Here's the conclusion of that review above:

Pros:
+ Excellent cooling performance with low noise (assuming adequate case ventilation)
+ Excellent overclockability and game performance (assuming adequate ventilation)
+ Silent operation
+ Dramatic appearance

Cons:
- Triple- or quad-slot cooler, probably too large for most HTPC cases
- Requires careful system design to ensure adequate ventilation
- Significantly higher price than other HD6850-based cards
- Unsuitable for CrossFireX setups

Ratings:
Performance: 9.5
Appearance: 9.0
Construction: 8.75
Functionality: 8.0
Value: 7.0

Final Score: 8.45 out of 10.



I wish more and more companies make hard attempts to silence video cards. Currently we can only get mid-range cards to run silent, but I'd love to see high end cards get the same treatment. Of course this also relies on nVidia/AMD making their cards more efficient as well.

The width spec say 38mm and slots are 42mm so you can run two, they seem to fit sideways with a 1-4mm space and one eats no slots on some newer motherboards. I was wondering about the actual height though depending on what they measure it looks taller than the 112mm the spec says.

EDIT: 1.7-2.0cm most likely (off the bracket). Just thought I would complete this post from the other thread.

What's the point of them making this video card, when it's impossible to get?

Already "deactivated" on newegg, which means end-of-life usually, and no where else selling it at a reasonable price.

Still available at AmazonDE, and price hasn't jumped.
http://www.amazon.de/PowerColor-Radeon- ... 473&sr=8-1

30 in stock at

http://www.priceguidenetwork.com/powerc ... -s3dh.html

These seem to be in stock at numerous retailers now.

$213.89 SuperBiiz.com
$225.00 EWorldSale.com
$279.94 1st Choice Memory

and a few others, funny how some retailers will try to jack up the price.

I just got mine and installed it with a Slipstream zip-tied to it (requires long zip-ties, I had to use two in 3 corners).
First impressions aren't so good, it runs about 5C hotter in games than a 4850 with AC S1 and a Slipstream at the same rpm.
I wouldn't dare to use it fanless, I believe it would get scorching hot. Haven't done anything about extra VRM cooling yet.

Thanks for the report. Could you fill us in on the airflow situation?

* Room temp
* Case (brand, model, mods)
* Intake and exhaust case fans
* PSU (brand, model, mods)
* any other components that would generate airflow, block airflow, or generate heat more so than a typical CPU + HDD.

I'm assuming you did your test in a closed case not open air or with a side panel off.

I believe airflow is acceptable, but room temperature is 25-26C, it's summer and it could get even hotter. My current setup, with nothing modded:

Solo case with Slipstream exhaust and 100mm Kaze Jyu intake, Enermax 82+ 525W, i7-920 with Scythe Mugen2 and Slipstream (BIOS control), Intel G2 160GB, Scythe Kaze Master controller.
The 6850 SCS3 has another Slipstream zip-tied to it, when gaming all fans (except CPU) are set to ~800 rpm. When idle I set them to ~600 rpm, but if the room is hot I keep them at ~800 rpm.

PS. This configuration stabilizes in Furmark Xtreme burn at ~78C, which is ~20C more than my vintage 4850 with S1. Not that the S1 is very good, but my old 4850 is relatively efficient.

PS2. With the GPU fan and case fans at only ~600 rpm in Furmark Xtreme it kind of stabilizes at ~86C, which is too much for my liking.
However, when playing a not so demanding game as Nehrim (a total mod for Oblivion) it only gets upto 66C, according to GPU-Z.

fwiw without a fan my HIS 5570 will do bad things if Furmark is run indefinitely (I don't know how bad it gets as I stopped testing somewhere above 100c). Putting a 120mm fan at 5V near it took that problem away. I can run Furmark indefinitely now and not worry about temps.

If you gave me a 6850 that stayed under 80c with a slow fan near while running Furmark I'd be happy with that. None of the games I play come close to Furmark levels of heat output.

Though I wish I could use PowerTune to lower the TDP instead of focusing on adding a 120mm fan to a fanless card. It's a shame that PowerTune is only enabled in the driver on the 69xx cards. I wonder if the driver could be hacked to enable PowerTune on a 6850 or if there is board level logic involved and the driver just gives the UI set the parameters for that logic.

I really hope that PowerTune will be a feature on even low end 7xxx cards so it will be easier to reduce heat output on the card with the heatsink/GPU combination you want.

