How is PowerColor? Looking at the 6850.

PoweredBySoy

2[H]4U
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So I'm ready to purchase a 6850 and I have been eying both the new Sapphire Toxic and the PowerColor PCS+ one. Both the exact same price with the same overclocks. Now, I've always been a huge fan of the Sapphire Vapor-X/Toxic cards - beefy overclocks with dead silent cooling. But I'm not that impressed with this 6850 version. The heatsink looks a little small and the fan a little loud, and the few reviews I've read kind of hint at this. The PCS+ on the other hand seems to have a larger heatsink, and all the reviews tout how quiet it is. I'm just wondering the quality behind PowerColor though. I've never purchased one of their cards and they seem like a smaller company with middling user reviews.

Thanks.

(I realize that the PCS+ doesn't allow for voltage modding and I don't have a problem with this. I'm not sure I'd even oc beyond the stock of these two)
 
Buying any 6850 at current prices lowers the $$ to performance benefit of the cards. I would wait till they come back down.
 
Pretty sure the Gigabyte 6850 (dual fan) has the best cooling of all 6850's right now.
It's $189 ($10 over msrp) and out of stock.
 
Wow, that is a good deal. The 5870 is a beast. Any idea as to how long that promo is going to last?

I hate MIR, but that's hard to pass up.

It's a Black Friday promo or something it won't last long, I expect they'll sell out by tomorrow night if not sooner. Too hot to pass up.
 
Okay, okay, you got me. Ordered. In the end that's only $5 more than I was ready to pay, and for a vastly faster card. Merry fuckin' christmas to Soy.
 
Oh yeah, way more than a 5 dollar jump in performance. You will be pleased with the speed. My christmas came today (sig). Details in 470 aftermarket cooling thread in NV section. Delicious... :)
 
Pretty sure the Gigabyte 6850 (dual fan) has the best cooling of all 6850's right now.
It's $189 ($10 over msrp) and out of stock.

I have yet to see a multi-card review where that is clearly the case. Anandtech's lacks both Gigabyte and Sapphire cards in their multi-card although they were the most readily available yet somehow they had an MSI. The only other one I've seen was from HardwareHeaven:

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...rd-review-temps-noise-power-overclocking.html

I own a Sapphire 6850 so I'm probably biased lol. I do not remember seeing reviews for the non-OC (i.e. non PCS+) version of the Powercolor card either at launch, but the PCS+ versions do cool quite well when compared to the XFX ones which are also known to cool well. I think the high fanspeed on the XFX cards have been fixed, but I am unsure if that affected reviews of XFX cards at launch.

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/powercolor_6850_pcs/15.htm
 
It wasn't high fanspeed that was "fixed" it was changing the fan profile with an updated bios to make it less aggressive, something you can do yourself in 5 minutes with afterburner et al.
 
Own a powercolor 5850 pcs+
I got kinda a dud of an OC that can only do 820, 1120 (though ram can go to 1200).
Some get ones that can do 900 without volt modding since you can't on these.
That being said.. card is solid, no issues and runs super quiet. 70% fan I can hear it, but it is not distracting and not even furmark pushes my fan to 70%.
dunno about support but I emailed them a warranty question and they replied in 2 days.
very good company.
I owned a 9800pro from sapphire. Just sold it a few months ago. Super solid as well.
Both awesome companies.
 
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