GIGABYTE Ultra Durable VGA Series Radeon HD 6850 1GB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity GV-R685OC-1GD

Pros: Nice Looking; Good price for a factory OC’d unit (factoring in the rebate); Fans are fairly quiet even under a load; Includes a MOLEX to PCIe six pin pass through adapter, a DSUB to DVI adapter and a CrossFire bridge as well as some Interesting utility software.

Cons: Not many here and nothing that costs an egg; Mine came with the 11.6 Catalyst drivers, I recommend you upgrade to 11.11 or 11.12. The CD with the drivers didn’t work but that happens sometimes and I was able to get updated drivers directly from AMD and current utilities from Gigabyte.

Overall Review: I purchased this card to replace an ageing HD5670 that I use on my test bench and it is working out well. On a board with a stock i7 960 and 6Gig of 1600MHz RAM I managed respectable test scores from both Cinebench and Future Mark Vantage right out of the box BUT if you are planning on using this card for gaming buy 2 or think about spending not-a-lot-more $ on 2x6870’s. Regarding the rebate process: I think Gigabyte set this up for failure, the UPC bar code (which is very small) is separate from the product sticker (which is very large) and the rebate form requires both. The UPC is on the same flap as the product sticker but on the left under the ‘HD’ label. It would be easy to miss. I received confirmation/approval of my submission in about a week.

Pros: Excellent price:performance ratio Runs everything I need it to at 1920x1200, SC2 single player on extreme, handles DoW:2 benchmark on max settings with pretty good framerates, I haven't tested Crysis classic yet, but I don't really feel the need. It's such a huge performance leap over my old 4670. Most importantly i am able to stream myself playing SC2/WoW effortlessly where as my old gpu would've crashed out. Not to mention also being able to downstream video content while playing SC2 (previously I was unable) I like being able to toggle manual fan control, and the design of the heatsink was one of the reasons i wanted this over some of the other 6850 models. It idles at 50c and runs 60c under load at 50% fan speed, 57-59 under load with 75%-100% fan speed. the 9" length of the card actually fits in my case too, which is probably the biggest deciding factor in getting this card over a higher end chip.

Cons: it's not a 6950? no real cons yet.

Overall Review: I originally was looking to get a 6870 or a 6950, but after reading many reviews of those cards being of huge lengths, I made sure to measure my own case to check how much clearance I had, and checked against the dimension specs of those cards. the 6870 and 6950 were all 11" which was just barely not going to fit, so I opted for the 6850 (which was definitely cheaper than both other options i was considering) Forced to save money because the case couldn't fit a higher end card? I'm okay with that, and so far the 6850 hasn't let me down, especially since i'm not as hardcore of a gamer anymore-- Picked this card up just in time, since Skyrim comes out tomorrow (as of the time of this review)

Pros: • Looks cool • Has a great custom heatsink that keeps the card chilly • Custom fan setup is very quiet • Comes with a slight overclock • Sips power, only needs a single PCI power plug • Performs nicely in games ranging from World of Warcraft to Skyrim

Cons: • Didn't get up out of the box and install itself for me!

Overall Review: I used this card in an old Core 2 Duo Hackintosh build after the 9800GTX in it died. Mac OS X Lion works great with the card and plays about anything you can throw at it well! The small stock overclock on this board is a nice bonus since there isn't any software for overclocking on Mac OS X yet. To anybody else who is using this card for a Hackintosh, I offer a bit of advice. While this card works fine without Chameleon's/Chimera's GraphicsEnabler switched on and can even play some games (Blizzard stuff works), many other games will only crash until you switch GraphicsEnabler on. So as long as you're running Lion, switch GraphicsEnabler on before shutting down, install the card,

Pros: - Incredibly powerful for the price - Twin fans cool very nicely and are quite (unless you jack them up to 100% of course)

Cons: If you want to do more than 2 monitors, make sure you have at least one monitor with a diplayport connector, or have an active displayport adapter.

Overall Review: This is my first ATI card (I've been an Nvidia loyalist for 13 years) and I am very impressed. From a gaming aspect, if runs Skyim on High settings (with several hi-res mods) at a consistent 30-35 fps. My wife does a lot of photo editing and photoshop is incredibly snappy. Definetly worth every dollar

Pros: Great price/performance (I paid $157 with taxes and shipping) Easily installed VERY quiet (I can't hear mine over the normal hum of my computer - ever) Overclocks well (mine went to 885MHz and 1225MHz) Runs very cool (hovers around 60C on full load (Furmark), and 50C when playing graphics-intense games)

Cons: No voltage control, but I wasn't going to play with voltage anyway so not a con for me Pretty large, but you should be making sure it fits so that's certainly not a strike against the card Catalyst Control Centre installed right of the bat but that is now seemingly obsolete and I had to uninstall it install the new replacement for it. CCC did not work properly which is the only reason I even figured there might be something newer.