Has anyone tried using this 6850 with an open air case and standard room temperature? Does it 100% require forced air?

I've an Asus fanless 5570 and I can hammer it all day and it's pretty cool GPU temps.

Gigabyte have a Radeon HD 6770 GPU

http://uk.gigabyte.com/products/product ... id=3861#ov

Or I'd say something like this would be about as far as I'd go myself

http://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/AMD_ ... _SLDI1GD3/
Or this:
http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentatio ... id=1&leg=0

Time is a good one to play on this I went up from a 7600GS to the 5570 whilst it's not a serious gamer card you can get some decent results and it was a big update on the older card. I'd personally wait for the next 7 series myself and a die shrink to 32nm that should help temps fall and power consumption drop

Ok, so does anyone have a picture where i can see it built in? A rig with a silent powercolor hd6850 build in it?

I wanna know cause I want to put in a gelid tranquilo cpu cooler in my case too and want to know if the two would fit.

thanks!

I haven't got a picture for you, but I can say this:

If your video card is right up in the top expansion slot, then the Gelid Tranquillo won't fit. It needs to be at least the second slot down. Even then, it barely clears my Thermalright HR-02.

(Motherboard was the Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H)

Thanks Flemeister, I can do some calculations with the info you gave me.

I want to tell you this, however. If you use the 6850 with the Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H in the second pcie slot, you should be aware of the fact that the second slot only supports 8x. Only the first runs at 16x. That is why I am looking for 2x 16 pcie lanes in my future mobo. You can see that this is stated on its product page. Still looking for motherboards that offer x16 lanes on a second pcie slot, and that will make it possible to mount such huge video cards without eating up pci slots. I need them! Make some room, manufacturers!

I think by second slot he meant the first PCIe 16x slot, the first slot is PCIe 1x.

Then look into X58 mobos, or more recently X79/LGA2011 those should have at least 2x PCI 2.0 16x PCIe slots. LGA1155 only has 1x PCIe 2.0 16x slot, thats how intel design their chipset, Ivy bridge (none E) will be the same. Only the high end chipsets from intel will have more than one 16x PCIe slot.

Hi Abula,

I already assumed he meant the first pcie x16 slot,

here, check out what gigabyte themself say about it,

1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16)
* For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot.
1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x8 (PCIEX8)
* The PCIEX8 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16 slot. When the PCIEX8 slot is populated with a PCI Express graphics card, the PCIEX16 slot will operate at up to x8 mode.

So, inserting a 6850 in the second slot because of its dimensions will tamper its full potential, since it only allows for x8.

thanks for your mobo suggestions! You seem to know a thing or two about it, haha. Is there any news regarding whether or not Ivy Bridge E version will support 2x x16 pcie slots? (What is the E version, actually, im kind a outdated on new cpu's... -.-

Not even a GTX580 can saturate a 16x PCIe 2.0 slot, even today, we see many doing SLI/Xfire with Sandy Bridge (not E), and still have very good scaling with dual gpus, this leads to believe, there will be little difference on 8x slot, specially a mid end card like 6850, but this is just my assumptions, as i have not tested an 8x slot with either of my gpus, but would be interesting to see if there is a difference.

Ivy Bridge E will probably come as Sandy Bridge E with more than one 16x slot, and probably will come with PCIe 3.0. But ivy bridge (none E) will be the same as sandy bridge (none E), with PCIe 3.0, the E is what intel is using for designating their Enthusiast chipset, sockets are different thus each chipset has their own cpus, E line has multiple 16x PCIe slots, the E also has support for quad channel memory, there are other difference that i don't remember, but in essence its two difference chipsets, one is mainstream and one is high end.

Looks interesting.

From what I can tell, because of the extreme temps created by this card, a normal fan won't work. Too much back-pressure due to the tightly spaced fins, which reduced airflow and increases speed.

You'll need a slot fan or a side fan blowing outwards to suck the heat off of the card and out of the case immediately.

Still, a single slot fan or side fan at fixed speeds is a lot quieter than any reference cooler. I'll take 15-20db over 50+db any day. Also, just run games. Don't burn it out maxxing the GPU for hours with futuremark. The cooler appears to be put together with typical OEM crud heat compound and lacks good heatsinks as noted. A bit of retrofitting should improve things, though to be honest, an Accelero on a normal 6850 is probably a better bet if you're going to mod things anyways.

Thanks abula.

Can I ask you (and others ) something?

