Afox AF6850-1024D5S1
Founded in 2008, Afox is a new player in the U.S. market that picks up where its former parent company left off. A spinoff of Foxconn’s branded graphics business, it’s said to now be under independent control.
A little independent thinking can go a long way in the graphics industry. Afox is the first brand to offer a single-slot version of AMD’s Radeon HD 6850 mid-priced gaming enthusiast graphics card. One other brand that followed its lead wasn’t able to deliver a sample for this review.
Like other Radeon HD 6850-based cards, the AF6850-1024D5S1 provides a single CrossFire bridge connection to support two-card arrays. Unlike its competitors, Afox is able to eliminate the six-pin PCIe power connector that other 6850s require, making this the fastest card we've seen without the need for auxiliary power input. Even more significantly, Afox is able to get its Radeon HD 6850 within the power confines of a PCIe x16 slot without any alteration to AMD’s reference 775 MHz GPU and GDDR5-4000 frequencies. That means the card is likely rated for the same 151 W maximum power limit as the dual-slot version. Afox simply tosses backward-compatibility with PCI Express 1.x out the window to take advantage of the second-gen interface's enhanced power delivery. Kudos to Afox for pushing the enthusiast agenda further.
As a full-height card, we even get the expected 256-bit memory interface.
Because Afox’s card has all of the display outputs we'd expect already, no adapters are included in its kit. The card supports DVI-I-to-VGA adapters, though none is included, since they're no longer required by most buyers.
Afox adds a simple installation manual and two temporary tattoos to its driver CD in the card's bundle.