Overall Review: I am relatively new to building and overclocking and computer gaming (mostly have used consoles), so I don't have the same expectations many of the 'maximizers' out there do, so keep that in mind. This install was extremely easy and overclocking was even easier and faster than doing the same with a CPU since you don't have to keep restarting and entering the bios. Other than performance/price ratio, noise and heat were my main concerns when purchasing a card since I use this computer for work, so I didn't want it making too much noise or heating up my office. This card was even better than I thought... it might as well be passively cooled for the amount of noise it makes. Also, the fact that it OCs to near 6870 levels is just a sweet bonus. Mine didn't OC as much as some other people who got above 900MHz, but I don't really care, the difference is essentially negligible.

Pros: Quiet, Cool, efficient, great for HDMI interface, works with my LG 42" TV without any hassel. For a quick comparison, I went from a GTS 250 1GB which got on average 50 to 55 frames per second on Furmark 1.8, while hitting 70 Deg C on the standard benchmark. The 6850 OC on the same exact test got 76 FPS while only hitting 50 Deg C. My overall wattage pull on my PC has decreased as well, but I'm not playing anything like Crysis, either. In addition, my GTS 250 had issues displaying to both my monitor and TV, where I would always have to readjust the desktop size on the TV to less than 1080p. It would also struggle when displaying to both. The 6850 automatically recognizes the TV and displays appropriately and the temp only goes up a couple Deg C.

Cons: Catalyst take some getting used to. I've been a Nvidia user up until now. Am currently haveing problems running 3DMark Vantage, but not with my games or other software. So, probably just a driver issue.

Overall Review: I had a lot of problems stripping the old Nvidia drivers from my system. Catalyst is weird enough without having conflicts from old Nvidia drivers. Considering my previous GPU was an 8800GTX from early 2007, and cost almost $600, and how unstable that was (not to mention how many RMA's), and then how the GTS 250 was going for around $130 in early 2010 for about the same performance (although completely stable), Spending $190 on this card for such a dramatic improvement with stability to me is a bargain.

Pros: Great little card for what it does. The factory overclock is nice for those of you who do not want to touch the Overboost settings in Catalyst. Runs nice and cool, never above 60C in a well ventilated case.

Cons: I heard the 6850 were good cards for overclocking so I picked up two of these for crossfire, but little did I know that Gigabyte decided to use completely different voltage regulators than the rest of the manufacturers. This card has a NCP5395 voltage regulator, while everyone else -- and I mean EVERYONE ELSE -- uses a CHIL8214-03. This means things like Sapphire Trixx and MSI Afterburner WILL NOT change the voltage. Even boosting the core clock or memery clock even a little bit will cause them to crash.

Overall Review: If I wasn't dead set on overclocking I would have kept these cards, however the lack of any sort of voltage control is a real put off. If I had known that before buying these I wouldn't have bought them.

Pros: Near Silent and Cool. I just gutted my 2 yr old HTPC. I wanted to make a real gaming HTPC. I wanted a full 256 bit card to run without overheating the CPU. Coupled with my 55" Samsung plasma the Thermaltake DH101 case, sitting next to my Yamaha RX-V765, matches the receiver in height and looks great! BUT the inside severly cramps airflow. I bought the SabreTooth 990FX, FX4100. 256g Crucial SSD, the Gigabyte GV-R6850oc to replace my 128bit 5770 vapor-x. I really am impressed with the cooling on the GV-R6850oc card. My CPU idles 34-36c. The GV-R6850OC idles at 32c on auto fan & is absolutely silent. I turned down the fan speed with CCC to 35% and GPU temp only went up 2-3c at 28% it still idled at 38c. Not bad for a case 5" tall which only has two small 60mm fans to suck it all out.

Cons: Not a con, but more of a suggestion. I am a fan of Gigabyte Ultra-Durable products: This dual cooler design is goodlooking and very efficient and the heatsink is high quality. BUT Ditch the thin plastic shroud and put some aluminum on it that adds to the structure of the card. I would gladly pay a few more dollars.

Overall Review: After two hours of Dirt 3, the temps only hit: cpu - 56c, GPU- 59c. This was with an overclock of the CPU to 4194mhz. Need a little more CPU cooling. I am going to purchase the ShurikenB or the Big Shuriken with some half height memory in an attept to get the CPU temps down a couple degrees. G-Skill RipJaw 1600 4g sticks are the best value in ram going. Great memory. But the metal heatshields actually create a problem in my case. The DH101 case limits the abilty to use a large cpu cooler that cools both cpu & memory. Bottom line, I need to improve the airflow around the memory. I am very happy with this purchase and recommend the GV-R6850oc for any HTPC or crossfire system.