Building around a i2500k system (gelid tranquilo cpu cooler), I am thinking about getting a silent hd6850. I mean, it's the best silent card out there right now, and when crossfiring it, it would be really really extra good. However, I also need room for two pci cards (my soundcard and a wireless network adapter card, ... maybe wireless could go through usb- but i will lose speed, right?).

Do you know of any good motherboards that will have the room to fit all of this? I am afraid that inserting two hd6850 underneath eachother is even doable for one (dimensionally, heat-wise). Secondly, im afraid that heat from the card will cook any card put in right under it... . Your thoughts?

If you can't come up with anything,... I'm thinking of going the Crossfire Gigabyte hd6770 route.... it's second best, but maybe easier to find a motherboard that will fit these two cards, and have room for two pci slots and a big cpu cooler?

thanks,
V

I wouldn't xfire two passive coolers.... way to much heat to lay inside the case, you will need very good airflow both in and out... personally if you want that kind of power i would probably just wait for the custom coolers for the new 7970 or 7950. I always have preferred single card over sli/xfire, but its up to you. Maybe something like Antec 1100 with the twin 120mm fan on the side.... but to me this starts getting to the point where you are going to need so much air flow... that it will not end up quiet, so i think its better to go single card.

Crossfire 5770's with Accelero S1's is practical to do, as long as you've got some modest airflow blowing across the cards (eg. 500RPM fans). For my old setup (photo below), with the 3x Scythe Slipstream fans all at a silent 400RPM, temps in games got up to the 90c mark, and Furmark took the GPUs a little over 100c. Turning the fans up to a quiet 800RPM brought game temps down to the low 70's.

I think that Crossfire 6850's with Accelero S1's would be ok as long as you blow some extra air over the cards when they're under load.

thanks abula, for the tips. I really want a silent computer, and a very good gpu performance. I guess in december 2011 its just not easy to win both ways. I will use the computer as my daw, so its gotta be quiet. One gpu will do for sure, when thinking about the application of my computer in this setting. However, when gaming, i will not need all that silence. Therefore, the thing i am currently thinking about right now is to get two passive 5770's. When recording audio through my pc I just wont stress the gpu's very much, so i wont need any fans operating at that moment, other than my intake fan, cpu fan, exhaust fan and psu fan (for seasonic silent 560x).

However, revving up the fans when gaming wont be a problem at all. Therefore I am just thinking about getting some fan controller to controll the fans with, or a zalman fan controller, you know, that little thing thatll allow you to let more voltage pass trhough fans making them spin around faster. Does this sound good?

Now that I think of it, its kinda what flemeister suggested. Slow fans when recording (like 400-500 rpm), and higher according to my need when gaming. 3 fans in my case, one cpu cooler, thats it.

By the way, flemeister, two 6850's wont really work i think. It takes up THREE slots. (one slot above the card, the card itself, and one under the card it seems,....). Two 6850's, and you lose 6 slots at least, plus one under the lowest 6850, cause its heat wont be good for any card under it. If you'd like two extra pci slots ( I do), then finding a good motherboard will be very hard. Taking two-slotted silent 6770 by gigabyte will suit more motherboards.

thanks for your suggestions.... maybe you guys know of a good fan controller (one that allows me to turn fans off, as well?

Regards

btw, what cards are these?

Powercolor's passive hd5750's? Two slot, right? I think the 6770 is two slot as well.
And, do i see correctly that you didnt put anything else in that motherboard than those two gpus?
Thanks

I like a lot the SCYTHE KM03-BK KAZE MASTER PRO 5.25 BLACK FAN CONTROLLER, i used to ran 5x Scythe Gentle Typoons 1850rpms on it, very nice fan controller, it manage to drop them around 500rpm, below that the fans stopped. Lamptron also makes some good fan controllers, maybe since you running 3 fans, stomething like Lamptron FC4 Fan Speed Controller 20W x 4 channel Black.

Most of the 1155 mobos will allow you to use dual 6850, as they come with 2 pci slots between the 16x pcie slots, i was checking some, and most do come like that. The power color is a dual slot card but also has heatsink on the back, so my guess is you do need 2 pci slots spaces between both cards, but i cant say for sure and i dont own it, just a guess. If you do go for that i would be interested in your results, specially temps while gaming, so please post them.

Asus CuCore HD5770.


That's right, although there are 3x expansion slots available if required. One above the cards, one in between, and one below; Two PCI-e 1x and one PCI. If I were to use the slot between the cards, I would make sure the intake fan blows extra air when the cards are under load.