-GD70 AM3
Computer Case: Cooler Master HAF 932
PSU: Corsair 750HX Modular
PS: I am open to "mix and match", my motherboard has quad crossfire configuration, meaning that I will have a reasonable gap between both cards and they won't be hugging each other (motherboard manual recommends PCI Express 2.0 slots 1 and 3, reasonably spaced). I do have a few questions about crossfire however, knowing that crossfire uses the lowest amount ram from two cards (ex: 512mb and 1gb, crossfire will be combined only 512mb), is it the same with core clock and memory speed? All the 6850s above have different core clocks, if I mix them, will the crossfire configuration be the lowest speed? Also, how does one go along overclocking a crossfire setup? From my extremely limited knowledge of overclocking, it's hard to raise voltage with crossfire.
Oh, and is one crossfire bridge enough? The 68xx series only has one crossfire finger, allowing only for 2x crossfire.
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